It was recently announced that the upcoming “Adventure Pack” for Neverwinter Nights 2, Mysteries of Westgate, has gone gold and will be released via digital distribution through the Atari website. The announcement comes from Alan Miranda, CEO of Ossian Studios, the developer of NWN2:MoW:

Hi Everyone,

As per my earlier post (see below), Ossian and Atari have done the final QA pass on MoW to make sure everything is working with 1.22. We finished yesterday and the critical path and sidequests all check out fine. I’ve gotten the official Atari stamp of approval today, meaning that MoW is now gold!

With MoW in the pipe, the next step is to get this final version to the digital distributors, for as you may or may not know, Atari uses services like Digital River to digitally distribute their games from the Atari website. When that has been hooked up, MoW will be set to release, and you’ll hear the official word from Atari about it. I’ll also post here to tell you the good news.

In the interim, it will be reviewers who will now get their copies of MoW to review. We’re looking forward to what they have to say!
- Alan

Source

MoW advertises an open-ended, non-linear campaign featuring over 15 hours of gameplay, 3 new companions, original musical score, and hundreds of lines of new recorded dialogue. According to the official announcement for the game:

“Developed by Ossian Studios, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate is the first full featured Adventure Pack available from Atari. Set in the infamous Forgotten Realms city of Westgate, players find themselves in possession of a powerful but cursed treasure that threatens to destroy them. Linked to the underworld organization known as the Night Masks, the treasure will draw players into a city-spanning clash between warring factions. Players must choose their allegiance in order to break the curse and ultimately uncover a plot that threatens Westgate itself.”

The concept of shifting from larger, full-blown expansions to less expensive premium, downloadable content is a marketing strategy developed by Atari for the first installment of the Neverwinter Nights series. Community support ensures that there is never a shortage of player-created modules to enjoy, however practical constraints of freelance modders limit content production quality; by contrast, premium Adventure Packs are created by full-time development studios contracted by Atari to entire top-notch modules that often include content beyond what is provided by the Aurora toolset.

Neverwinter Nights 2, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, already features 2 expansions, Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of the Zehir.

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