Summer has just ended, and as always at this time of year I find myself looking back. Three quarters of the year have gone by, and it's hard not to feel nostalgic already. This year has seen many big titles come out, and there are still a few promising ones remaining. The RPG genre is alive and kicking, and will continue to be as alive in the coming months for sure. This year has seen some special games which have changed the way we look at the genre. I have two particular titles in mind which have especially left their mark on me. Not everyone likes these two games, for very different reasons, but there is no disputing the fact that they have impacted our RPG lives to an extent that is not often seen and that will continue to be felt in the next generations of CRPG titles.

Exploring new strange lands
Morrowind was the first to arrive. It conquered anticipation (not to say hype) and finally made it on store shelves, ready to be sold to many eager Role players. The most eager of these players were probably those who had followed the Elder Scrolls series since its very beginning back in 1992 with Arena. I remember that at the time I was anticipating Arena maybe just as much as I anticipated this year's Morrowind. Arena promised much freedom, not to mention a sprawling and mind bogglingly large world to explore... in 3D!! That was a pretty big thing back then.

Now Morrowind promised much of the same thing, which realistically is nothing revolutionary by today's standards. What was revolutionizing was the level of detail and quality of the graphics. In an era when CRPGs are expected to trade nice and shiny graphics for depth and story, Morrowind's environments were some of the most believable we've ever seen in such a large game world, and it will spawn a new era of attention to details by developers. One simply has to look at the upcoming Gothic 2 and can't help but feel a certain level of visual inspiration has been taken from Morrowind. Granted, Gothic 1, which came long before Morrowind, did in fact display a very realistic environment and detailed world, but not to such a size, or in such an open-ended world. Everything was hand placed in Morrowind, and there is nothing that ever looked random. That, in and of itself, is a great achievement for a computer game where everything is usually randomly selected and placed. The main story behind Morrowind isn't very original or ground breaking. But the background history of its world is deep enough to help the true role players out there have their own little adventures within the confines of the island. Even without the main plot Morrowind can still be more engrossing than most games out there.

The other revolutionizing thing that appeared in Morrowind was the ability for players to add and change things with the editor. This is more of a trend than a special feature since other Role Playing games have implemented this (I can't help but mention Dungeon Siege here since it did come out before Morrowind). Morrowind's community of players was ripe for such a feature, and quickly showed us the genius behind the inclusion of an editor. This CRPG promises to stay interesting for a long while because of it. I can just imagine myself leaving it alone for a couple of months only to return with a new mod (or module) to install and suddenly discover a brand new world within the same game. All this free of charge!

Virtual Tabletop
But as much as Morrowind was interesting on many levels for me, there is another game which came out a few weeks later that holds an even more special place in my collection. Can you actually believe that I planned not to buy Neverwinter Nights (NWN) at all? There was so much said about this game before it came out, so much coverage as to be one of the best example of how much hype is too much, that I decided I didn't want any part of it. There were interrogations on my part as to whether there could be a safe community in which to enjoy such a game. I could only imagine the young Diablo veterans using NWN to further their blood-thirst, and fear that the true role playing community would hide in a dark corner, leaving me lost and alone in between. I wasn't far from the truth as the first few to play the game online were using NWN to further their Diablo lust.

Luckily, I found the role playing community I was looking for lurking in a not so dark corner, or maybe they just weren't hiding at all. But I let myself be swayed into buying it after finding out that a few like-minded people were roaming the RPGDot boards. A small NWN community was quickly forming right here. I never regretted buying this game. In fact, if it means anything at all, I would readily pay for it a second time to continue playing if someone told me I had to. Mind you, I never even finished the single player campaign! I never got past chapter 2 (I know, shame on me). But the reason I bought the game was to play online with a few friends that couldn't meet physically because of distances, and play a role playing game that I enjoy together with them.

We're just about to finish our first full fledged campaign together. We have about 2, maybe 3 sessions left to an adaptation of the DragonLance saga I created as we went along. I played DM through all of those sessions. One session a week, running around 2 to 3 hours a piece for close to 3 months now. I'd say that's a success. And next I plan to start enjoying the life of the adventurer for a while, and hope that someone else can take the DM mantle so that we may continue on other new adventures.

But it's not really the game itself that we love so much as the tools the game gives us to really create a role playing experience that, in my opinion, cannot be equaled by any other computer game out there. That, and the interaction between players who are comfortable role playing together. When a game is completely run by a DM (Dungeon Master), almost anything is possible, there is no right or wrong answer, only people who adapt to the choices made and their consequences. There is an infinite freedom in this game that even Morrowind's sprawling world cannot compete with. When a player talks with a DM-controlled character, there is no telling what could happen. There is a certain level of "unknown" that exists in every NWN multiplayer games which makes it wonderful and surprising every time, something you can hardly find in the predictable world of AI responses that exists in single player games.

And my heart goes to...
And so NWN holds a sweet spot in my heart this year, and I think it will be very hard to beat. Interaction is really what we seek when we play a computer game. Whether it's interaction with other human players or an AI controlled player, we do seek for the CRPG to entertain us, to fill in the virtual world so that it's not as lonely as sitting in front of the computer screen actually is. And NWN not only achieves that, it creates an experience unlike any other when played with fellow human beings.

So unless something truly revolutionary comes along by the end of the year, NWN has my vote for RPG of the year, if not flat out Game of the Year. 2002 will be a vintage year remembered for a long time.