By John Walker on September 3rd, 2012 at 9:00 am.
There’s eventually some nice in-game footage of the combat in Neverwinter in the new trailer, revealed via PAX this weekend. The game is set for release early next year, but in the meantime you can find out more about skull-faced pirate, Blackdagger, below.
I challenge you to pay attention to a word the narrator says:
03/09/2012 at 09:05 Gornodd says:
Best narrative trailer ive seen in ages. DAGGERFACE!!!1
03/09/2012 at 09:28 FakeAssName says:
wow, it’s Champions Online modded into DnD!
it’s got a bit better coat of paint, but the from the stiff animations to the combat casting that thing screams “Champions Online: Fantasy version!”
03/09/2012 at 09:36 Toberoth says:
I’m saddened that in four years or so what people are going to associate with the word “Neverwinter” will be this cack and not the rather brilliant (if flawed) Neverwinter Nights. Assuming they even remember this game at all, that is.
03/09/2012 at 11:23 atticus says:
I’m saddened that so many people have spent the last four (or more) years developing MMO’s, both free-to-play and subscription-based, that seemingly very few care about.
Imagine all those resources being used on single-player titles instead… We could have had a new Knights of the Old Republic, a new Neverwinter Nights, a new The Longest Journey…. or a number of new solid IP’s.
Maybe I’m in a minority thinking like this since I’ve never really played MMO’s myself, but it really bums me out.
03/09/2012 at 11:30 JiminyJickers says:
I agree with you, I have no interest in MMO’s give me a new single player RPG in those universes any day.
03/09/2012 at 12:55 StranaMente says:
I concur. Seeing mmo attached to almost any game makes lose all my interest immediately. Sorry for them.
03/09/2012 at 14:54 cragthehack says:
Just what we all want, another fantasy based MMO. *rolls eyes* And I agree, give me a great single player RPG over any MMO any day.
03/09/2012 at 19:22 FakeAssName says:
you do know that this is being done by Cryptic, not Bioware, right?
For all the effort that CRYPTIC has been putting into this for the last 4 years, we would have gotten a few more ships in STO or a bunch of overpriced crap in the Champions cash shop.
03/09/2012 at 19:55 atticus says:
Yeah, I meant all the time spent by any developer on MMO’s in recent years. Sure there’s a market there and lots of people want to pay for and play this kind of game, but it just seems like too many are trying too hard and very few are succeeding.
I don’t want MMO’s to go away, I just want fewer companies to risk their entire business on a type of game that needs a huge base of players over a very long period of time.
04/09/2012 at 01:26 Komus says:
Both great points; is not Dragon Age 3 for Xbox and suffers because of it… Kickstarter will be the place where PC produces it’s next golden single player epic.
The big publishers will go for arcade/multi-player titles almost every time. Black Isle is the one to watch too!
03/09/2012 at 13:44 phelix says:
Same probably goes for the Elder Scrolls. In some years the ‘new generation’ of gamers will only remember TES for either the MMO or Skyrim, and not for the glory that was Morrowind.
03/09/2012 at 13:50 InternetBatman says:
Not really. After the death of Interplay, people didn’t associate Fallout with Brotherhood of Steel. I’m kind of curious what the old MUD was like.
03/09/2012 at 09:38 Whisperduke says:
Poor D&D. You deserved better.
03/09/2012 at 10:07 Godwhacker says:
This looks pretty boring, but then I have been playing Dark Souls all weekend.
03/09/2012 at 10:22 Toberoth says:
Same here <3
03/09/2012 at 16:21 DrGonzo says:
I honestly thought that looked much prettier. The combat looked just as wonky as Dark Souls though.
I’m really trying to get into it, but after a couple of hours in the world and universe is incredibly generic and dull. But sod that, it’s about the fighting, or so they say. So far it’s like a poor man’s Witcher 2. The combat is nowhere near as good, or as difficult and it doesn’t have an interesting world and story like W2.
My main cause of death in Darks Souls so far is walking through a door and there being a hole right behind it which I fall through and die. And people are praising this? Madness.
03/09/2012 at 16:33 Gessen says:
I haven’t had that issue. I think I fell down an unexpected hole maybe 5 times. 3 of which were into dungeons or some sort of area with a mob, and the others were to my death. I fell like Dark Souls doesn’t smack you in the head with it’s graphics but it’s consistently excellent and creative. I really enjoyed the variety of creatures / bosses and the different feel of each type of weapon. Having just started NG+ I feel a lot of ownership for that game. I worked hard and learned a lot to beat it. Even though there wasn’t a map, I could trace routes to pretty much every location in the game. Anyway I’m rambling, but while challenging and frustrating, I feel like this game was probably one of the most naturally rewarding games I’ve played in years and the story telling while maybe a little too minimalist also made you notice every scrap because of it’s scarcity. Will definitely be in my top 5 games for a very long time.
