Despite releasing back in 2018, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition – the re-release of the nearly 20-year-old classic Dungeons & Dragons RPG by BioWare – is still apparently being supported by developer Beamdog, which just released a free official HD texture pack that makes it look better than even Neverwinter Nights 2.
Neverwinter Nights released all the way back in 2002 and looks pretty ropey now, which is why Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition in 2018 was so welcome – as included improved graphics, effects, and general visual improvements. However, that apparently wasn’t enough for the developer, who has been working on a full HD upgrade ever since.
Finally, the free “HD Models & Textures Pack” update for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition has arrived and it has the classic RPG looking a lot more modern. As Beamdog states in a blog post on Steam, this update is the result of “several years of hard work” and clocks in at over 4.1 GB – bringing the game’s total disc space requirement to over 16 GB.
The pack offers HD texture and model upgrades for all character models and equipment, meaning that Neverwinter Nights looks better than it’s ever been before. However, given that the pack can cause problems with lower-end systems it’s not a mandatory patch – so Beamdog has made it available separately on its website. Presumably this patch will work with both the Steam and GOG versions, then.
It took a while, but Beamdog have successfully gone through with their hi-res model/texture pack for Neverwinter Nights Enhanced – https://t.co/sSMunzAkSf
A little over 4gb to turn those old potato-handed cube people into something closer to NWN2 in terms of detail.
— The Chimpy Man (@TheChimpyMan) November 24, 2021
The two Neverwinter Nights titles are still two of the best RPGs on PC, so it’s great to see the original looking like a modern game again. It’s a shame then that Beamdog never got to do the Knights of the Old Republic remake it’d planned, although that project’s hopefully in safe hands right now.
{“schema”:{“page”:{“content”:{“headline”:”Neverwinter Nights is now a better looking DnD game than Neverwinter Nights 2″,”type”:”news”,”category”:”neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition”},”user”:{“loginstatus”:false},”game”:{“publisher”:”Beamdog”,”genre”:”Strategy Gamer”,”title”:”Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition”,”genres”:[“Strategy Gamer”,”RPG”]}}}}