Company News New D&D games in Q1 2005?

[Ausir]

Tags: Atari; Baldur's Gate III (Atari)

According to the <a target=_blank href=http://www.atari.com/us/press/?action=readmore&id=1957&PHPSESSID=724ff6e6e8d8136c5ef5e2ce4616881f>latest Atari financial report</a>, the company will release new Dungeons & Dragons game(s) as early as in 2005. It could mean Baldur's Gate 3 or Neverwinter Nights 2. if it's BG3, could it mean that they chose to resurrect Jefferson, given the short development cycle?
<br>

<br>
Cheers, <b>DemonKing</b>!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I doubt they bother with Jefferson unless they work out a deal with Interplay and get Obsidian to work on it. That's a lot of "ifs". Not saying it's not possible, but knowing Atari's past dealings with Interplay and the court dates and legal wrangling involved with dealing with Herve and Crew, I'd say that's not likely. They'd also have to get Obsidian to do it simply because Obsidian has the most people familiar with the base of work in Jefferson.

 

[Volourn]

Geez.. That's a very short dev cycle. I hope for the best; but these games don't have as enthusiastic now... Both BG3, and NWN2 should ahve long dev cycles if you are gonna do justice to them... at least as long as TOEE's to at least make a decent game..

 

[Ap_Jolly]

Well I heard last D&D game sucked balls...

 

[suibhne]

Well I heard last D&D game sucked balls...

Now you're just trolling. Plus you stole my avatar.

(Even if you have been here longer... )

To keep it on topic, here's my post from the other topic started by DemonKing:

That Atari post is surprising, especially since I thought Obsidian only recently started hiring. Even using all of the assets from Jefferson, I assume it would be damn tough for Obsidian to put out a finished title by March - and it would probably be impossible for any other developer (i.e., Troika) without prior Jeff experience. But I can't imagine Atari would be referencing any other D&D titles, since Demon Stone, the RTS, and Cellphone-Gate are announced - and NWN2 and BG3 are all but announced (because of the PCGamer article), suggesting a downright infinitesimal likelihood of a sixth D&D title under development.

 

[Talorc]

I doubt its Obsidian, they really only just started getting going recently. Hard to imagine they could be releasing KOTOR 2 "Winter 2004" and then coming out with a D&D game 3 months later.

Could be Troika though - ToEE came out September 2003. I think the staff working on that then all went on to the "Sekrit Mystary Project" they have - which still isnt announced.

If that was a D&D game based on the ToEE engine, it would have approx 18 months development time if released March 2005. 18 months is pretty decent - especially considering your engine is totally done. The ToEE engine plus 18 months dev time to add content would be pretty exciting I think. Who knows - maybe it will even have the "BG3" title/branding?

(As an aside - I think one of Interplay / Bioware owns the copyrights to the characters / storyline of BG 1 & 2 - Atari just owns the rights to the name "Baldurs Gate 3"?)

If it is Troika's mystary project, its a little dissapointing as it means their current sekrit project is not a Fallout / Post Apoc game that Chris Glen was working on Concept Art for.

Of course the strongly depressing possibility is that the title is not a PC RPG game. Atari just calls it "a release from the lucrative Dungeons & Dragons franchise". That could be anything from a decent PC RPG, to

"Elminster(TM): Bad Ass Wizard" - One Wizards journey through hell and back - a FPS game set in the Forgottens Realms (TM) world"

 

[Volourn]

"As an aside - I think one of Interplay / Bioware owns the copyrights to the characters / storyline of BG 1 & 2 - Atari just owns the rights to the name "Baldurs Gate 3"?) "

Not BIO 'cause lots of BIO fanboys continually cry for Minsc and others to return and BIO always tells them no. It was BIS/interplay who owns the rights; but that probably went to Atari due to that 'deal" that was made late last year..

 

[Briosafreak]

I told Sammael one of these days that it couldn`t be Jefferson, because Vivendi owns part of the rights involving the code, but still if Interplay got an agreement with Atari paying them with the Fallout deal money, who knows if Jefferson wasn`t part of the deal?


In other news some guys from gaming mags are betting Obsidian next game is D&D, and i can bet on that almost for sure too.

 

[Talorc]

I almost got excited when I saw "Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (Xbox and PC)," I thought it might be a D&D game coming up I hadnt heard of.

But then I found out:

"THREE renegade warriors, all drawn together by an inexplicable force..."

And realised they meant it was coming out on Xbox and Playstation. damn.

And haven't they moved away from branding the RTS game as a D&D RTS game? Its just called DragonShard Wars now I think

 

[Monte Carlo]

From the Jefferson POV, I don't think any new third party developer would want to use second-hand assets, a la FO3 and Bethseda.

Unless, of course, it was a crew from Obsidian for whom it wouldn't be second hand, would it?. The rumours that Sawyer might return to work on it there were squished by the man himself on the Obsidian boards this week, BTW.

Then again, even considering the licencing acrobatics that it would require is giving me a migraine. I do remember asking Sawyer on the old BIS forums how "future proof" the Jefferson engine was and he replied that it was fairly robust. Nonethess, I think a slam dunk like "BG3" will be less cerebral and niche-orientated than what we would imagine Jefferson would have been. It will be a smash, bang wallop affair I suspect.

