Neverwinter Nights 2: Gamespot E3 Coverage

GameSpot: Obviously we're here to talk about NWN2.

Feargus: Exactly.

GameSpot: And it's sort of the follow-up, the sequel. What happens? Where do you pick up from Neverwinter? Are you picking up the story or are you gonna go from the original game?

Feargus: Oh, yeah. Picking up from a game like Neverwinter... there's so many people that are still playing it online and it's kind of intimidating in some ways. It's kind of this huge thing. I guess we were kind of lucky in that we have been doing this for a while; we have been making roleplaying games for a while. We were actually involved with Neverwinter way back when, when it was first launched. When the idea for it came up was in 1997. And so we kind of, when we were lucky enough to get to work on Neverwinter 2 we really though about "what are we going to do". It's this phenomenon online; there's thousands of people playing it four years after the game came out. It's almost like Counterstrike, but the geeky RPG version. So what we really wanted to do was to figure out... we really didn't want to change the game immensely, because it is... what it is, is great. It's a great game that you can just buy and play and then it has this toolset that just created this ongoing, online amazing community. And so that's what we did. We kind of took Neverwinter 2, I mean the idea of Neverwinter which is a great story and great tools, and just said "hey, let's add a great new graphics engine and just make that all better. Let's give more tools to people. Let's give, you know, everything. But also keep the core of it the same. It's a great D&D game; it needs to stay a great D&D game."

GameSpot: Very cool. So, you're talking about what you're adding to it, like in terms of giving people more. Let's just jump right into it. So the characters... there's a lot more going on with character creation and subraces. So tell me everything you can tell me about it. Everything.

Feargus: Well, we'll be here for about a day. We'll be here until next Friday.

GameSpot: That's ok. Could we not end this interview until then anyway.

Feargus: So what have we added? You brought up subraces. And definitely that's one of the things that we included, that's new. When you're just choosing a race, could be dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, half-elves, whatever. And let's say you decided to be a human. And when you choose your race you then next get a scene, the next things that basically tells you: "what subrace?" And each of the races actually can have different subraces, which kind of like, in the case of humans, you can be a normal human. You can also be a tiefling which is kind of a human with demon blood in them. And each of them can have special abilities and special things that make them slightly different. And in fact, because everybody asks me, we do have drow in the game (Shir'le: Yay! ), people can play a dark elf and that kind of stuff. It's one of those things we always get: "I wanna be a drow, I wanna be a drow" I think, as Chris Avalone always... I always say "I don't understand the fascination with drow", but he says "because they're sinister and they're cool and they're... basically it's like being an elven vampire almost. People really get off on it". (Shir'le: I'm am not an elven vampire! )

GameSpot: So talking about that sort of balance, sort of segue very nicely into talking about the good/evil alignment in the game. Obviously that's something that you guys have a history with. So what have you done with Neverwinter Nights 2 in terms of good and evil alignment? How does that work?

Feargus: I think the thing is that, alignment is important to D&D and that we've tried to do with alignment in particular is, through all the games we've ever worked on, is to have it mean something. So when you make decisions it actually affects your alignment. You do too many bad things you're gonna become evil even if you started off as good. And it also really affects who wants to travel with you. We've added companions to the game. There was henchmen in the first one. We really made them companions now in that you can control them and they talk to you much more often and you can kind of convince them of things. We've actually brought in an idea that we came up with in our first game, Knights of the Old Republic 2, which was the influence system. You can actually kind of bend them to your will. You can convince them of things that they wouldn't have normally thought. And so you have these people traveling with you and you can, kind of, if they started of good, you can convince them to do evil things. And more so we really make the companions part of the story from the standpoint of they're not always going to do what you want them to do. There's some that are going to betray you, some that will sacrifice them for you. So we really tried to play up that.

GameSpot: So if you convince your companions to be something evil, does that impact you as a character or does that make you a little more evil?

Feargus: Yeah, exactly. Because if you convince them to do something evil then something evil occurs in the game, or something is solved as being evil, so you do become more evil.

GameSpot: Oh, very cool. Now there's also a lot of talking about talking to other characters and choosing dialog. Is that, specifically, for the good/evil purpose or does that otherwise change the story?

Feargus: Oh, when you're talking to people. You know lots of times it's, some it's just to get information, sometime it's to get things to do. We also, we really wanted when we were thinking about the story and kind of how we wanted it to... Every game you try to think like what new and what different can you do, how can we take RPGs and make them even more. One of the things... we kind of went back in history in this case and we started thinking a lot about the games, the RPGs, that we played long, long ago. And Ultima came up as a game that we really enjoyed. We really felt Ultima did something different with RPGs. It wasn't just about stats. It wasn't just about leveling. It wasn't just about experience points. It was about how you were in the world and how you interacted with the world and how you... sort of like what you did really had meaning. And so we really wanted to bring that into Neverwinter 2 as well and so that replaced the kind of dialog and characters and things like that. People that you talk to in the world, you're trying to get their respect. You're trying to... Because we also wanted to... we were also thinking about roleplaying games from the standpoint of... we got sick of the idea of, like, you start of just a guy and you show up at the city and some guy, the guy running the city, comes on and asks you to save the world. And it's the same thing over and over again. So you actually have to, if you need to save the world... President Bush isn't going to come down here and asks me to come save the world. So you have to figure out how to get people's respect and eventually get to the point where they will ask you to save the world.

