Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford

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Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford
Single-player

Darkness over Daggerford is a

mod, the game was created by Canadian company Ossian Studios, headed by former BioWare employee Alan Miranda
. It was remastered and released as an official premium module on June 1, 2018.

Daggerford was based on earlier

Baldur's Gate. Completely a single-player experience, Daggerford's story revolves around the player character
investigating the recent death of the town's leader.

Daggerford was originally conceived as a Neverwinter Nights premium module, which were products marketed through BioWare's website and supported by the game's publisher,

Neverwinter Nights series
.

For Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Ossian Studios was hired to remaster Daggerford and finally release it as an official premium module.[1]

Gameplay

Main article: Neverwinter Nights
The world map in Darkness over Daggerford.

Since the game is an expansion of Neverwinter Nights, it uses the same

sidequests.[2] Players start the module at level 8.[3] In addition to the main storyline of the game, there are numerous sidequests that can be undertaken for a variety of rewards.[4]

Plot

The intro of the game tells the player about the recent events in city of Daggerford. Pwyll Greatshout, the duke of Daggerford, died during strange circumstances. To maintain stability, a new leader was chosen: Baron Matagar Bugo, who promises the citizens to make Daggerford a new trading giant like Waterdeep. In the meantime, raider attacks on caravans become too often, and strange disappearings of cattle make people believe that hard times wait ahead.

The game begins with players working as freelance adventurers escorting a caravan from Waterdeep to Daggerford. Along the way, the caravan is attacked by a mysterious group and one of the player's

party members, Talarenne, is kidnapped.[2]
The player soon discovers that Talarenne was mistaken for an agent of Waterdeep who came to the city in order to find out the truth about Pwyll Greatshout's death and the current political situation. The player decides to aid the agent.

The rest of the story follows the player character's efforts to rescue the missing party member and find the truth about what is going on around Daggerford.[3] Gradually, an evil plot by Zhentarim is uncovered, and player has to do everything to stop it from fruition, or the city might be taken over... or even destroyed.

Development

Alan Miranda was a previous employee of BioWare and had worked on other Dungeons & Dragons titles like Neverwinter Nights and

Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast. Miranda revised the concept and chose the Western Heartlands as the setting.[9]

toolset
.

Ossian began putting together the team for the module and decided to hire prominent amateur modders from the Neverwinter Nights fan community.

Baldur's Gate.[10] Early on, the team decided to focus on the creation of a world map system for Daggerford, as well as a stronghold system that players could use as a customizable home and base.[5]

Ossian estimated that a module on par with other large games like Kingmaker would take four to five months to develop. Pre-production on Daggerford began in April 2005 and took a month and a half. Ossian went through five designers in this stage, none of whom were successful. Choosing a designer required much of the time allocated for pre-production, and to compensate, Ossian developers immediately began creating the game, fleshing out details as they went.

brick and mortar building—most of the game's design was coordinated online using Skype.[11] The production of Daggerford took longer than Ossian had anticipated, and in February 2006, BioWare's Live Team Lead Designer Rob Bartel offered the studio advice on their module.[4][11] The next month, BioWare inspected the game and approved it for content completion.[13]

In May 2006, Atari cancelled the premium module program, with no warning to developers of the current projects.

Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, which Miranda described as "perplexing."[13]

Reception

Darkness over Daggerford surpassed 25,000 downloads in five weeks, a higher number than that recorded for previous Neverwinter Nights Vault's Module of the Year winners.[15] The game went on to win the site's Reviewer Award, a Gold Award for the second-best module of 2006, and an entry in their Hall of Fame,[14] which collects the highest-rated and most popular modules.[16] It also won the Best RPG Mod award at the Independent Games Festival in 2007.[17]

References

  1. ^ The Beamblog. "Neverwinter Nights: Darkness Over Daggerford Is Now Available!". Retrieved 2022-10-29.
  2. ^ a b Berliad (2006-09-27). "Darkness over Daggerford". NWVault (IGN). Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  3. ^ a b "Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford". BioWare. Archived from the original on 2009-03-12. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  4. ^ a b c Taluntain; Chevalier (2006-10-26). "Darkness over Daggerford Interview". Sorcerer's Place. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  5. ^ a b c "Cancelled Premium Module Interview -Alan Miranda (Darkness over Daggerford)". NW Vault (IGN). 2006-08-17. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  6. ^ a b Ford, Suzie (2008-04-14). "NWN2: Mysteries of Westgate Interview with Alan Miranda". Warcry. Archived from the original on 2009-03-04. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  7. ^ "Darkness over Daggerford Wrap Report". RPG Vault (IGN). 2006-10-13. Archived from the original on 2009-06-22. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  8. ^ "Premium Neverwinter Nights Modules". BioWare. Archived from the original on April 29, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  9. ^ a b "Cancelled Premium Module Team Interview - (Darkness over Daggerford)". NW Vault (IGN). 2006-08-26. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  10. ^ a b Wallis, Alistair (2007-02-23). "Road To The IGF: Darkness Over Daggerford's Alan Miranda". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  11. ^ a b c "Darkness over Daggerford Wrap Report (page 2)". RPG Vault (IGN). 2006-10-13. Archived from the original on 2008-03-04. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  12. ^ "Darkness over Daggerford World Map System - Alan Miranda/Brian Watson". NW Vault (IGN). 2006-08-19. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  13. ^ a b c Taluntain; Chevalier (2006-10-26). "Darkness over Daggerford Interview (page 2)". Sorcerer's Place. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  14. ^ a b "Darkness over Daggerford". NW Vault (IGN). 2006-08-15. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  15. ^ "Darkness over Daggerford Wrap Report (page 4)". RPG Vault (IGN). 2006-10-13. Archived from the original on 2008-03-04. Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  16. ^ "Hall of Fame". NW Vault (IGN). Retrieved 2009-03-22.
  17. ^ "2007 IGF Mod Category Winners Announced". Gamasutra. 2006-12-16. Retrieved 2009-03-22.

External links

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