Editorial Neverwinter Nights Feature at Gamasutra

[Mistress]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights

<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/">Gamasutra</a> have posted a <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20021204/greig_01.htm">"postmortem"</a> of <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/">Neverwinter Nights</a>, written by director of programming, Scott Greig and others on the Neverwinter Nights team.
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The article discusses what they felt did and didn't go right with the development of the game, together with the pitfalls of working on such a large and ambitious project.
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Here are a few excerpts that caught my eye:
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<blockquote>"In Neverwinter Nights, the multiplayer systems were integrated directly into the original design. <b>Even in single-player, the game acts like a multiplayer game with a single client attached.</b> Although this deep integration increased the time to develop each system (compared to a single-player-only system), it did result in an overall reduction in the time required to integrate multiplayer and ensured that all the systems were optimized for multiplayer play."</blockquote>
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I think that just about sums the NWN single-player campaign up. <i>"Multiplayer game with a single client attached"</i>.
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<blockquote>"<b>We hired a number of new people during the course of the game, practically all of whom had no prior game development experience, but we were very fortunate that a number of people that had worked on the Baldur's Gateseries also worked key roles on NWN</b>. Their RPG development experience served as the cement that held everything together on the project and enabled them to circumvent many of the pitfalls typically encountered when developing a story-based role-playing game."</blockquote>
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So fortunate!
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<blockquote>"BioWare relies heavily on our ability to draw upon manpower from the rest of the company to help out on a project in the final stages of production. All of our projects have done this in the past, and NWN was no exception. Designers, artists, and programmers came on from the old Infinity engine team as soon as Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaalwas completed. Many of these people were responsible for key aspects of the project, in the same way that many of the NWN team members had been responsible for systems in MDK2and Baldur's Gate II. <b>The development teams weren't the only people who helped out at the end; systems administrators, front-office staff, and the PR department also helped test the game.</b>"</blockquote>
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....and what about the janitor?
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<blockquote>"As with any new-engine game, there was too little time available to prototype gameplay. Our prototypes focused instead on technology and the individual features of the game. While this kind of prototyping was important, <b>it would have been very useful to have early feedback on how the game played, particularly with regard to the interface and story line</b>."</blockquote>
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I would say it certainly would have been useful.
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<blockquote>"In the end, BioWare is a reflection of the people who work at the company; Neverwinter Nightswas completed by people devoted to a project they believed in completely; as with many similarly successful products, without their hard work it never would have been possible. But we still have a lot to learn, and we can only try to improve each game in relation to the ones that we released before. <b>Our future games must and will be better still than Neverwinter Nights</b>."</blockquote>
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One can only hope....
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[Sol Invictus]

For Bioware's sake an the sake of the state of CRPG development I sure as hell hope so too.

The company's got a lot of potential but it lacks the necessary vision to bring the design into the forefront of innovation and progressive advance.

I'm sure that if they actually put their wits to it and tried creating a new deisgn other than making more games in the same air of the tried-and-true-but-completely-waning Baldur's Gate the same fans who bought their previous titles will most undoubtedly try it out.

Honestly, I don't think that they have nothing to lose by trying out something different. I just wish they did.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

For Bioware's sake an the sake of the state of CRPG development I sure as hell hope so too.

The company's got a lot of potential but it lacks the necessary vision to bring the design into the forefront of innovation and progressive advance.

I'm not sure there's that much potential there. After all, they seem to me like the people who play PnP in search of ph4t l3wt and making ungodly uber characters. Maybe if they lose their whole munchkin nature, they'll have potential, but even the BG games were a tad silly on what all items and things they handed out as well as the situations they put the player in.

They definitely need to lose the ONE DRAGON GOOD, SIX DRAGONS BETTER mentality in game design. Just tossing in k3wl concepts for the sake of them, like tossing around powerful magic items, really isn't going to win me over.

That and their obvious lack of creativity when it comes to plot devices, as seen with the HeadEx quests in NWN. They come up with a good idea, then flood the game with it. That's not potential there.

 

[Mistress]

I'm not sure there's that much potential there. After all, they seem to me like the people who play PnP in search of ph4t l3wt and making ungodly uber characters. Maybe if they lose their whole munchkin nature, they'll have potential, but even the BG games were a tad silly on what all items and things they handed out as well as the situations they put the player in.

Yes, and I really dislike the predominant attitude to these games - "I hate pointbuy - I need a Stat cheat so I can increase my stats". JUST PLAY THE GAME. Games that encourage this attitude through throwing in ph4t l3wt only serve to make it worse.

