Interview NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer interviews

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Feargus Urquhart; Neverwinter Nights 2; Obsidian Entertainment

Two almost new, somewhat informative <a href=http://www.nwn2.com>NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer</a> interviews:
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<blockquote><a href=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neverwinternights2maskofthebetrayer/news.html?sid=6175569>GameSpot</a>:
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Mask of the Betrayer is a much more personal story than the original NWN2. The entirety of the story is about your survival and what you choose to do to survive. So, instead of it being about saving the Forgotten Realms--again--it comes down to what you will do to save yourself.
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The story is more of a continuation of your character then it is of the NWN2 storyline. We tie up many loose ends from NWN2, but the things you are doing aren't directly related to the events of the original campaign.
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As far as the companions being more fully developed goes, Kaelyn, who is completely optional, has more than twice as many lines of dialogue as the most developed companion from NWN2.
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We've taken a somewhat different approach in Mask of the Betrayer in that we've applied that idea [alternative paths] to the whole game, but not differentiated it so clearly. The core focus of what is happening to you in the game can really be affected by how you choose to deal with it. That in turn changes how the game reacts to you as you continue playing, and ultimately how the game ends. But at any time you can choose to alter what course you're on. This isn't so clearly a "good versus evil" decision, though alignment is involved in some ways.
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In a lot of ways, I feel like players are not just getting an expansion pack, but a whole new game in the world of NWN2.
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<a href=http://www.gameshark.com/features/339/p_0/Neverwinter-Nights-2-Mask-of-the-Betrayer-Interview.htm>GameShark</a>:
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I think we've made some major improvements to the Influence system. First, now your companions (and you, perhaps) will gain game play benefits for having high influence. Second, if Influence goes low enough, the companions will behave more realistically and actually leave you. Also, we've spent a lot of energy on polishing how Influence works with the companions. For example, increases and losses will feel more natural and appropriate to the characters' personalities and goals. Except for the very beginning of the game, none of the companions are required and players who don't like them can adventure alone if they wish. </blockquote>Sounds very promising.
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Thanks, Lestat.

 

[Jasede]

Fuck.

This is shaping up to become pretty intriguing. If everything goes the worst way it can I'll have to buy NWN 2 to play this. Bah.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

NWN 2 was really a mixed bag. On the one hand, it had ridiciously, unbelievably bad game design like that big, boring, railroaded dungeon romb that was Act 1.
On the other hand, it had quite a number of very interesting quests like the whole Trial thing, the Keep Managment was fun also it had no real effect in the end and a few other things.

I was also quite pleased by the number of skillchecks throughout the OC, Lore, Wisdom, Intelligence, Appraise, Taunt, those were all skills and attributes that could somehow matter in different situations with bigger or smaller effect.

Also, the Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate skills had their uses in some situations. Sometimes the possiblites to use them were just plain retarded, like the instance in act 1 where you can prevent two orcs guarding a cave entrance from attacking you, but once in you still have to fight about 300 orcs or so. Sometimes you could reach the same peacefull solution by selecting dialogue lines which were not exclusive diplomacy skilled chars.

Often however, predominatly in smaller situations they had their uses. In Ammon Jerros heaven you have to gather support from the different deamons improsined there.
A succubus wants you to find out the real name of a rival deamon. You can find out the name by using your taunt skill, a succesful check will make the deamon angry and make him reveal his true name.
Alternativly, you can just lie about the true name to the succubus if your bluff skill is high enough.
Another female deamon in that dungeon will attack you, unless your bluff or diplomacy skill proves high enough in the initical conversation. If so, she will offer you a (almost) peacefull possibility to gain her support.

Make no mistake though, those diplomatic options are little extras, playing a completly diplomatic character is imposible.
All in all, NWN 2 is a pretty average and damn fucking linear game, but it offers much better possibilites to put your non-combat skill to use then let's say Baldurs Gate 2.

I hope MotB will expand on that, it sounds as if the game could turn out decent enough.

 

[MetalCraze]

And why reading this preview brings so warm feelings, unlike reading some fallout 3 preview?

yes, NWN2 had many things that I didn't like - like too much hack'n'slash in some places and completely lack of romances. Shit, there are 3 female npcs with 3 totally different behaviors for your taste, but you are allowed to romance only 1, wtf? And romancing her was somewhat stupid. BG2 (edit> and PS:T ) where did you gone?...
Also I didn't like storyline too much. however at some places it took some nice turns.

