Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer Previews

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Written by BuckGB on September 20th, 2007

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You begin Mask of the Betrayer at the bottom level of an ancient barrow, a burial site for a long-dead race of sentient animals. The powerful Sword of Gith has been taken from you, including the shard that was embedded in your chest. In its place is a dark hunger to recover it, and of course to find out who ripped it from your body. At the very start of the game you'll meet your first companion, a Red Wizard of Thay who has decided to help you, though her reasons may be dubious. Your escape from the barrow inflames the ancient spirits that guard it, including the local bear god. That incident will play an important role later on. Answers begin to be revealed when you reach Mulsantir, the main town in the expansion and what appears to be a hub for your many adventures. In Mulsantir you'll find yourself drawn into a web of intrigue that involves the Red Wizards of Thay, as well as a legend that involves a betrayer who tried to usurp the god of death. One of the intriguing things about Mulsantir is that it offers you access to the shadow plane, a dreamlike version of the real world. There's hardly any color in the shadow plane, so it's almost like you're exploring an oppressively gray world.

Adventuring in the Unapproachable East is much less about killing tons of monsters (though there's no shortage of that) than digging through the layers of subterfuge and masks that hide the truth. This is true in the storyline and is reflected in some of the beautiful new scenery that we were shown. The Rashemen city of Mulsantir will act as the "hub city" in the game, the place where much of the storyline plays out and the majority of the game's quests will be garnered. Mulsantir, like most of the other game locations, also has a dark reflection of itself on the Plane of Shadow that the players will visit. The Plane of Shadow uses a new color desaturation technique (that will be available to modders) to turn everything except the color red to black and white. In these shadowlands, certain truths are revealed so a small, benign temple of a god of healing in the "real world" is instead a huge cathedral to an evil deity. A collapsed pier in an otherwise ordinary swamp is revealed to be whole in the Plane of Shadow and it leads to the home of a group of hags called the Slumbering Coven.

A few new classes are set to be added to the game, as well as a few new prestige classes that are getting us excited for the game. The two classes that we were shown were the Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman, which were both powerful spell casters, but were different enough to make them distinctive and appealing. While Favored Souls were able to nuke a foe with offense spells, the Spirit Shaman were more of a support class. For those of you who want to make a character with a more defined skill set, Obsidian has added new prestige classes to the game to be unlocked after you meet a certain set of criteria. We were told about two of these classes, the Arcane Scholar and, since you really can't have a visit to Thay without them, the Red Wizard class is set to make its first appearance in a video game.

Some of the new environmental effects include ground fog, and blowing sand as well as darkvision for those that are allowed it. When turned on, dark areas in their cone field of vision light up to help reveal more detail. Another really cool environmental effect is seen when you travel from your base in the city of Mulsantir to the Shadow plane. Obsidian has implemented a new desaturation setting that can be adjusted from 0% (no color) to 100% (full color). So the Shadow Plane is set at around 10-20% desaturation and gives a really black and white feeling you'd expect from such a place. This new control can be used by anyone making a module so it's sure to be used in some creative ways.

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