Looks like Neverwinter Nights 2 has been freed from rights hell and is due an imminent enhanced edition release, bringing the 2006 RPG from 5GB to 36GB

There's probably a few holdouts somewhere, but for the most part, it seems like we've all come to accept Beamdog's "enhanced" versions of D&D classics like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights 1 as those games' go-to editions. But there are a couple of classics still missing from the lineup: Icewind Dale 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2.

Icewind Dale 2's missing source code means the outlook for a remaster of that one looks grim, but an addition to SteamDB (spotted on Reddit) has me pretty much convinced we're due for an imminent dolled-up re-release of Obsidian's follow-up to the OG Neverwinter Nights, which up to now has reputedly been in licensing rights purgatory.

The package on SteamDB—which, if you're not familiar, is a third-party website that tracks changes to Steam's backend—is called Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. Which could mean anything, really. I'm not a detective, how do you expect me to work out what that could possibly signify?

But wait, there's more. Alongside that inscrutable name, the package's update history suggests we'll be able to launch the game in default mode, Dungeon Master mode (misspelled "Dungen Master," somewhat charmingly), or launch the NWN2 Toolset. It's also already been tagged as: RPG, Action-RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Story Rich, and Fantasy.

Yeah, I'm as stumped as you are. Unless, wait, could "Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition" possibly be an enhanced edition of Neverwinter Nights 2? It just might be, and according to SteamDB's data, the new release of the classic will come in at a meaty 36GB of size, compared to the original's 5.5GB of required HDD space. It also seems to come with Steam Deck support out the gate.

To be fair, it looks like the devs have done a bunch of upscaling for the game's textures and whatnot to make them fit for modern screens. Plus, it looks like it comes with all the gubbins for the game's expansions: Storm of Zehir, Mask of the Betrayer, and Mysteries of Westgate.

Sounds great to me. The EULA tied to the package only mentions Aspyr, but I really have to imagine that the company handed the work off to Beamdog, which it acquired in 2022. If that's the case, consider me excited. Beamdog does great work on exactly this kind of thing, and I've wanted to play NWN2 (specifically, Mask of the Betrayer) for years. Looks like I'll get my chance, and probably soon.