But if BIS... I mean Obsidian do listen to players (at least they're talking to them at their forums) - then I trust this addon will have a chance.

 

[yns88]

yes, NWN2 had many things that I didn't like - like too much hack'n'slash in some places and completely lack of romances. Shit, there are 3 female npcs with 3 totally different behaviors for your taste, but you are allowed to romance only 1, wtf? And romancing her was somewhat stupid.

Well, Chris Avallone had a blog entry about writing romances (linked from the previous interview with him), so I'm guessing they're making that a concern in the expansion.

Also, I've never played NWN2, but this seems similar to what Bioware did with NWN1. The original campaign in NWN1 was linear and boring, but the first expansion offered substantially more roleplaying opportunity.

 

[sabishii]

NWN 2 was really a mixed bag. On the one hand, it had ridiciously, unbelievably bad game design like that big, boring, railroaded dungeon romb that was Act 1.
On the other hand, it had quite a number of very interesting quests like the whole Trial thing, the Keep Managment was fun also it had no real effect in the end and a few other things.

I agree. The roleplaying in NWN2 could have been improved (e.g. the optional companions everybody talked about), but it was a lot better than average and I could easily live with it. But the problem was the other aspects of game design. As much as I like these quotes from the interview, in the end I would rather they improve those weaker - and frustrating - parts of the game first.

 

[Rei]

My loading times for NWN2 is rape. Am I the only one?


I think I might as well go back and play KOTOR 2 again.

 

[aboyd]

RAM really helps with load times.

 

[Jaesun]

Who is the lead Producer on Mask? Chris..? JE?

 

[Texas Red]

My loading times for NWN2 is rape. Am I the only one?


I think I might as well go back and play KOTOR 2 again.

Yup, the loading times rape your brain cells. Quite true. Although Ive notived before in them trailers that even *their* computers dont have the fastest loadings either.

Not only this but when I have above the minimum specs I assume that I could play without constant, brain-damaging lagg. Nope, not going to happen. Turn off everything and still get immense lagg. Yay! Hell man, I wonder what is it like for people who have the minimum specs?

 

[ricolikesrice]

We also often pose questions to the community as to what they would like to see. As we get that feedback from them and from our own continual play of the game, we are adding in changes to update both NWN2 and the expansion.

while that is normally a good thing.... not so with anything having its community over at bioware forums.

i m afraid both dragon age and MotB might be ruined not alone on the devs faults but mostly because of the stupidity of the community (well of course not all posters) over there.

have you read these forums ? every 2nd post is about romances ! a thread about choices and consequences, or roleplaying values etc etc . is gonna last 2 pages at most and drops from the front page in one day.... every thread about romances goes 10 pages and longer in a matter of hours. (slightly exaggerated but pretty close to the truth...)

if i never heard about the term RPG before and my first contact with the term would be the biowareforums.... i d translate it into "romance picking game".

i DONT mind a romance in a good RPG story, if well done it can really add to a game.
but when people complain that a romance option is bald and they dont like bald girls (me neither..) and thus will not buy the game, i can only wonder if they ever come to understand the term roleplaying at all.... hey guys, its not YOU romancing that girl, its the character you play, and maybe he likes bald girls ?! and if not, you re free to ignore it but then dont go around whining because there isnt 500 more elf girls with huge tits waiting to get fucked by you(r character), since this isnt supposed to be soft porn, or is it now ?

after reading CAs blog on romance the first picture that came up in mind was not him actually interested in the topic but beeing chained infront of the PC with 3 nerds in bioware t-shirts behind him putting a gun at his head while jerking off to the romance dialogue they force him to write. like a yell for help.....
....thats what you get for making bioware sequels i guess:p

 

[Shannow]

My loading times for NWN2 is rape. Am I the only one?


I think I might as well go back and play KOTOR 2 again.

Yup, the loading times rape your brain cells. Quite true. Although Ive notived before in them trailers that even *their* computers dont have the fastest loadings either.

Not only this but when I have above the minimum specs I assume that I could play without constant, brain-damaging lagg. Nope, not going to happen. Turn off everything and still get immense lagg. Yay! Hell man, I wonder what is it like for people who have the minimum specs?

Hmm, for me loading times were so fast that I couldn't read the comments/tips that always appear till the end most of the time...

