E3 2008: Neverwinter Nights 2: The Storm of Zehir First Look

By Jon Miller, GameSpotPosted Jul 16, 2008 8:54 pm PT

Create your own party and dominate the land in Obsidian's anticipated expansion.

We stopped by Atari's booth at E3 2008 to get a quick look at The Strom of Zehir, the much-anticipated expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2. The first major addition that fans of the NWN franchise will eat up is the new party-creation feature. Instead of starting your voyage with a cast of preset characters, you'll design your own friends, give them names, and even create your very own motto for your party. Obsidian said that many players felt that the relationships with preset characters felt forced and artificial, whereas this new creation system will allow for relationships and personalities to evolve dynamically. We didn't get to see the tool for ourselves, but love the idea of creating our own friends--we always need more.

You'll navigate the high seas on board the Vigilant, and it will quickly become apparent that your trusty ship has been sabotaged. With your party in tow, as well as the famous bard Volo, you'll begin to explore the land of Samarach and all of the mystery that it holds. We watched as Volo ran into a group of menacing goblins. Not being fluent in their language, Volo managed to insult the goblins and instigate a full-scale battle. You can expect plenty of such tomfoolery from Volo as you progress through SOZ.

Instead of the two-dimensional map in past NWN games, you now have access to a 3D overworld map that looks as if it was taken straight from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, for you NES fans. Here, many of the extra Dungeons & Dragons attributes from the 3.5 edition of the rules come into play, such as search, listen, and evade. Improving these will help you to spot enemies on the map from further away and avoid them, if necessary. Merchant wagons also dot the landscape, and you can buy low and sell high on your own virtual Wall Street. Many of the items will fluctuate in value and you can trade them in for cold, hard coinage.

Obsidian promises that SOZ will offer about 15 hours of additional gameplay; we'll have to take their word for it, given that we saw it for only about 15 minutes. You can expect to see Storm of Zehir sometime in the fourth quarter of this year for $29.99, or roughly 600,000 copper pieces.

34 Comments

  • ndra_vika

    Posted Aug 17, 2008 11:00 pm PT

    WOA...really wait for this!

  • AdrianWrz

    Posted Aug 16, 2008 1:14 pm PT

    I am gone buy The Witcher Enchanced before this expansion pack that for sure

  • OndonaFlash

    Posted Aug 14, 2008 3:36 pm PT

    Will this be a continuation of the character's story from the original NWN2 or will it be a character with a new backstory? That's what I want to know. I don't want it to be like the Neverwinter Nights expansion where in the first expansion it was a whole new character removed from the plot of the first game, and in the second expansion it was a follow up on the character from the first EXPANSION.

  • Slash145

    Posted Aug 12, 2008 10:17 am PT

    The story got much better but more annoying at the same time with Mask of the Betrayer because of the curse and some other problems but this one looks pretty promising as long as they make sure the created friends have backstories and some kind of personality because that's what made the characters in the other games interesting.

  • mrboone01

    Posted Jul 29, 2008 6:37 pm PT

    More crapware from Obsidian. Let me know when Atari loses the DnD rights and hopefully Bioware can make a real Neverwinter Nights game again.

  • Signal2Noise

    Posted Jul 29, 2008 12:30 am PT

    NWN2 & MotB have been sitting on my shelf for almost a year. Maybe I'll get around to playing them finally.

  • Jackyll87

    Posted Jul 28, 2008 12:27 pm PT

    I hated NWN1 only because it took up so many hours of mt life and by the end i was completing it out of habit rather than enjoying it. And as soon as i heard that NWN2 is NWN1 with better graphics i stayed away from it like hell.

  • Kez1984

    Posted Jul 28, 2008 9:08 am PT

    I'm glad there adding full custom support.

  • Hungry_bunny

    Posted Jul 21, 2008 11:11 am PT

    Haven't played NWN yet... but I've always wanted to try it...

  • ognen

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 7:51 am PT

    Ah, this is gonna be hell of a game.

  • Mehfuz

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 7:33 am PT

    another expansion, great

  • gmax Site moderator

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 1:26 am PT

    Something for the Neverwinter fans...

  • zombieman666

    Posted Jul 19, 2008 3:07 pm PT

    I will pass

  • TehFuneral

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 11:42 am PT

    sounds intresting

  • Macgyver40

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 11:19 am PT

    could be interesting

  • MattRorie Works for a game publisher or developer

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 10:14 am PT

    Broncosfan, we actually showed the demo of this game on a Vista machine. I'm not sure what problems you're having, but the demo ran fine.

  • forhekset

    Posted Jul 17, 2008 9:45 pm PT

    Seeing how they evolved their story telling skills from the original to MotB, this expansion should be incredible, though I assume not as epic.

  • lettuceman44

    Posted Jul 17, 2008 2:54 pm PT

    Looks good.

  • worldind913

    Posted Jul 17, 2008 12:26 pm PT

    sure the camera sucked a bit, but it's not the end of the world

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