GameSpot is sharing some pre-show E3 impressions of Neverwinter Nights 2. Here's a clip:

We were able to sit down and observe an early game from the beginning on through some of the game's single-player quests. Character creation seems like an even more involved process than it was in the original Neverwinter Nights--if you want it to be. Like the original game, you can choose to simply click on a "recommendations" button that will fill in all the blanks for you, but true Dungeons & Dragons nerds will probably want to explore the sequel's expanded "subrace" options, which lets you create "deep gnome" and "shield dwarf" characters in addition to plain old humans--like with 2002's Icewind Dale II (which was developed by several of Obsidian's current team at the now-defunct Black Isle Studios), which also included subrace characters, each subrace will have various racial abilities and penalties to balance out their unique skills. You'll also be able to choose your character's various ability scores in the usual attributes (such as strength, dexterity, and constitution), skill points, and heroic feats. You can even choose a "character background"--a new option unique to Neverwinter Nights 2 that will give your character a bit of a back-story that may or may not be accompanied by additional skills, feats, or ability scores, and may also cause other characters in the game to react differently to you.

Read the rest (http://www.gamespot.com/e3/e3story.html?sid=6148676&pid=922154) at GameSpot.