All in all it sounds promising and better than NWN2 OC apart from these comments:

The core focus of what is happening to you in the game can really be affected by how you choose to deal with it. That in turn changes how the game reacts to you as you continue playing, and ultimately how the game ends. But at any time you can choose to alter what course you're on. This isn't so clearly a "good versus evil" decision, though alignment is involved in some ways.

So no consequences here. Being able to change my approach is certainly not bad. If I have been villainous I should have the possibility to make amends, it just shouldn't be easy.

I think we've made some major improvements to the Influence system. First, now your companions (and you, perhaps) will gain game play benefits for having high influence.

Sounds like getting +2 strength for having maximum light side points or +2 con for max dark side. I hated that in KotOR2. I really do hope that those "benefits" won't be as crude as simple attribute buffs. Then again, if it resembles Morte loosing his bad conscience i'd be a-okay.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

After reading ricolikesrice's post I decided to check Bioware forums. What can I say? I can't believe my fucking eyes.

1) Try make so the females don't all fall at my feet just for saying 'hello'
2) When a possible 'relationship' has been struck up, have quite a few quests to explain the reason for the 'bond' and give some more details about the love interests' past
3) When the relationship reaches that all important milestone have a freaking huge and difficult wedding quest.
4) You heard me, a wedding quest, where you have to set up everything from flowers to clothes, actually wear those clothes, rent a church (have different churches in different areas), get your god alinements in order if they out of wack (not compatible or something) and have it so you're rewarded by actually seeing the whole wedding (and not just a blackout) with the music, walking down the aisle and the hilarity of having any other love interests objecting, crying and trying to make you run off with them...with the option to run off with them.
5) For example if I choose to marry Neeska: I have to convert to whatever chaotic god she's under, have to deal with her demon father who thinks I'm a pathetic weed and then have to make the desition whether to run off with Kelgar -who confesses his love for me is as strong as a Dwarven Warhammer during the Wedding. (that's a joke) Then if everyhing goes right, the bride doesn't show up because she got cold feet and I have to go half way around the world to find her, bring her back and/or kill her for running off.

Evil characters shouldn't be able to do 'really' evil (like 'forcing' the girl) in this case but they should still have a different way of doing this, like marrying the rich one, then running off with her money. Or collecting on her life insurance after that completely accidental accident where the rope holding the piano up broke and landed on you 'love' mear seconds after the priest married you.

 

[ricolikesrice]

....

yeah thinking about it Bioware should make a deal with EA and produce The Sims 3: Love, Magic & Dragons. it would be a blockbuster of WoW-like dimensions !

 

[Suicidal]

The interviews make the game sound interesting. Already, from I've heard about MoTB, it seems like it will be a much better RPG then NWN 2 ever was. Could it really be that the Obsidian devs have learned from their mistakes and are making an expansion pack with features which should have been included in the original. If that's the case I hope we see pretty decent RPGs in the near future.

Unless, of course, anything they we've said about this game so far is just hype and the finished product will be nothing like what they've made it look like in the interviews.

 

[Bradylama]

What can I say? I can't believe my fucking eyes.

True Romance can only be accomplished through the mundane, and making concessions.

This is what people play games to experience, right?

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

We also often pose questions to the community as to what they would like to see. As we get that feedback from them and from our own continual play of the game, we are adding in changes to update both NWN2 and the expansion.

i m afraid both dragon age and MotB might be ruined not alone on the devs faults but mostly because of the stupidity of the community (well of course not all posters) over there.

I think at least with Dragon Age we can rest assured that all the game's stupid flaws and annoying design decisions (of which it surely will hav many) will be caused by the dev teams own stupidity.
From reading his posts over at the Bioboards aswell as at the Codex, I got the impression that Gaider wants to make pretty clear that he doesn't give a rat's piss about the input of their retarded community.

 

[MetalCraze]

What can I say? I can't believe my fucking eyes.

The thing is that in BG2 romances were all right. And there was only 1 character that jumped at you, but she's a slut so that explains. But with Jaheira f.e. it's a long brain-fucking. After BG2 something went terribly wrong with Bioware. So nothing very surprising in such threads at their forum. I noticed quite a few more like that earlier.

and about having threads about romances in NWN2 forums. One thing if you got some romancing shit in your game, but if this shit smells worse than bioware-level shit... well it needs to be fixed.

About DA. Well as far as I read Dragon Age forums - devs can quite tell stupidity from normal ideas. For example - some ... special gamers wanted to have mini-games in it. And the main writer of DA David Whatever-his-surname replied something like "go-screw-yourself"
so that's reassuring =)

 

[thesheeep]

Mini games in real games are quite a good thing, actually!

