Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate (PC)

[aruljothi]

Release Date: 04/29/2009
ESRB Rating: Teen
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Ossian Studios

Despite its numerous rules and restrictions, Dungeons & Dragons, I've always maintained, asks this question: "How do you want to play?" The Neverwinter Nights series answers that question better than many role-playing games. In addition to content produced by BioWare and Obsidian, the games' players have used the included toolsets to create hundreds of modules and items, from ambitious retellings of classic paper-and-pen D&D campaigns to simple dungeon tiles.

Ossian Studios produced one of the best modules for the first Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford, an adventure (still available for free from the Neverwinter Vault) that felt more like Baldur's Gate II than Neverwinter Nights. That shouldn't be much of a surprise, considering that Ossian's founder is Alan Miranda, a BioWare alum who worked on BG2 expansion Throne of Bhaal.

Ossian's Mysteries of Westgate is the first adventure pack for Neverwinter Nights 2, and it's the studio's first official retail product. While it does have some fun quests, nods to the past, and interesting new content, the tale shows the studio is still learning how to develop and pace a story.

Mysteries of Westgate opens in the port city of Westgate, the Dragon Coast burg that's home to the Night Masks, a feared thieves' guild. You arrive at the docks to solve the mystery of a cursed mask that you found in a dungeon. The mask isn't a very cooperative item; it won't part from your company, and it gives you nightmares. As you delve into the adventure and the shadowy guild's operations, you're embroiled in a tale of vengeance and a dark, monstrous secret.

It's an intriguing tale, and even after finishing the game, a number of encounters and plot points ring in my head, and one puzzle in particular is a lot of fun. The resolution for one of the NPC's storylines is quite satisfying, but the story's poor stitching distracts from its arc -- I felt like a great hand (no, not Bigby's) was pushing me through the plot, and the tale felt a bit muddled toward the end. The biggest issue, I feel, lies with the mask's curse -- it has no real negative impact on you. Carrying it may give you nightmares, but you're allowed to rest, and if you're a spellcaster, regain spells. Drawbacks exist for donning the mask, but since it's cursed, you're not very likely to do so until you reach a point where the game makes you wear the mask. The mask's the impetus for your quest, but the story fails to really that. You never feel like it's important to rid yourself of the curse.

The adventure doesn't make use of the improvements seen in NWN2 expansions Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir, though this isn't Ossian's fault. The studio finished MOW in 2007, but the digital-rights-management system that Atari wanted wasn't ready. Between the time MOW was finished and the DRM was ready, Obsidian released both of the expansions. Since the module was finished before the expansions, none of the improvements from the expansions, such as Zehir's party system, were in play.

Only one bug was evident, and that issue, I feel, had more to do with the nature of games that incorporate user-generated content than any programming SNAFUs on Ossian's part. Playing with a combined pack of prestige classes, spells, and races developed by the NWN2 community (a pack that's compatible with the expansions), I encountered a bug that caused a key encounter in the game to fail to appear. Once I disabled those modifications, the encountere worked just fine. With time, I'm sure modders will make their content packs work with MOW.

Mysteries of Westgate does have some interesting encounters and adds to the already impressive NWN2 toolset. It has some good plot points and character development. But the story's shortcomings show the trials a young studio endures as it learns to craft a tale.