The story was so bad that it got me in a bad mood, and I've taken every opportunity that I've been able to find to say that I absolutely hate that games story. Man was it bland, boring, silly and hamfisted.
NWN is a game you play for the mods, not the poorly written and utterly generic main campaigns (including the expansions here. They were better, but if the core game was a 1/5 in terms of storytelling, the expansions are 2/5)






Ultima series from 4 & forward (not including 9)
Planescape: torment
To the Moon
Myst series, if seen as a whole
Wing Commander-series
Elderscrolls series (backstory)
Xenogears (PS1)
Fallout series (not 3 or tactics)
EYE: Divine Cybermancy (you said complex, not good :P This one is a mess. An interesting mess, but still a mess)
Syberia 1-2
The Longest Journey
Also Planescape: Torment (had to be said twice, it deserves it)

I haven't finished the series yet but Thief seems to have a complex story.

Also Battlezone (BZ2 good as well)

Freespace 1 and 2 are good too.

SPOILERS for NWN:
- Generic villain - look, you play against ancient lizards supported by evil mage. Haven't we seen that before many times?
- Good and evil choices - I know, that's a problem with many RPGs, but the game leaves you a choice to be: lawful stupid or evil asshole; it lacks any subtelty.
- Not really inspired structure: Introduction (chapter 1), hunt for artefacts (chapter 2), another hunt for artefacts (chapter 3), final battle.
Sure the game still shines at many places (like the cursed village where you have to do some detective work and decide who's guility), but the main plot didn't catch me that much.
In MotB I loved ambiguousity of the story and that they made it more personal. Also loved how very different the game is where you choose evil and decide to become a harvester of souls.

As in the story is about retrieving 4 magical macguffins, and repeat 3-4 times? That's all I recall about it.

But really NWN 1 main storyline is quite bad to be honest, some of the subplots were interesting but not really well delivered either.

Do yourself a favour then and play The Cat Lady. Or at least the demo, just to see if it fits you.

Its not so much complex as it is just a great story: Homeworld. In turn that makes H2, while a great game, a little lacking in storey. It's kind of "Ooops we forgot something, turn around!"

I'll put in a vote for Cryostasis. Quite the underrated game.

Nwn2 motb is basicly using what i will refer to as "the lost formula" where it drops you into some strange universe, and you have to backtrack while going foreward to reveal the truth, and while the storytelling is quite good, the story itself is somewhat lacking.
You've basicly had this "super-power death curse" upon yourself in which you need to cure yourself of, the choices you do is some extremely super-evil-lenient or super-good-lenient ones, but the universe or the story allmost dont recognize them at ALL, making the story completely neglige half of itself (the story you yourself are allowed to make)
To me the whole game felt like it was created by 2 seperate entities, at war on how to make a good story for a game.

Nwn1 has a somewhat lacking justification for why "it's you!" and no charechter development at all in my eyes, but it does have good political plots, especially if you read the books you find. The gameplay and quests of nwn1 however is just bad in my eyes :\

But how 1 could presume to claim nwn2 motb to have the "superior" story is still a mystery to me.

'Complex' could mean so many things.

There are games with a lot of branches, such that you can play through in different ways. Like 'The Witcher'

There are games with a long storyline, that has a lot of content to it. Like the Final Fantasy games (most things by Square tend to take about 3 solid days of play to complete).

There are games with a storyline that makes you think a lot. Such as Gemini Rue.

There are games with a storyline that has a lot of back story, and you can hunt around for more information on the world. Such as Divinity 2 (also called The Dragon Knight Saga).

There are games with an epic storyline that ends up in you leading a world changing struggle.

Which are you looking for?

The Witcher series (plus all the books)
Mass Effect series
Mafia 1 (and 2 but not so much)
The Longest Journey (Dreamfall was a bit of a letdown)
Syberia series
Cryostatis
Gothic 1 and 2
Metro 2033 (read the book after you play it)
Fahrenheit Indigo Prophecy (except the ending which sucks)
Deus Ex 1 (Human Revolution not so much)
Starcraft 1 (2 was terrible)
Warcraft 3 (generic at times but with a very rich lore)
Assassin's Creed series
Call of Duty Black Ops (the story is really good if you pay attention)

There might be a few others I'm missing.