GameSpot: That's cool. Well maybe if President Bush really likes Neverwinter Nights 2, maybe for some reason he'll think that you can possibly save the world. So let's talk about the editing tools. That was the first time that I had ever messed around with editing tools, was in the first Neverwinter Nights. So what have you done with the editing tools for this game?

Feargus: Well, I think that... it was a hard balance when we were really thinking about what we wanted to do because there's all these people that have spent four years now with these tools. It's become like a hobby to them. It's more than this game that they bought and they fiddled around with. It really is their hobby. We had to respect that and figure out what we wanted to do. And we sort or started with this idea of that we wanted the tools to feel the same, but they needed to do so much more. The terrain we now have in the game, it's not tile-based, it's all completely rolling. Sort of like in Battlefield, sort of a height-mapped type thing. So we were we're going to have that, we need to add that to the editor, but we have to respect that these people have all of this experience with it. So one of the decisions we did do is that we wanted them to bring as much over from the original tools. So people are going be able to import their dialogs and scripts. So a lot of the work that they've already done they're going to be able to use again. But on top of that we also wanted to give them more power and more abilities. Kind of the example I use of that... in the first Neverwinter Nights when the artists wanted to create spell effects like fireballs and stuff like that they did that in Max or another art package. We've actually put that editor in our toolset. So people can make their own spells and make their own whatever. So it kind of shows that they now can do so much more with it.

GameSpot: Oh, that's really cool. Talk a little bit about downloads, like the extra, little, paid downloads. Are you gonna incorporate that into after the game comes out or are you gonna have like small little packs to download. Anything like that?

Feargus: Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the things is that, it's this community and the community wants to be fed, basically. And they want new things. And the whole game is built on being able to add little bits and pieces in it all the time. And so, I mean you can see when BioWare released expansion packs... and BioWare has been great about doing the Neverwinter Wednesday or BioWare Wednesday in which every Wednesday they released something about the game. And by doing that and by releasing all the things it just gives people the ability to, I mean, it gives them even more things that they can do with the toolset and make their modules and they can reincarnate every ancient D&D module ever in existence.

GameSpot: Very cool. Actually it looks like our viewers are getting excited talking about the editing tools. I'll take a couple of questions from them. ... "Will a demo of the tools be released before the game like the first Neverwinter Nights?"

Feargus: I think what we're planning to do actually... I don't think we're going to be releasing a demo of the toolset before. But we're actually going to be doing a beta release of the toolset to sort of the real... the module builders, the guys that really have been doing a lot of the Neverwinter 1 stuff. Because we really want their feedback, we want to see what we're doing, what we're doing right what we're doing wrong, what's easy, what's not easy. So that we can make sure that when the game comes out, when the toolset comes out, that it works flawlessly.

GameSpot: Oh, very good. ... "How many different types of environment does the new toolset support?"

Feargus: We're actually doing environments a little differently. Now we actually have tilesets inside. You can make normal rooms and castles and caverns and mines and all that kind of stuff. Outside now, because it's a heighmap and you actually just paint the terrain. And I think what we have like 60, 70 different kinds of textures that you can texture the terrain with now. So you can make cliffs and you can make deserts and beeches and jungles and everything. We're also licensed SpeedTree, which is these guys who just do trees. It's a middleware technology. And there's going to be like 80 or 90 or 100 trees that come with it, all for those different kinds of environments. So one of the things that people are really going to get out of it is when it's outside and they're making outside they can almost make anything.

GameSpot: How do you become a specialist in trees?

Feargus: It's a good question, but it funny, the thing is, actually trees are one of the hardest things to make. Because it's very hard, because polygons and games are all these flat squares and things. How do you make this leaf canopy thing look like and look right and... often if you want to find this sort of the man behind the curtain, if you're playing a game and want to see where we kind of just fiddle to get something to look right, it's just run around a tree and look at it at different angles and you'll start seeing where it breaks the illusion. Don't do that.

GameSpot: Well you're tree experts, so you're fine. Let me take one more question ... "My favorite part of Neverwinter Nights was the customization of armor, weapons, clothes, etc. Are you bringing this level of customization into Neverwinter Nights 2?"

Feargus: Oh yeah. We're actually increasing it quite a bit as well. We've actually made armor sets now all bits and pieces. So shoulders and arms and gloves and grieves and chest plates and all are different parts. So when someone wants to make a piece of armor they can just actually make an item in the toolset and make it all bits and pieces. They can use like a leather shoulder and a platemail chest piece and, I don't know, hide boots or whatever. And they can make all that and that can be an item. And on top of that what we've also done is kind of made scale and color things that are editable in the toolset now. So if someone wants to take like a lizardman and make the "lizardman king" they can take the lizardman, make him twice as big, change him from green to orange and put like a platemail chest piece on him and a pitchfork and cloth boots. And now you have the lizardman king.

GameSpot: Very cool. Well this game, do we have a release date for this game, is there...?

Feargus: Yeah. It's coming out in September.

GameSpot: September? Alright. Of this year?

Feargus: Of this year, yeah.

GameSpot: Oh, very exciting. Well, thank you so much for coming by Feargus. Thank you Chris for showing off the game.