Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer

"Adding both in content and scope, this expansion turns out to be nearly a must for fans of the core game"

Neverwinter Nights 2 was released about a year ago by Obsidian Entertainment, and was met with mixed responses. The graphics and general stability in particular were the reasons of many negative reviews. Some players also missed epic levels, which were available after the first game's second expansion. Mask of the Betrayer is, overall, a pleasant surprise, adding a very reasonable amount of content (including epic levels up to 30) and fixing some issues with the performance and graphics. However, the limitations of the core game are still there and it is doubtful that anyone who hated the original will magically enjoy the expansion.

Gameplay 8

First off, Mask of the Betrayer brings new races to the game. Wild elves are bulky and rough elves who prefer to remain shut from the society. Have-elves can now have drow (dark elf) blood instead of "regular" surface elf blood (mostly an aesthetic choice). Genasis are the major additions - planetouched humans with elemental blood. Choose from the fire, earth, air and water versions, each with rather different attributes and a small racial ability that reflects their ties with the elements. I personally find the choice to be rather strange, but down the road I cannot say no to this kind of new content.

There are two new base classes, the spirit shaman and favoured soul. These are essentially "sorcerer versions" of the druid and cleric respectively - that is, they cast spells without preparations but know fewer spells than their "regular" counterparts. Considering that the druid and cleric with arguably the most overpowered classes of the regular game, I find it odd that the developers decided to add similar classes to the game. Anyway, nobody ever said that the D&D system was balanced and I shall leave this balancing mumbo-jumbo to hardcore multiplayer fans to sort out.

Then we have prestige classes. This time around, Obsidian decided to favour casters; I welcome this since the original set of prestige classes was very limiting for casters who wished to simply improve their casting potential (most classes catering to hybrid characters). Thus, the expansion brings the Red Wizard of Thay and Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep for mages and sorcerers, the stormlord for druids and clerics and the invisible blade for rogue-ish classes. As I said, these classes are all very welcome and add a lot to the character customisation part of the game. That being said, you can only take 10 (or 5 in some cases) levels in a given prestige class (no epic progression for them). This is a bit disappointing, since it makes some classes much less useful (namely the arcane archer and assassin).

Finally, the expansion adds 10 (epic) levels - so your characters can level up to level 30. Epic levels mean epic feats, and there are quite a few of these. A point of concern is that the game departs from "real" D&D by retaining the base attack bonus of non-epic levels, and by allowing characters to gain more attacks per round. For the uninitiated, that means that warrior classes improve a lot more through epic levels than they should. Considering how the late game used to be dominated by casters, this rule change might actually be a good thing.

As I hinted earlier, some of the engine's limitations are still there (which was to be expected since Mask is only an expansion, after all). Arguably the biggest limitation is the size of the areas. It was not that bad in NWN1 and Knights of the Old Republic, since the areas were somewhat less detailed. NWN2 has lots of eye candy and some fancy graphic effects, and so the areas tend to be smaller to accommodate the average computer. Combine this with the rather long loading times, and it sometimes feel like you spend more time arms crossed over your chest looking at the loading bar than actually playing the game.

Video 8

The graphics are said to have been improved since the original, as well as the performance. Honestly, I cannot really see a difference in the general graphics, but I do see an improvement in performance. This is still better than nothing, especially since it is rather unusual for expansions to add such things.

And then we come to character models ("heads"). The visual quality has been improved, and the heads look more contrasted and realistic than before. Changing the skin colour also yields higher quality results, so the heads do seem more than a simple plastic ball with a general tint. The big problem is once again the variety. Most subraces (including the new ones) still have about 3 head choices, which is incredibly low and makes for a rather weak multiplayer experience (too many people look the same). Hairstyles and beards have had small facelifts as well, but remain largely unchanged (it is still impossible to choose a specific beard for a specific head, for example; they still come in pairs).

All in all, I do not think that the graphics part was directly improved by a significant amount since the release of the core game. What has changed is the performance, so depending on your system you might be able to crank up the graphics more than before. In the end, I always thought that the graphics were pretty good – the problem was the cost at which these graphics came, and MotB seems to make the graphics more proportional to the system's power.

Audio 9

Mask of the Betrayer gives NWN2 a real audio part. In the original game, almost every music and sound were imported from NWN1, which was rather disappointing. The expansion brings a good number of new soundtracks as well as a 2 new voice sets for your characters, which include new spell chants. All in all, both the music and voices are very good, and I can only wonder why they had not bothered to do things like that for vanilla NWN2.