All I know is that I enjoyed MotB story far better than original NWN. I'm not that much into Forgotten Realms so I haven't read any books giving NWN interesting backstory and I can judge only by the game itself - an there the politics is really minimal - there is Desther who we know will turn out evil the first time we see him and after Desther is gone the cult seems to rely on brute force rather than on political manipulation. Example of interesting take on politics in RPG: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.
That, and I don't really like "go and save the world" storylines.
In the other hand, MotB gives me what I really like: a mystery to uncover, a personal story to follow and moral ambiguity surrounding the Wall.
All that is of course my point of view and I'm not going to force it upon anybody.

The books are in the game m8, they are not "background info" from 3rd part sources.

This is not the case of "I prefere mystery to political strife" this is a case of the most complete story.

The material that went into nwn1 must at least be 10 times bigger, and when i speak of politics i speak more of certain books you will find that talks about how the power of the luskans are divided, and how it came to be etc, not of "deshter is evil"- such things have never been "good storytelling", not to any1 above the mindset of a 10 year old at least.

1 thing both games actually do well is the complexity of "evil", while most games really rely on a black&white way of looking at it, nwn1 and nwn2 motb both have issues upon which the evils are justified by cause, means or results.
The main difference is it's so much more of it in nwn1, we might write that to side of being "its a bigger game", but the justifications are to me also given in more unique ways, when you meet a villain in nwn1, you will more often than once find yourself saying "this is the bad guy, why the fuck is he killing all these people, lets just end him", but you might find a certain book in a later chapter explaining the reasoning.

While if you look at motb the guy will quite often through a very unnatural conversation proclaim his reasoning, or even worse his minion might do it for him in an even more unnatural conversation.

MOTB's story is about mythology, mythology has never been something that leant itself upon the complex story, but rather upon the grandeur of it, and I believe the creators knew this, so rather then have complex reasoning and true background information, they tried to create a sense of "mystique" and make your deeds feel like true greatness "I Beat a god!, im like hercules, just with less odds on my side"
It's as I said nothing wrong with prefering this type of storytelling, but we're not talking about preferences, we're talking about WHAT HAS THE BETTER STORY.
This is the areas i feel nwn1 wins out in:
1: complexity&reasoning
2: Background (and yes its included in the game for those who choose to read the items they pick up in the inventory, thats a choice you make though, do you really care about the story enough to do reading?)
3: Charechters, yes i actually feel nwn1 has more interesting charechters in general, the villains in this game is far more complex and you can get so much more information on them.

Now what does motb have in the element of STORY
1: Charechter development, Both your own and your companions, companions in nwn1 is Basicly just a tool to win in combat, they serve negligeble purpose for "story" in my eyes, while in MOTB They play all the part in world basicly :) And they do develop, allthough I do not think they are reactive enough to your actions, in a game which is SO centered around your actions and choices and your companions.
2: (If you played the previus game) familiar faces, in my eyes as the previuse game was not the best, this didn't play in to much favour in my eyes, but It might for some, and its important to include.

To me too, since I never played MoTB, and never stated it was better than NWN 1 ;D


As I said, all I remember from the first one was that each chapter was always about finding 4 magic Items/Places of Interest while everyone else was sitting around with their thumbs up their arse doing jackshit. and just to spice things up a bit every chapter epilogue was a bossfight.

Whatever depth there is in the game is quite lost as soon as ou realise that it is hold together by a completely predictable formula with not a single surprise on the way. Imho at least.

Yes, I know about those books - Planescape: Torment taught me to read everything I find. Still - even reading those books, we can get: Neverwinter is a city of noble people ruled by a righteous ruler, Luskan is a wretched hive of scum and villainity.
In KotOR II, for example, you participate in politics and the politics affects you and the storyline, not only read about it.

Who are you talking about?
I tried to learn as much as possible about the villains and nothing really felt unique.
I'll once again turn to KotOR II about complex evil - if you haven't played it, I don't want to go into details but they made me feel bad for the villains and that's IMO good writing.

It's only a matter of preference ; ) I can see where are you coming from and what story elements are important for you.
Also, you may get the wrong impression that I'm a hardcore MotB fan. I'm not. My all-time favourite RPG is Planescape: Torment, closely followed by Fallout 2.

Personal opinion. I pefer following clues to for rounds of collecting artefacts. Reasoning in NWN: You are a merc and want to get some moolah. Reasoning in MotB: You are cursed and you want to heal yourself.

I do the reading and, sorry, I'm not that impressed - neither by the background info nor by the game reverting to give me it's backstory in randomly placed books.

For me they are to vile to be believable.
Whoever goes after world domination is on his\her way to fail in being interesting character \ villain.