| Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford | |
| Developer: | Ossian Studios |
| Publisher: | Ossian Studios |
| Designer: | Alan Miranda |
| Series: | Neverwinter Nights |
| Released: | Enhanced Edition |
| Genre: | Role-playing |
| Modes: | Single-player |
| Platforms: | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux |
Darkness over Daggerford is a premium module for BioWare's Neverwinter Nights role-playing video game. It was released for digital distribution on August 16, 2006. Considered a user-made 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 Dungeons & Dragons video games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. It takes place in the Western Heartlands region of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, in the town of Daggerford, near Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate. Completely a single-player experience, Daggerfords 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, Atari. Several months before the game's scheduled release, the premium module program was cancelled. Ossian decided to publish Daggerford anyway, and it was released as a free download on IGN's Neverwinter Vault, a community site for the 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]
See main article: Neverwinter Nights. Since the game is an expansion of Neverwinter Nights, it uses the same engine, Aurora, and basic gameplay is similar. Features created specifically for Daggerford include a world map and a stronghold, which players can use as a base of operations and a source for 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]
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. 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. 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.
Alan Miranda was a previous employee of BioWare and had worked on other Dungeons & Dragons titles like Neverwinter Nights and .[5] In 2003, he left BioWare to form his own company, Ossian Studios, with his wife, Elizabeth Starr.[6] Miranda approached BioWare joint CEO Greg Zeschuk in 2005 to discuss the possibility of Ossian developing a "premium module" for Neverwinter Nights.[7] Premium modules were adventures created for Neverwinter Nights by BioWare and other companies.[8] BioWare had been given autonomy on the premium module process from the game's publisher, Atari, and Zeschuk approved Miranda's proposal. Miranda's initial draft of the project was a pirate-themed adventure in the Sword Coast, which happened to be the same idea that BioWare itself was creating a premium module for, called . Miranda revised the concept and chose the Western Heartlands as the setting.