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Neverwinter Nights
I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights. But I had quite a setback.
My dwarf fighter was extremely effective for his level. I'd specialized in two-weapon combat, and I'm reasonably sure that I was operating at an effective level higher than his actual level. I'd lowered his INT and CHA a bit, which seemed to close off some game options. Still, I was powering through the campaign quite quickly.
Too quickly, it seems. Near the end of the game, I reached an absolute dead end. There was a room that I had to get through, and the two opponents in there were both completely invulnerable to the weapons that I had.
Should I explain? In the game, some creatures cannot be hurt except by weapons of sufficient magical power. The problem is that unless your character is of sufficient level, more powerful weapons are completely unavailable. You won't find them in dungeons or chests, you can't make them, and merchants won't have them for you to buy. The game is very "fixed" that way.
The problem is that there is no way to RAISE your level at some points, and no way to go back and do it. Unlike most CRPGs, there is NOT an infinite supply of re-spawning monsters in NWN; once you've cleaned out an area, it stays clean! And you simply can't journey to other areas. They're just not available to you.
So my dwarf fighter is completely stuck. All that time, wasted.
I started over with a human fighter, considerably weaker but with average INT and a decent charisma. This time I checked out walkthroughs online, specifically to make sure that I got every possible side-quest; every possible way to earn extra experience and guarantee that I'd be higher level when I got to that choke-point. So far it's working fairly well. My dwarf fighter was level 14 when he stalled out. My human fighter is 13th level, and he's still a whole chapter away from the end; at the rate I'm going, it's guaranteed that he'll be 16th level at least when I get to the same point, and it wouldn't surprise me if he made it to 18th level or higher by then.
Still, it's a definite flaw in the game. No good game leaves you stuck without any options after dozens of hours of play.
There was another thing that bothered me. In Luskan, at the end of Chapter 2, there's a woman named Londa who asks you to find her missing children. If you carry out the mission, you find that the older children were turned into were-rats (and effectively killed, because they're gone), and the younger children were turned into food - either for the were-rats, or for the big bad guy who kidnapped the children in the first place.
You can kill the bad guy, and rescue the children's nanny, and get proof of what happened. But if you go back and tell the mother what happened, she thanks you, gives you a reward, and then runs out into the street and automatically gets killed by some of the bad guys. This is a special event; no other NPC ever leaves a building and appears on the street, much less interacts with wandering "monsters". And the thug dialog itself reflects the strangeness of the events. In other words, Londa commits suicide.
But when you're reporting to her, there's the option to lie to her and tell her that her children were sent away to distant orphanages by the bad guy. So I boosted my charisma (just to be sure) and took that option. Once again she thanked me, gave me the exact same reward, and ran out into the street the same way as before - but this time, wandering thugs did NOT appear and cut her down. She just stood there, refusing to enter dialog but just saying "leave me alone, please" if you try to talk with her.
And I mean she really just stands there. She's part of the fixtures of the city after that, indefinitely. In fact, she's still there.
Lying to her didn't affect my alignment (100% Good) or anything else. It's just...I don't know, it's kind of an annoying plot stub.
My dwarf fighter was extremely effective for his level. I'd specialized in two-weapon combat, and I'm reasonably sure that I was operating at an effective level higher than his actual level. I'd lowered his INT and CHA a bit, which seemed to close off some game options. Still, I was powering through the campaign quite quickly.
Too quickly, it seems. Near the end of the game, I reached an absolute dead end. There was a room that I had to get through, and the two opponents in there were both completely invulnerable to the weapons that I had.
Should I explain? In the game, some creatures cannot be hurt except by weapons of sufficient magical power. The problem is that unless your character is of sufficient level, more powerful weapons are completely unavailable. You won't find them in dungeons or chests, you can't make them, and merchants won't have them for you to buy. The game is very "fixed" that way.
The problem is that there is no way to RAISE your level at some points, and no way to go back and do it. Unlike most CRPGs, there is NOT an infinite supply of re-spawning monsters in NWN; once you've cleaned out an area, it stays clean! And you simply can't journey to other areas. They're just not available to you.
So my dwarf fighter is completely stuck. All that time, wasted.
I started over with a human fighter, considerably weaker but with average INT and a decent charisma. This time I checked out walkthroughs online, specifically to make sure that I got every possible side-quest; every possible way to earn extra experience and guarantee that I'd be higher level when I got to that choke-point. So far it's working fairly well. My dwarf fighter was level 14 when he stalled out. My human fighter is 13th level, and he's still a whole chapter away from the end; at the rate I'm going, it's guaranteed that he'll be 16th level at least when I get to the same point, and it wouldn't surprise me if he made it to 18th level or higher by then.
Still, it's a definite flaw in the game. No good game leaves you stuck without any options after dozens of hours of play.
There was another thing that bothered me. In Luskan, at the end of Chapter 2, there's a woman named Londa who asks you to find her missing children. If you carry out the mission, you find that the older children were turned into were-rats (and effectively killed, because they're gone), and the younger children were turned into food - either for the were-rats, or for the big bad guy who kidnapped the children in the first place.
You can kill the bad guy, and rescue the children's nanny, and get proof of what happened. But if you go back and tell the mother what happened, she thanks you, gives you a reward, and then runs out into the street and automatically gets killed by some of the bad guys. This is a special event; no other NPC ever leaves a building and appears on the street, much less interacts with wandering "monsters". And the thug dialog itself reflects the strangeness of the events. In other words, Londa commits suicide.
But when you're reporting to her, there's the option to lie to her and tell her that her children were sent away to distant orphanages by the bad guy. So I boosted my charisma (just to be sure) and took that option. Once again she thanked me, gave me the exact same reward, and ran out into the street the same way as before - but this time, wandering thugs did NOT appear and cut her down. She just stood there, refusing to enter dialog but just saying "leave me alone, please" if you try to talk with her.
And I mean she really just stands there. She's part of the fixtures of the city after that, indefinitely. In fact, she's still there.
Lying to her didn't affect my alignment (100% Good) or anything else. It's just...I don't know, it's kind of an annoying plot stub.