Others have prettymuch said most of the things I like already. AL and Pathos both touched on most of my main reasons. However I dont think anyone went on enough about how WONDERFUL our new tooset is. Ive heard complaints from folks that I know are reasonably smart that its daunting, but Im a lazy smoke-addled hippie... If I grabbed ahold of the toolset, anyone can. Admitedly it has a few more levels of complexity over the old one.. but those who once robe bikes eventually learned to drive cars.
You can fade from snowy to muddy to grassy and back again in any pattern or shape you want, no placing of little tiles. You literally paint in the terrain like mighty AO himself making all that is. Your mind is literally the limit of your creation. You can go back in and tint any of these textures with colors too.
Individual creatures can be made bigger or smaller, as can PLACEABLES! If there is a statue model you like for the kingdom you are building... you can have it appear 2 feet tall on the king throne, also 10 feet tall at ever major intersection, and again at 35 feet tall outside the city gate.
The sky. For starters it has the orbiting sun, and moon with tears. Not only do they orbit, but you can change that orbit or remove them totally. You can lock em in one place, or make alien skies by playing with color and lighting... you can literally change the color of the sunlight if you want. Adjustable fog, by density and color.
Lighting. Your lights can be any color, any intensity, be placed at any height or angle, and take up any volume you might desire. The altar to Lolth really pulses purple in an otherwise lightless room. The fire dosnt just make a spot of light, that spot of light flickers like a real fire. The temple to Umberlee in both the upcoming servers of BG and the Moonsea have sea colored lights that fade in and out like tides and waves.
Toolset rocks.... its just like one of those hot bitchy goth girls from your high school, they only seem that way at first. The toolset really wants to your kitten, and show you how much cooler it is than the other girls.
Nalo Jade wrote:besides the graphics.
You dont get to ask "Whats so great about chocolate, besides the taste". Nope.
The graphics rock. If I wanna imagine the game looking better, I could play PnP and imagine it much better than either platform. I got into nwn1 cause I liked looking at the DnD game I was playing. After joining alfa I learned to like it for other reasons, but I still really like lookin at my game.
I mentioned the skies in the toolset section above. Even on the lowest graphics settings, the skies are great.
PCs look more realistic and as mentioned by others each race is scaleable. You also dont chose your "head" like in nwn1, you do chose from one of a set of faces but the hairstyles are separate choice from the faces.
In the hands of even a slightly competent builder you get a pretty sweet lookin game. With our ALFA teams you see areas like the purple lake (highway 6b) , high hold, and that big plateau in the moodwoods. Alfas Silvy sits on a river in a pretty drastic valley, you can be down on the shore and look out across the whole of the other side of the city spread up and outward in front of you. Its really like looking at Silvy, switching from nwn1's engine to getting to look at that was worth buying the game.
The great thing about chocolate really is the taste, even if you asked for another answer.
J
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