Neverwinter Nights 2
Developer: Obsidian
Platform: PC
Release Date: September 19, 2006
While there were many role-playing games at E3 2006 that looked terrific, it was Neverwinter Nights 2 that showed the most potential as a great sequel, a great toolbox to create custom content, and as a great role-playing game overall. The game is in development at Obsidian Entertainment, the creator of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and also consists of veteran RPG designers that helped create such classic games as Planescape: Torment and Fallout.
However, what was shown at E3 looked impressive on its own; a role-playing game with what will hopefully be a deep, engrossing, story-driven single-player campaign given added depth by the game's use of the modernized 3.5 Edition rule set for Dungeons & Dragons. The game will let players bring deep gnomes and dark elves into battle with a full complement of character skills and heroic feats, along with all-new character "backgrounds" that will help players further customize unique, powerful characters.
In addition, the game will include expanded adventuring party options that will allow for groups of up to four characters at once, with control options that in some ways resemble the classic Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. It doesn't hurt that Neverwinter Nights 2 will also ship with a comprehensive and powerful tool set that should let players create even bigger adventures, with larger menageries of evil monsters and larger treasuries full of completely customizable treasures. At E3, Neverwinter Nights 2 proved that it has a lot to offer as a role-playing game and distinguished itself as the RPG of the show.
Finalists
E3 2006 Editors' Choice Awards
In this feature, the GameSpot staff brings its considerable amount of collective experience at covering E3 to bear, distilling all of our coverage down to its most important elements and showing you what the biggest names and events were at E3 2006.