If they are made like those Gameboy-like games in System Shock 2, not having any practical use but to entertain the player when he is a bit bored...

 

[MetalCraze]

Mini games in real games are quite a good thing, actually!

If they are made like those Gameboy-like games in System Shock 2, not having any practical use but to entertain the player when he is a bit bored...

As long as mini-games are not forced on you it's fine. But even with that if this mini-games will look like that shit from Jade Empire - then no.
However a game like pazaak (which is a chance based game) could be acceptable. But none of the oblivion-like shit

 

[thesheeep]

Yes, that arcade shooter in Jade Empire was beyond every expression of "lame"

 

[Gromnir]

"A lot of the feedback we got about the single-player campaign came down to one of two things: How we implemented the D&D rules and the satisfaction that one got from the ending of the game. We're continually working on the game based on comments we get from people about how we've implemented the rules."

fergie can be such a yutz. sure, SOME of the feedbacks of nwn2 sp campaign were complaints 'bout rulez implementations, but there were far more negative feedback 'bout lack o' optional side-quests... the absolute paucity o' anything to do beyond the critical path were a more frequent complaint. also, there were more interface, controls and technical concerns than rulez implementation concerns coming from fan base... and Bugs too. most people who play these d&d pc games is NOT rulez lawyerz who quibble over whether the appropriate bab bonus in a certain situation should be +1 or +2. is getting rules minutiae in a d&d game correct an important goal? probably, but suggesting that such stuff were a serious concern for most players is misleading.

so why does fergie mention the rulez crap? maybe 'cause it is an easier fix than is interface issues. and sadly, as motb is an expansion, we doubt that there is gonna be some major increase in availability of tangential side-quests neither. expansions is invariably a bit more streamlined than is original game.

btw, when there were big uproar over hours o' fergie's pre-release gameplay estimates for nwn2, josh sawyer pretty much admitted that fergie probably didn't know what he were talking 'bout. am guessing that such is the typical scenario: fegie speaking out his arse. fergie is obsidian's version o' elmer gantry... which is probably a good thing for obsidian. bs and enthusiasm seems to go a long way with fans and journalists.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Zomg]

This isn't based on close observation, but I'd think the rules lawyers would actually be very into the video games, since they're the types that buy the books but never play actual tabletop games. The video games provide an opportunity to apply their autism.

I don't read the Obsidian boards, but my biggest issues by far were the design philosophy that made unavoidable garbage combat ubiquitous and the twisty corridor area designs, repetitive enemies and predictably useless AI that exacerbated it. It was like every area was a longer version of Curst Prison from PS:T. There are more subtle problems but I don't see a pressing reason to suss them out while the substrate of the game is so bad.

 

[Gromnir]

...

am not sure what zog's point is. even if every d&d rulez fanatic were a nwn2 purchaser (doubtful) what % of total nwn 2 purchasers does you thinks they represent? on old bg2 boards there were a guy who called himself "specter." were a rulez lawyer and forgotten realms fanatic. he got his shorts in a twist over every little detail of bio implementation of rules and fr canon. bioware pretty much ignored him... 'cause he were one voice in a thousand. he were a joke... a clown. there is a current obsidian developer who mentions often how much he disliked the bg games... based in large part on bio's less than faithful rulez implementation. you thinks bio weeps 'cause josh not like how bio did d&d rules? HA! bio laughs all the way to the bank, 'cause most fans o' d&d crpgs don't even realize when the rules in a crpg is broken.

zomg's logic is busted. 'course the d&d rulez lawyerz who purchased nwn2 is gonna be offended by inaccurate implementations o' spells and feats n' such, but that handful of noisy protesters is noteworthy only 'cause the represent such a ridiculously small % of actual purchasers. they is a loud minority.

btw, some of Gromnir's earliest contributions on the old totsc boards were complaints that "mag. def adj." for high wisdom scores were not in game. were in manual, but not in game. Gromnir is one of those freaks that knows rulez well 'nuff to be bothered when they is clear busted... but we ain't narcissistic 'nuff to believe that our pov is common 'mongst the fanbase... and we is damned sure that fergie knows better than to believe that the rulez lawyerz represent more than a small % of total potential motb purchasers.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Yes, that arcade shooter in Jade Empire was beyond every expression of "lame"

What about the gunturret minigame in KOTOR?

I thought it was real dumb. I downloaded a mod to remove it.