Overview

Shadows of Underwear

Since it was first announced, the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights has taken a lot of heat for its goofy name. Yes, it is vulnerable to fratboy tags like “Shadows of Underwear.” Yes, it is impossible to properly spell “Undrentide” without access to Google. But the name is also suitable. You may be amazed that the FloodGate Entertainment-developed game got past the front door of publisher Atari with those words on the box, yet it still fits right in with old Dungeons & Dragons modules like Tomb of Horrors and Queen of the Demonweb Pits. Gary Gygax probably would have approved.

Pretty spells

Blood splatters

Interrogating the locals

Acceptance of the add-on probably won’t be universal, though. Look past the name and you see a solo adventure with a cliché-packed plot, some engine enhancements like new character class options and spells, and a few new toys for the Aurora toolset. The campaign will hold your interest for a while, as the story is professionally told and features a nice balance between roleplaying and fighting. The rule and toolset tweaks will soon become must-haves for anyone who wants to design or download fan-developed mods and modules for Neverwinter Nights. But nothing addresses the faults of the original game. If you didn’t like the single-player limit, the annoying henchman stuff, or the fixed camera angles that cut off too much screen, you won’t like SoU. We’re still a long way from the epic tale and real-time battles that characterize the Baldur’s Gate series.

Conan saves the world

That’s both good and bad, as each franchise has its strengths. SoU plays up to its strengths with a plot that, like its name, evokes memories of first-edition D&D modules that old-timers like myself remember playing in high school. Although it lacks the “gotta save the world” stuff of Baldur’s Gate, the adventure features a script that could have been published in pen-and-paper format in the early 80s. You play a student of Master Drogan, a dwarf asked to hang onto four dangerous magical artifacts by the organization of Forgotten Realms do-gooders called the Harpers. Sooner than you can say “Robert E. Howard,” the lich’s hand, dragon’s tooth, tower statue, and mask of an evil high priest are stolen and Master Drogan nearly killed, leaving you as the only one capable of playing hero.

A comely wench

Those fearsome kobolds

Obtaining a quest

Predictable? Oh yeah. Regaining lost or stolen magical devices have been a hallmark of fantasy gaming since the first Conan adventures, and of D&D since the White Plume Mountain module in 1980. Still, a thrice-told story can be entertaining, and this one is, for the most part. You get to visit a number of new lands, spread across the Forgotten Realms from the frozen north around a village called Hilltop to the Anauroch Desert (the latter terrain is new to Neverwinter Nights, so expect to see a lot of sandy homebrewed modules in the next little while). There are a few twists and turns, although everything is telegraphed. You know right away that somebody is behind the kobold invasion of Hilltop, that the gnolls didn’t attack the kobolds for kicks, that somebody reeeeallly evil waits in the desert at the end of a long line of evil string-pullers.