Story 9

I found the official campaign to be pretty interesting overall; it's the kind of campaign that I can actually see myself going through more than once, which is saying something. I also admit that I was quite interested in the development of the plot. Some people will probably call me a blasphemer, but I really saw parallels between Mask of the Betrayer and Planescape: Torment (for the record, I have to say that I've always found Planescape to be kind of overrated though).

Of course, I do not want to spoil things here, so I will leave it at that as far as the story itself goes.

One of the things that really surprised me was the difficulty. In the modern world of gaming, developers want to sell their games and tend to make them rather easy so that everyone can get through them. I found Mask's campaign to be surprisingly difficult, and I see that as a good thing overall; especially given how easy the original one was. Even early in the game I had to reload a few times. The kind of reload that makes you think "all right, I really need to think of a better strategy this time".

I also really liked the companions that can join you. The developers aimed for quality over quantity this time, and I would say that this is a good thing. There are only five possible companions to choose from, two of which are mutually exclusive (as can be guessed, one comes from "the evil way" and the other from "the good way"). The result is that each companion feels more complete, with a defined personality, and they are affected in their own way by the plot development.

A small disappointment for me here was to have to choose which companions to keep. The game uses a 4-man party, so that's 3 companions. In the original campaign, and other games like Baldur's Gate, it's obvious that you had to make a choice because of the large number of companions. But this time around, there are essentially only four companions to choose from but you can only have 3 with you. It feels a bit artificial to have to leave a single companion behind. In the original campaign, you often had a group of 5 because of "forced companions" (which, by the way, doesn't happen in Mask after the initial prologue), so I don't quite understand why they force the 4-man on us this time. Given how companions are a highlight of the campaign, I think that this is a poor design choice.

Although the campaign is rather heavy on the action, I was pleased to see that the developers refrained from going with a "warehouse slaughter" approach. In the original campaign, there was a lot of mindless slaughter involved. In Mask, combat is harder but generally more appropriate.

Overall, the main thing that really irked me was the general lack of realism that comes from the fact that Mask is an epic campaign (epic as in levels here, not size unfortunately). Basically, everything that moves seems to be as epic as your character. The result is that a bar fight against a bunch of pirates is as hard as fighting away an army of angry spirits. The whole thing feels terribly forced and unrealistic, and reminds me of Oblivion's scaling enemies. Your character might be a machine of destruction, but so is the average gnoll.

As a final note, the campaign makes use of a special system of spirit eating. I cannot detail things at the risk of spoiling, but your character will basically develop a thirst for spirit energy and become addicted to it. How you manage your addiction has an impact on alignment, in particular. Some people have found the system frustrating; I actually think that it's great, since it gives more depth to the character and allows for special developments of the story. The Mask campaign is about your character more than anything else, and the spirit eating curse reflects this.

Replay value 7

The campaign apparently comes with a few different endings, but I haven't seem them all as of yet. As was said before, two companions are mutually exclusive, so that could be an incentive to go through the campaign again.

The replay value of games like NWN2 mainly come from two different sources, multiplayer and fan-made modules. Unlike in NWN1, which saw the rise of many adventures, both single and multiplayer, NWN2 seems to have a smaller community - even a year after release. My guess is that many people are put off by the high requirements of the game. There are still some great modules to find, and a few populated servers.

Most modules and persistent worlds that will come out will probably require Mask from now on, so if you plan on sticking to NWN2 for some time it might end up being a requirement.

Ironically enough, only time can tell what the replay value of the game (outside of the campaign) will look like. If you are looking for a game where new content is readily available and constantly drops from the sky, NWN2 and Mask are probably not a terribly good choice. Still, I do think that the campaign itself has a decent replay value, and if you touch only official material you should have a good time.

Conclusion

To me, there is no doubt that Mask of the Betrayer is a good expansion, and that it improves the Neverwinter Nights 2 experience. As such, I really think that this expansion is a must for anyone who liked the original a bit. That being said, it remains just that - an expansion. So if you thought that NWN2 was a bad game, chances are that Mask will not leave you amazed. It does feel more like a complete and stable game, but some of the engine annoyances are still there and will most likely remain forever. All things considered though, I think that Mask was very well made and I hope that the developers keep doing good work.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/07

Game Release: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer (US, 10/09/07)