Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
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ESRB:
Alcohol Reference,Blood,Mild Violence,Sexual Themes,Violence
Publisher: Atari Genre(s): Role Playing Game Home Page: http://www.atari.com/nwn2/motb/US/...
Multiplayer: Fun for One Andre the Giant is upset because not a single NPC acknowledges his existence. Kamile and Safiya try to cheer him up, which makes Kaji feel left out The original Neverwinter Nights added something new to online multiplayer RPGs: Dungeon Master play and an extensive toolset for creating custom worlds and adventures. In essence, this let players use Neverwinter Nights as a medium for pen-and-paper style role playing, where plot and player-world interaction were orchestrated by a real Dungeon Master, not predetermined scripting and AI. You can read more about the history of the DM client and multiplayer in the Neverwinter Nights series in our NWN2 retrospective. While multiplayer has matured in the year since NWN2's release, one glaring flaw remained until the release of Mask of the Betrayer: no official campaign content supports multiplayer cooperative play. I'm a big fan of co-op gaming, and when Mask of the Betrayer proudly declared that it's meant for "a single player or 2-4 friends", I was giddy as a schoolgirl. What a load of crock that claim turned out to be. Try playing the campaign with a friend, and your friendship will be truly tested. Tested how? Well I'm glad you asked. First of all, only one player can be the main protagonist - other players will be "companions", which is a nicer term for "henchman". That means you'll get to sit out through all of the lengthy bits of dialogue, with no control over the events, and you'll never get to use your conversational skills either. The 20 skill ranks of Intimidate my mighty Half-Orc Barbarian took were totally wasted, and all I could do was scowl at the monitor with my most threatening stare, while my companion attempted to placate my wrath with ever increasing offerings of magic items for me to wear.
Secondly, the scripting completely forgets about the possibility of two human players, and annoying bugs follow. At the very beginning, after a worse-than-cliched "you wake up in pain" cutscene, all players start the game with a curse that weakens them. However, only the main protagonist can trigger a cutscene that removes the weakness, and as a result, all henchman players have debilitating penalties for the rest of the adventure. The only fix we could find was to play the multiplayer game solo past the cutscene where your attributes are restored, and have other players join in after that. This is user-unfriendliness defined. Finally, if you're going to call a CRPG campaign "multiplayer", try to at least allow for the most basic tenant of role-play adventuring: specialized characters that complement each other. After all, those stereotyped roles are what makes it easy to assume a role and have fun pretending. But no, not so for Mask of the Betrayer. In the Barbarians' Ice Lodge in Mulsantir, one of the party has to prove their might against the local barbarian posse. Does our mighty, all muscle and no wit Half-Orc, Andre the Giant, finally step up to the plate? No, says the game, the best representative is obviously Kamile, the petite and whiny Bard - after all, she's the protagonist. This is where Andre lost it and decided that he'd had enough of this multiplayer experience.
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