Neverwinter Nights

It was a long game. A long, long, looooong game, that I think I poured about 70 hours into, and that's just counting this time - this time of playing through the game with my spiffy new video card and all of the graphical wonderfulness that it entails. Of course, I poured another 40 hours into the game a year or two ago when it came out, back when my 32MB VRAM laptop was the best way to play it, and where the screen would freeze for seconds at a time when more than five creatures came on the screen. That's a big problem of course, because there were almost always more than five creatures on the screen when anything interesting was happening, and even though the image would freeze, the game would keep going, so the next frame I saw might have me hacked to pieces on the ground.

The storyline was okay, but not great, but that was hardly the point of the game. More than anything else, the game is an engine for creating stories of your own, which they explain how to do in great detail. That's what sold so many copies and built such a big fan base. That's what made it such a great idea in the first place. And boy, am I excited to start building modules of my own. While doing other things, I've been reading the Official WorldBuilder's Guide, and it looks fairly easy, as long as you're willing to stay within the scope of what the game can accomplish.

That doesn't really excuse 70 hours of me at the monitor clicking away at orcs and giant spiders and air elementals, though, to the neglect of Kim and a couple of minor duties. That's just obsession - the same obsession that has me very excited about playing the other two modules Bioware's released (which I've purchased now).

Hmm... after 70 hours on the main game and the promise of another 50 hours in the two modules, I'm spending another 30 minutes to write about it. Silly me. On to other things.