They definitely need to lose the ONE DRAGON GOOD, SIX DRAGONS BETTER mentality in game design. Just tossing in k3wl concepts for the sake of them, like tossing around powerful magic items, really isn't going to win me over.

That doesn't impress me either. There's such a thing as overdoing it. This is part of the reason I also hated BGII. The other part being the fact that in the community there is such an overwhelming obsession for creating new NPC romances etc. (I keep going on about that, I know...it just really grates....).

That and their obvious lack of creativity when it comes to plot devices, as seen with the HeadEx quests in NWN. They come up with a good idea, then flood the game with it. That's not potential there.

Yes, it would be nice if they had more than a handful of good ideas, then they wouldn't need to sprinkle them liberally throughout the games.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yes, and I really dislike the predominant attitude to these games - "I hate pointbuy - I need a Stat cheat so I can increase my stats". JUST PLAY THE GAME. Games that encourage this attitude through throwing in ph4t l3wt only serve to make it worse.

I agree. In fact, that REROLL shit that BG/IWD had is basically the cause of that. Basically, those people would just keep clicking, repeatedly, until they ended up with an uber character.

That's the nice thing about point buy, it makes sure that there is balance between the characters, and the person who clicks the most REROLL buttons isn't the best guy out there.

That doesn't impress me either. There's such a thing as overdoing it. This is part of the reason I also hated BGII. The other part being the fact that in the community there is such an overwhelming obsession for creating new NPC romances etc. (I keep going on about that, I know...it just really grates....).

Romances annoy me too. In fact, I'm surprised they don't turn off a lot of guys considering it just seems like a marketting ploy to get women to buy the games. Oh, look! We got combat.. and romance!

Speaking of munchkinism, what do you want to bet there's LightSaber +4s and things in KotOR?

 

[Deathy]

....and what about the janitor?

He wrote the singleplayer campaign.

 

[Rosh]

Romances annoy me too. In fact, I'm surprised they don't turn off a lot of guys considering it just seems like a marketting ploy to get women to buy the games. Oh, look! We got combat.. and romance!

Don't forget the prepubescants who couldn't get a real date and are thrilled that these virtual romances have a reload button so they can try the 7k or so times until the social rejects get it right for a change.

Speaking of munchkinism, what do you want to bet there's LightSaber +4s and things in KotOR?

Of some sort, and not just "+4", naturally. There will just be different names for it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Don't forget the prepubescants who couldn't get a real date and are thrilled that these virtual romances have a reload button so they can try the 7k or so times until the social rejects get it right for a change.

Look on the bright side, at least they're learning something! Educational RPGs! Now all we need is for Diablo 3 to have a spelling program built-in...

At its peak, the team numbered more than 75 people

Just how many janitors do they need over there!?

Due to our schedule, we needed to start working on art and design assets right from the beginning of the project. The problem was that it took the programming team three and a half years to complete the game systems. Thus the art and design teams had to make assets based on technical specifications derived from early prototypes. As the game progressed, many of these specifications changed, requiring some assets to be rebuilt, or else workarounds had to be adapted in the game code to allow for old and newer assets to work together.

I can understand the reason for them doing it this way, but you really wonder why they didn't wait until the previous part was finished, before they started work on the next bit. I realise it would've added time to the project like they say, but it seems like it sure would've saved them a whole lot of hassle in the long run, especially when it came to their re-working the art later on due to new technologies.

While we pushed aggressively through the entire development, there was never a sense the game would be shipped before it was ready.

Until the end, right?

Because NWN was a rule-based game, and rules implementation was at the end of the schedule, we were only able to test actual gameplay near the end of the development cycle.

So the most important part of any game was left right until the end, when they had little time left.

Given that the game was in development for such a long period, we were all concerned it might look dated by release. To combat this issue we laid out a plan to add a number of high-impact but relatively easy-to-implement features late in the development cycle to improve the game's visual quality. These additions resulted in constant concern among the artists who had to generate the new art required to support the late-added technologies. In the end, it all worked out because of large personal efforts by many team members.

That's right! You work them slaves boys! Hi-ya! *whip* *whip*

160 man-years of development.

Ouch.

All in all it's quite an honest review. Presumably the hard yards have been done now and NWN 2 will be a whole lot better. If the reviews for NWN 2 aren't full of bug lists, I might even consider buying it! :D

 

[Spazmo]

The thing is NWN 2: Electric Boogaloo will just be another module using the original NWN engine. Maybe they'll add a super-cool new tileset to the editor like "hell".