03/09/2012 at 10:09 inkreis says:
Never come to a Sword (Coast)-fight armed only with a (Black)Dagger.
03/09/2012 at 10:23 Archipelagos says:
So when is this coming out again? 2004? Can’t wait!
Seriously though, that looked very, very poor on almost all fronts: bland character design, boring environments, dodgy animations, dated combat, the list goes on. That it’s being released next year is fairly shocking. They will need a tremendous gameplay hook to do well because it doesn’t seem to have much else in its favor.
03/09/2012 at 11:02 lordfrikk says:
This looks so bland…
03/09/2012 at 11:53 Arglebargle says:
They were talking about ressurecting some series with BlackAdder in it??
This doesn’t even look like Cryptic’s usual.
03/09/2012 at 12:33 spongthe1st says:
I really wish they’d just make tabletop DnD on the computer with flashy graphics, that’s literally all it needs to be.
Neverwinter Nights was great in the sense the toolkit enabled people to create game sessions in this way but it was rather complicated to do so. In that way it was to DnD RPGs what ARMA is to mil-sim, hugely rewarding if you put the tremendous amount of time and effort required into it, but otherwise rather useless.
A streamlined approach to make it easier to create, host and play in a straightforward manner would be a blessing.
Of course it could still have a complex toolkit for the more technically able as well, but for it to really take off it needs to be more accessible to everyone.
03/09/2012 at 12:37 Unholymess says:
Hear! Hear! Totally agree.
03/09/2012 at 12:38 Lobotomist says:
I wanted to assemble a small indie team to do just that.
Alas…WOTC licence. And its chainbound to Atari. That is the plague
03/09/2012 at 12:58 Nim says:
Pathfinder Nights
03/09/2012 at 13:52 InternetBatman says:
It certainly doesn’t have flashy graphics, but Maptools is tabletop D&D on the PC. I think you’ll find that as a system gets simpler, it also has far more limitations. I wouldn’t have done things quite the way NWN did, but it wasn’t that poorly designed.
03/09/2012 at 13:11 Krimson says:
I swear that the voice actress for the narrator has appeared in every fantasy video game ever.
03/09/2012 at 13:41 gtb says:
This game is going to be a non-starter. I predict it will sell a miniscule amount on release, and then completely disappear.
03/09/2012 at 16:57 tumbleworld says:
I predict that your prediction will eventually prove to be spot on.
Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Nastily shafted by D&D.
03/09/2012 at 14:50 PostieDoc says:
Why is Le Chuck in this video?
03/09/2012 at 15:33 frank3n says:
His stocky Daggerbody creeps up the stairs, into the throne room, and sits for a spell. His pat is complete.
03/09/2012 at 16:55 tumbleworld says:
Wow, that was a whole pile of monotone gibberish. I tried turning auto-captions on, which was hilarious: “The hot friends have found me.”
But, um, yeah. Really? Another ludicrous license-murdering MMOFlop to compete with TESCO as the savagely expensive embarrassment of the year? When will the bloody idiots give it a break?!
03/09/2012 at 18:12 Shuck says:
The auto-captions are hilarious:
“that’s an option because you’re black
so what we sent so we can speak each Sinatra’s true”
It’s a poetic gibberish, i must say.
03/09/2012 at 18:03 Jeff6016 says:
The 90′s called, they want their graphic quality back when you are done with it, guys.
Sheesh.
03/09/2012 at 18:15 maladroid says:
Did she say “coitus” at 0:52?
03/09/2012 at 18:27 EPICTHEFAIL says:
I think it is just Standard Fantasy Narration (TM), another trend that should have died long ago.
03/09/2012 at 18:28 Kein says:
I wasn’t able to understand a word she said. Such is a life of non-native english speaker.
04/09/2012 at 01:17 MiKHEILL says:
Sounds like the narrator lady from the System Shock intro video.
04/09/2012 at 01:20 MiKHEILL says:
Bah, scratch that, just my memory being poor.
04/09/2012 at 09:43 GasToad says:
This is a pretty bad video for the Neverwinter MMO. It wasn’t even showing the UI or anything. This video helps, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylmYKHBGlyQ but I think most of your opinions are already concrete. Ignore the talking, like I did, and just watch the gameplay.
04/09/2012 at 09:46 GasToad says:
Woah, just re-watched it and yeah I can say it looks pretty bad.