“Mad lad places Neverwinter Nights into Baldur’s Gate 2 for some motive” was my coworker Joshua Wolens’ summation of Andrey Balabokhin’s really confounding mod venture, NWNForBG, which seeks to demake BioWare’s 2002 D&D RPG in its extra critically acclaimed 2000 D&D RPG. The consequence isn’t how I would advocate having fun with both sport, nevertheless it’s one of many weirdest and most fascinating mod tasks I’ve seen in a minute.
There aren’t actually screenshots or dialogue of the mod I may discover on the market, so my curiosity may solely be sated by a direct hands-on expertise. Getting there, although, proved a vexing odyssey into Baldur’s Gate 2’s funky modding ecosystem and NWNForBG’s personal quirkiness.
Putting in NWNForBG itself was comparatively easy, nevertheless it additionally requires the BP-BGT Worldmap mod to perform. This mod swaps Baldur’s Gate 2’s default world map with a zoomed out map of the complete Forgotten Realms, permitting modders so as to add new quick journey factors on the map, equivalent to the town of Neverwinter.
I met my very own, private Waterloo looking for the goddamn .exe installer for this factor that the venture’s GitHub web page tells you to make use of—it is simply not there within the mod information! I felt just like the man in that Twilight Zone episode with the room filled with books and a damaged pair of studying glasses (spoilers).
Fortunately, I discovered that, via a quirk of the foundational Infinity Engine modding software WeiDU, you’ll be able to really rename any WeiDU-based mod installer to be the one you want for a selected set of Infinity Engine mod information. I made a duplicate of the set up .exe for a WeiDU mod I already had, and renamed it to impersonate “setup-bgt-worldmap.exe,” placing me in enterprise.
Solely not fairly but. You may’t entry Neverwinter Nights as a separate marketing campaign from a menu. There’s a man added to Baldur’s Gate 2 who’ll take you to this fully new marketing campaign contained throughout the unique one, and he’ll solely present up upon getting 1,350,000 XP (round stage 13 or so). The expertise fortunately wasn’t an excessive amount of of a difficulty because of cheat codes, however I did must crank via absolutely the slog of BG2’s opening Jon Irenicus dungeon.
Setting the problem all the way down to Story did not do something about Baldur’s Gate 2’s lethal traps, so I used to be quick a Minsc and Jaheira by the point I reached the floor. Even then, it took me a minute wandering round Athkatla to run into John Neverwinter (actually only a “Messenger”) who may whisk me away to a totally totally different sport.
Jewel of the North
Right here was the second of reality: Had this modder actually managed to place a complete sport into one other sport? Was I actually about to start out taking part in 2002’s Neverwinter Nights, this beloved relic of my childhood, in a completely new means, recontextualized on the genre-defining Infinity Engine? In the most effective of all worlds, I may see a developer wringing new life out of this story with Baldur’s Gate’s full occasion management and potential for beautiful, pre-rendered backgrounds.
I used to be greeted with a fuzzy rip of Neverwinter Nights’ opening cutscene—full with the unique audio—earlier than arriving in an atmosphere I acknowledged however could not fairly place but. NwN mascot Aribeth was right here with dialogue and audio once more seemingly ripped straight from the unique sport. Curiously, act 1 secret dangerous man Desther (whoops, spoilers once more) did not have his unique dialog portrait, however a repurposed pic of Gaunter O’Dimm from The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone.
And that is removed from the one borrowing from a 2010s RPG right here. The driving drive behind my curiosity was how a modder may recreate maps from the absolutely 3D, modular, tile-based Neverwinter Nights within the Infinity Engine, which makes use of a 2.5D presentation counting on compelled perspective and bespoke, pre-rendered environments. Now I do know: Balabokhin principally chopped and screwed maps from the Pillars of Eternity video games, porting them again into the Infinity Engine that initially impressed Obsidian’s RPG revival.
I stepped out into the Copperlane district of Pillars 1’s Defiance Bay, flipped with a picture editor mirror software to face in for Neverwinter’s metropolis core. The town’s different districts are equally tweaked, flipped, or in any other case modified zones from Defiance Bay or Pillars 2’s Neketaka.
Popping into the Commerce of Blades mercenary hub (the catacombs entrance in Pillars), I used to be capable of pattern NWNForBG’s lone, debatable improve over the unique sport: full six-person occasion management, versus the bottom marketing campaign’s lone character with a single AI-controlled companion. It is probably not value leaping ship for.
This does not actually work for me as a method to expertise the OG NwN’s largely respectable marketing campaign—even getting previous its weird development, it would not appear proper to begin this 30-hour, zero-to-hero journey as a stage 13 character. Getting yoinked out of Baldur’s Gate 2 by John Neverwinter additionally would not absolutely eliminate that sport: I stored getting plot-critical dream sequence cutscenes for the unique story each time I took a nap.
However this CRPG turducken is such a compelling web artifact: a mishmash of three video games I’ve spent a whole bunch of hours in, remixed in a means I do not suppose I might ever have thought to do. NWNForBG evokes this surreal feeling for me, like how your goals will function individuals out of your life inhabiting fully totally different characters. It jogs my memory of standout ROM hacks like Toby Fox’s pre-Undertale Earthbound video games.
I merely cannot advocate NWNForBG as an RPG expertise, however that is a part of why I adore it. It was doomed from the beginning—Neverwinter Nights’ unique marketing campaign is basically underwhelming with occasional flashes of brilliance, nevertheless it’s a tech demo for the wonderful Aurora Engine toolset, which modders have used to make unbelievable, hundred-hour RPG epics like Swordflight or the Aielund Saga.
There is a mythic absurdity in making an attempt to recreate an okay marketing campaign launched alongside a number of the finest, easiest-to-use RPG maker instruments ever in a sport that is a lot more durable to create new ranges for. Certainly, there was really a long-running mod venture to try to remake Baldur’s Gate 2 with Neverwinter Nights 2’s mod instruments.
And this certainly took Balabokhin a ton of labor to create—he is reimplemented issues like Neverwinter Nights’ companion and facet quests, and whereas I am unable to personally attest to how a lot of the Neverwinter Nights marketing campaign is playable, Balabokhin’s patch notes make reference to later acts, implying he is labored the entire 30+ hour RPG into this format. So whereas I will not be taking part in NWNForBG for enjoyable, its fever dream mashup of some defining video games from my youth and early maturity is gonna keep on with me for a very long time.