WarCry: How did Ossian Studios come up with the idea for Mysteries of Westgate or was the decision for the location of the adventure pack made by Atari?
Alan Miranda: Ossian was the one that decided to do a game located in Westgate, although ultimately, it's up to Atari and WotC to approve the idea. It was Luke Scull, our lead designer on MoW (and well known for his AL series of Hall of Fame NWN1 mods, one of which was to have been a premium mod), who came up with the idea of setting a game in the city of Westgate.
From my experience at BioWare and working with Rob Bartel on the premium mod program when we were doing Daggerford, I knew that city adventures were a lot tougher to do versus rural adventures. This is because so many people and buildings are packed together in a city, that you have to design more quests to fit in that smaller space (call it quest density). If you don't have a high quest density, then your bustling city will be devoid of interaction and feel completely empty.
So doing a city adventure was going to be a lot more difficult, and I was initially hesitant because I thought that we might be biting off more than we could chew (something we'd had far too much of on Daggerford). But, in the end, we felt that the location was the ideal one out of our list of locations, and we had expanded our team since Daggerford, so we decided we were up to the challenge.
WarCry: Have Ossian Studios developers had much contact with Obsidian Entertainment developers? If so, with whom and covering what topics?
Alan Miranda: We talk with Obsidian every once in a while, and our relationship focuses mainly on NWN2 technical support. When we started working with the NWN2 toolset in September 2006, there were quite a few quirks that made development of a module difficult. So we sent Obsidian plenty of feedback about this and over the course of MoW's development they implemented fixes for us, as well as sent us internal builds of the game to test things out.
WarCry: Who are the primary developers for Mysteries of Westgate and from where do they hail?
Alan Miranda: Aside from Elizabeth and myself, who work on all our projects, as well as managing Ossian Studios, all of the internal MoW development team comes from the NWN community. Many of them have worked on some top-notch NWN1 and NWN2 mods, which is why we offered them positions at Ossian. I've listed below what mods our different team members have worked on previously, although it should be noted that many of our members have also released other things to the community such as scripts, plugins, placeables, areas, etc.
Luke Scull (aka Alazander) - Lead Designer, Writer
(AL1: Siege of Shadowdale, AL2: Crimson Tides of Tethyr, AL3: Tyrants of the Moonsea)
Kevin Smith (aka codepoetz) - Lead Technical Designer
(Kiss of Fate, Hand of Fate, Tales of the Sundering: Hub)
Mat Jobe (aka Nemorem) - Writer
(Dastards Morrow - Maiden Voyage, Myranni's Magic - BioWare Writing Contest Winner)
Russ Davis (aka Tiberius209) - Writer
(The Sign of Four, Saleron's Gambit: Chapter 1-5, The Maimed God's Saga)
Alex Hugon (aka Hugie) - Writer
(Moonshadows, Tale of a Mage Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, The Island, The Art of Death, Perchance to Dream)
Leonard Bedner (aka Challseus) - Technical Designer
(The Rose of Eternity Chapter 1, The Rose of Eternity Chapter 2)
Lee Hogg (aka Sir Elric) - Technical Designer
Raphael Faccioli (aka O Observador) - Level Designer
Alex Wagner (aka EvilShade) - Level Designer
Brian Dunn (aka Brother Roth) - 3D Artist
Brian Watson (aka MadWombat) - Cinematic Artist
(Runes of Blood)
Zach Holbrook (aka Maerduin) - Beta Tester (now Writer)
(The Birthday, Harp and Chrysanthemum)
Rich Barker (aka Phantasma) - Beta Tester (now Technical Designer)
(N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God)
WarCry: How did you all come into contact with one another?
Alan Miranda: For most of our team, we either searched, or received applications from, the NWN community for good writers, scripters, artists, and level designers, and hired the people we thought were talented, experienced, as well as a good fit for Ossian. We're also always on the lookout for new talent!
