Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide Interview

It was a hot summer day sometime in June 2002. I had broken my right ancle and I was pretty much depressed at the time, but that didn't stop me from heading straight to the office to check out our copy of Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. It was by far the most thrilling RPG experience. I played the game for days, and managed to forget my unfortunate injury. Once Bioware announced the Shadows of Undrentide, the first Neverwinter Nights expansion pack, we were intrigued almost instantly and have decided to milk some info out of those hardworking blokes at Bioware and Floodgate. We've managed to get hold of Rick Ernst, the lead designer on Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide. He unveils additional info about the story, various locales players will get to visit, exciting new gameplay elements, diverse monsters you'll get to encounter, AI improvements, and more.

Action Trip: The vast fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms proved to be an excellent foundation for an RPG. Give us a quick peek into the game's storyline?

Rick Ernst: The story starts in a frontier town called Hilltop in the icy wilderness of the Silver Marches. The player begins the game as the student of a retired adventurer as the end of her apprenticeship approaches. A surprise attack by raiders and some stolen artefacts draw the player into an epic plot that puts the fate of Hilltop and the Silver Marches into her inexperienced hands. As the true extent of the danger is discovered, our hero will find it necessary to journey into the forbidding Anauroch desert in search of an ancient magic.

AT: Will we perhaps see some of the old characters from the original NWN?

RE: Shadows of Undrentide actually takes place more-or-less in parallel with the events of the original Neverwinter campaign. So the city of Neverwinter to the west is closed off to prevent the plague from spreading, and the player's quest in Shadows of Undrentide will take her even further to the east, away from Neverwinter and the Sword Coast.

AT: As we understand it, the expansion pack will have three new chapters. What kind of settings will they feature - woods, mountains, caves, or what?

RE: We've added three new tilesets to those already available in NWN. The first is the Winter Rural tileset that will be the setting for the first chapter, and Desert and Ruins environments that will be used extensively in chapters two and three. Of course we'll also be using the existing tiles whenever appropriate, so players should expect to travel through a wide variety of cool locales.

AT: And, will we be able to return to any of the locations from the previous game?

RE: Over the course of Shadows of Undrentide the player is drawn inexorably eastward. So no, there won't be any opportunities to re-visit locations from the original campaign.

AT: Can you tell us a bit about some of the new monsters we'll see in the game?

RE: Sure... The Anauroch Desert is full of exotic and ferocious creatures that make travel an extremely dangerous prospect. You have to stay alert for ambushes by the Stingers, xenophobic scorpion-people that hide in tunnels beneath the desert sand. And anyone who strays too far from the Black Road (the only trade route through the desert) has to worry about running into basilisks that can petrify you with a glance, or an army of ant-like formians from the outer planes. Even sticking to the trade route you risk running into a malicious sphinx that has decided to challenge passers-by with a riddle... and you really don't want to guess wrong.

AT: Will you be making improvements to the NWN AI?

RE: BioWare and FloodGate have been working hard to improve the AI of both enemies and henchmen. We're trying to make computer-controlled characters fight smarter and give them more tactical options. We're testing new commands for henchmen like 'Don't attack until I'm attacked', for example, that should give players more control over their sidekicks. There's still a lot of testing to do, so it's too early to say which improvements prove robust enough to make it to final release.

AT: Recently, you have revealed that Shadows of Undrentide will feature some new skills and spells. Can you tell us about any and how they will work?

RE: There are going to be three new skills available in Shadow of Undrentide, and we've tried to come up with three with some variety so most characters will find at least one very helpful. Nimble fighters and spry wizards alike should get a lot of use out of Tumble, which lets heroes try to avoid attacks of opportunity. Just about everybody should take a few ranks of Appraise, however, as it improves both buying and selling prices for just about every merchant in the game.

AT: There was much talk of new items. Can you reveal some of them?

RE: Well, BioWare's Aurora toolset makes it really simple to add new magic items such as weapons, armour, rings, amulets, staves, etc. So expect to see lots of those. But we're also adding some new 'wonderous' items, as they are called in D&D. Two of my favourites are The Rod of Wonder... a crazy chaotic item that produces a random effect each time it's used, and our own 'Deck of Hazards', which is based on the classic artefact 'The Deck of Many Things.' We didn't want to use the actual DoMT as it appears in D&D, because many of the effects didn't really make sense in a CRPG. So we created our own artefact, a magical deck of cards that has been soaking up the ambient magic of an ancient ruin for centuries. Talented module builders should have little trouble modifying our Deck of Hazards to fit into their campaigns, even recreating the original DoMT, if they want.

AT: In your opinion, what is the most important new ingredient in Shadows of Undrentide that is going to make the game more exciting for hardcore RPG players?

RE: I think one of the elements that should really appeal to the hardcore role-players is the freedom we are building into quests in regard to alignment. We're trying hard to make sure that players have options that are appropriate to their character and alignment throughout the campaign. You will be able to play through the entire story as evil mage or righteous paladin, in either case you'll be confronted by roughly the same challenges, but how you deal with them will define your character.

AT: Does your development team plan to make a revision of the character advancement system (experience, leveling, etc)?

RE: Character advancement and levelling are for the most part determined by the D&D 3rd edition rules as set down by Wizards of the Coast. Aside from adjusting the combat xp awards to take into account the amount of fighting that takes place in a CRPG, Bioware has pretty much left well-enough alone. We see no reason to deviate from that with Shadows of Undrentide.

AT: How long is Shadows of Undrentide? Roughly, how many hours of game play are we looking at?

RE: It is really difficult to judge the length of an RPG with any accuracy. You have to make a lot of assumptions about things like how many side-quests a player completes, how often she reloads save games, how much time she spends on exploration... That being said, we're shooting for about 40 hours of game-play, assuming the player decides to explore a fair number of the side-quest opportunities. Your mileage may vary.