Something of a surreal experience
I guess it is not that surprising, given the recent milestone for Neverwinter Nights, that I find myself writing about work I did nearly twenty years ago once again! More specifically, I have been watching someone play through Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, the expansion I produced and wrote for DLA as part of Bioware’s expansion programme. I got a tweet from Lord Fenton, a streamer on Youtube, who is currently playing through Wyvern Crown of Cormyr and sharing the experience (you can find the first episode here).
It’s oddly compelling viewing and I can’t really put my finger on why! The videos are nicely put together and there is some nostalgia for me in that I have not touched that piece of work for many years, so some of it feels quite fresh to see now. Aside from some irritating bugs (more on that in a bit) it’s also a really polished piece of work in terms of the thought that went in to the systems and quests. I think there also might be a bit of masochism in watching someone else play and missing out on some of the things you wrote – like having a loose tooth and being unable to stop fiddling with it.
On the downside, it does seem that the recent upgrade of Neverwinter Nights by Beamdog to the Enhanced Edition has re-introduced some bugs into Wyvern Crown. More specifically the version carried over to the Enhanced Edition seems to have completely bypassed the original patch that was released a day or two after launch. This was added to fix some fairly irritating bugs on some systems (such as being able to continually level followers) and variants of them seem to have reappeared.
Even so I have been enjoying the series and have even been briefly tempted to open up the game again and have a go myself! That said I am also torn between polishing up Child of Fate, or starting another novel in the Beastslayer series… decisions, decisions!