Pre-order your copy of Neverwinter Nights today!

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Pre-Order Neverwinter Nights!

DailyRadar Review

Bioware impressed us with Baldur's Gate, and the upcoming Baldur's Gate 2 also looks like it'll make us lock our doors and lay in a supply of beef jerky for the long game sessions. Neverwinter Nights, however, will not only suck away hours of our time, but it'll let us help suck away hours from other gamers' lives -- as many as 63 other gamers, to be exact.

The game's isometric third person perspective lets players rotate the camera so they can get a good look at the other players joining them on an adventure. The game focuses on easy multiplayer action -- Bioware still hopes to get as many as 64 players in all at once for some serious old-school paper-and-pencil roleplaying on the computer. The game will ship with 28 multiplayer modules for player to jump directly into, as well as a powerful editor to let prospective dungeon masters create their own adventures.

However, the game will still have a single-player mode that will let players experience the game on their own. Although the multiplayer aspects of the is obviously the focus, Bioware wants to make it accessible to those who don't want to constantly play online.

The game is completely faithful to the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition rules, which means players can create all the new character classes of the new system and use many of the new rules for combat. Bioware is focused on making the game as accurate to the rule set as possible.

Graphically, the game looks fantastic. Realtime shadows cast from torches flicker with the dancing flames, and move around as players move the torch. The shadows even include those cast by the player holding the light source. Spell effects look big and beautiful, just like they should. And the character models even have reflective surfaces, so armor reflects the light from around the character while the cloth or skin portions are more muted.

Unfortunately we'll have to wait until the second quarter of 2001 to get our hands on the game, but once we do, time will vanish completely. Not only can one person play the Dungeon Master (DM), but more than one person can be the DM. Which means you might be walking down a path on the way to a new dungeon, and a DM in the guise of a begger could ambush the party and attempt an assassination. As a matter of fact, players could have 63 DMs for one player -- not that it would be any fun for the DMs. In the same sense, DMs running a game will have full control over who gets in to the game, whether or not certain areas will allow player killing, or what sort of requirements players have to meet to join the adventure.

The characters in the game will be stored in a variety of ways, either on the host's server, on a general game vault, or on the players' hard drive directly. While this will open up the possibilities for some hacking, DMs can look a character over before letting it into the game. At the same time, Bioware promises full support online for the game, with ranking measures that will let players either recommend or lambaste other players, DMs, and servers.

We were suitably impressed with Bioware's latest offering, and we think these screenshots prove that Neverwinter Nights will be one of the best RPGs to look for next year.

Amazon.com Preview

BioWare, the company that brought you Baldur's Gate and the sequel BG2: Shadows of Amn, are at it again with what promises to be the most revolutionary online RPG yet: Neverwinter Nights. Why is it revolutionary? Because Neverwinter Nights dares to play like the pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons game it was based on.

Neverwinter Nights will be an online multiplayer role-playing game, but it won't be anything like EverQuest or Ultima Online. Instead of thousands of players exploring a single game world, Neverwinter Nights will feature small bands of players gathering on a single server. One player will take the role of Dungeon Master and will coordinate the story, control monsters, and guide players along a pre-made adventure from BioWare or from the Dungeon Master's own imagination. The overall experience will be much more personal, and will play just like the pen-and-paper game except without time-consuming dice rolls and rules arguments.

Those who don't want to run a game can always simply join an open game server and meet new people. Gamers looking for a solo experience can play through the included single-player adventures.

A new state-of-the-art 3-D graphics engine powers the game. It will also use the current 3rd edition rule set for Dungeons & Dragons. Neverwinter Nights is due sometime in the autumn of 2001, and will likely forever change the way we role-play online. --Andrew S. Bub