Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

SPOILER ALERT
This post describes chapter 2 and 3 of Hordes of the Underdark.


Chapter 2: After rescuing the mad wizard Halaster from a Drow raiding party, Halaster betrays you and places a "geas" on you, compelling you to search for the evil Valsharess ("empress" in Drow language) and destroy her. Basically, a "geas" is a curse that resembles 'Simon Says', except that if you fail, the curse kills you. Halaster then teleports you to a drow-rebel camp where you meet with the rebel leader aka 'Seer' (like Mon-Mothma). She wants you to sabotage the Valsharess' military alliance with other powerful creatures, namely the Illithids, Undead, and Beholders, in an attempt to weaken her military strength. The Seer also wants you to help establish alliances and gain powerful artefacts to aid the rebel cause. Also, there is a minor quest involving the betrayal of one of the Seer's allies, if you give this quest a miss, you'll have the extra trouble of dealing with traitors in the middle of a war.




That's a total of 5 main quests.  Unfortunately, there is only enough time to accomplish at least 4 of these quests, because the Valsharess' army are already making final preparations to crush the rebellion.



Before the Valsharess sends her forces to defeat the rebels, she tries to convince you to become her ally and betray the Seer (a good opportunity for the evil players to finally be able to do evil things). She removes your geas as an incentive and tells you to aid her forces' arrival by opening the main gates for them. If you refuse to betray the Seer, you will have to face the Valsharess' Illithid, Undead, and Beholder (Oh, my!) forces personally, unless you've already sabotaged their respective alliances beforehand.

After winning the battle (either as a hero or traitor), you will find yourself in the Valsharess' throne room (Hero: attempting to assassinate her, Traitor: where the Valsharess will start hitting on you). In any case, you'll encounter the one and only Mephistopheles, who wants to take over the world, starting by using the Valsharess' army as his own. Sensing your power, he banishes you to the frozen hell where he once ruled in a bid to prevent you from interfering with his conquest.

Chapter 3: You find yourself stuck in hell, while Mephistopheles has all the fun. You will have to endure a rather hellish expedition to find a way home. As you explore,  you'll find a celestial sleeping beauty here in hell, who has been awaiting his true love for eternity. For the fun of it you might want to play cupid, and search for his true love (which could be any major NPC, almost randomly selected) thus ending his eternal torment. If you play as a female character and have not 'developed' a relationship with any other major NPC, you might be a possible candidate. Much fun to be had here, but it's pretty tedious to keep replaying to see the different outcomes.


Also, once you've found your way out, you'll have to deal with Mephistopheles. If you've discovered his 'True Name' along the way, all the better, because that knowledge will open lots of options to you (Instead of fighting him, you can use his 'true name' to command him to die, or allow you to rule by his side or vice versa, many more choices to explore here, again, too tedious to keep replaying to see different outcomes)


At the end of everything, there is a narrated biography of you and your exploits in the whole story. Since this part was also too tedious to to keep replaying, I checked the dialog script which said "BASED ON VARIABLES SET THROUGHOUT THE GAME, THE PLAYER IS PRESENTED WITH THE AFTERMATH OF THEIR ACTIONS IN THE WORLD."


And the narrator/scribe says: "And so the tale is done. In the lore of an age that was famed for its heroes as well as its villains, your legend will live on. Scribes will read of your deeds in dusty tomes and marvel that ever there was a time where such an adventurer walked the face of Toril."

Then he goes on to describe the fate of Mephistopheles and whether you killed, banished or enslaved him. "Knowing how the tale ends, however, is only part of the story. There is evidence in the old tomes that tell of your fate in the years to come, the fate of your companions and the effect your passing had upon the world."
Now he describes the future of your party companions and their success and downfalls, depending on which character the narrator s referring to.
Next, he talks about the Seer and her rebellion, which depends on whether you betrayed or aided her in chapter 2, and if you did aid her, the narrator will mention how much you helped her (the greatest help you can give her is the discovery of the powerful artefact mentioned in chapter 2).
Now he talks about the things you did to the Illithids, Undead, and no mention of Beholders (Beholders aren't worth talking about)
The narrator will also describe the future events of the frozen hell, which depends on what you did to mephistopheles (If you killed him for the sake of taking over his hell, he will say so, etc etc)
He'll also talk about the celestial sleeping angel who awaits his true love via coma, and whether you helped/killed him or left him to suffer eternally.
The narrator will describe each and every one of your party members and their futures, some bright, some doomed, depending on how you treated them (If your character fell in love with one of them, he'll tell a summarised love story starring you and your lover, if you didn't get intimate with anyone, it's pretty platonic)
Finally, he'll talk about your awesomeness in the later years, again, this depends on how you dealt with Mephistopheles, if you let him live in defeat he'll say "Yet not all sat so well with you for, when you commanded Mephistopheles, you had placed your trust in a devil's word. You used no True Name to bind him, nor did you extinguish the fire that was his life. To the end of your days, you possessed a certainty that somewhere in the vastness of the planes, the archdevil was licking his wounds and waiting for you, plotting his revenge. You watch and wait for that day to come, and when it does you know that you will have to fight him to the last breath." If you enslaved him instead, he'll say "As promised, however, you built an inn of your own in Waterdeep and people came from miles around to torment the fallen devil that was its chambermaid..." But if you killed him with/without using his true name, this little segment wouldn't appear at all.


That's the end of the game, but the stories of your adventures never, ever end. There's always more to tell, that's the beauty of NWN.


In terms of gameplay, this narration part is the best, because listening to the narrator (Yes, every line he said was Actually narrated, Every possible outcome was narrated) talk about how awesome you are, whether good or evil, rewards you with a rare sense of accomplishment that most other RPG games fail to do so despite your 'hard work', simply by rolling the credits...