Whatever is going on, it has been uncharacteristically sneaky and discrete for the gaming industry, which usually thrives on slow-burn hype from stage one of the dev cycle. I wonder why?

 

[Talorc]

In other news some guys from gaming mags are betting Obsidian next game is D&D, and i can bet on that almost for sure too.

Their next game probably is D&D - but do you think that their next game is the one Atari refers to for March 2004 release? Feargus really only got Obsidian going around May 2003. news post

Would less than 2 years be enough to retread KOTOR into KOTOR II AND develop a D&D game? Only way it could be is if they had the Jefferson code base - but Herve would have shouted it for all the market to hear if they had manged to sell the Jeferson code base. Hell - managing to actually have a post office box is a significant financial event for Interplay ;-)

 

[Talorc]

Not BIO 'cause lots of BIO fanboys continually cry for Minsc and others to return and BIO always tells them no. It was BIS/interplay who owns the rights; but that probably went to Atari due to that 'deal" that was made late last year..

So we can look forward to Minsc, valuable intellectual property that he is, making a cameo appereance in Driv4r then? ;-)

 

[Volourn]

"So we can look forward to Minsc, valuable intellectual property that he is, making a cameo appereance in Driv4r then?"

LOL I wouldn't rule it out.

 

[suibhne]

Whatever is going on, it has been uncharacteristically sneaky and discrete for the gaming industry, which usually thrives on slow-burn hype from stage one of the dev cycle. I wonder why?

Atari's financials are the why. That's no doubt why they're so explicitly targeting Q1 of 2005.

Because of this, I presume Atari would try hard to to re-use the Jeff assets if they could, and Obsidian is the only realistic way to grant that if. I'm pretty curious to hear the announcement within the next week or two.

And Herve would have only announced the Jeff sale if he had been able to do so. Atari's a much bigger gun than BethSoft, legally speaking, so I'm not sure Interplay would be holding the reins in any arrangement with Atari.

 

[Surlent]

On the bright side, we are guarenteed to get a DnD game on next year's start ?
Whether Jeffy or not.
I guess you can kill some time till then.
Unless it's console only title.....

 

[Monte Carlo]

Question:

Who owns Jefferson assets?

Presumably IPLAY own the engine, but not the IP on which the mechanics are coded.

These are owned by both Hasbro and Atari. Hmmm.

Furthermore, given the scrutiny of IPLAY's financial situation of late you'd have thought that they'd have been unable to sell Jefferson off without somebody noticing. Or (any lawyers?) are they actually unable to sell Jefferson at this point?

How much is a game engine and associated assets, about 30% complete, worth?

Cheers
MC

 

[suibhne]

Dammit, this is what I get for uncritically listening to you people.

The Atari financial report clearly doesn't make any claims about previously unannounced D&D titles; it merely states

For the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2005: Revenue will be driven by releases from both the lucrative Dragon Ball Z and Dungeons & Dragons franchises.

The press release outlined "releases from both the lucratiive Dragon Ball Z and Dungeons & Dragons franchises," right before that statement, so there's no reason to think Atari's necessarily referring to new titles. With an allowance for typical PR language, it's possible this statement is referring to the aforementioned Demon Stone (PS2, XBox, PC) and DBZ (PS2, GBA) titles. (Granted, this is in a section about new releases, but it's hardly definitive.)

We'll still be getting the news about BG3 and NWN2 within the next few weeks, but there's no reason I can see to believe that either one of those will be released by the end of March 2005.

 

[taks]

60% complete, MC. 9-12 months of a full dev team to finish according to other ramblings i've heard.

but the sales point is crucial. interplay still has all the assets and given their financial situation, we would have heard about a sale. also, given that the story outlined to us was not BG specific, i doubt atari can claim rights to that. the engine was not rules specific either, intentionally according to the developers (which was part of what caused so many problems with the IE).

according to other postings by grok on the atari boards, btw, they didn't fully take back over the BG license rights till january, which would give only 15 months to complete a game. given that they had issues with toee in even more time than that, i'm guessing it ain't BG3, but NWN2 they're talking about. which may be obsidian...

taks

 

[Whipporowill]

I'll get into this later (laundry duty, fuck), but yeah - I doubt Atari would want BG3 to be turnbased so that makes it less likely to be Troika. And AFAIK Timmieh joined the Bloodlines team after ToEE shipped and several of the ToEE developers quit/moved on (probably due to lack of work). Rumour also has it that they've only got Bloodlines in the pipeline.

 

[Volourn]

"I doubt Atari would want BG3 to be turnbased so that makes it less likely to be Troika."

Yeah, because we all know that Troika would never stoop to making non turn based games.

 

[Whipporowill]

The ToEE engine is TB, dumbass. And there'd be no point in using the ToEE engine without the TB combat would there? Most of the 3.5E mechanics implemented by Troika are used for combat specifically and I doubt it would work well translated into realtime. And if there's no point in using Troika Atari could've (and would've) used another developer they haven't already screwed

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I wonder if they (Troika) would work again with Atari?

 

[Volourn]

The Whipped One: Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. All those words yet all empty much like your crying. And, it is for several reasons.

1. As we all know the TOEE engine was once known as the Arcanum engine which had RT combat. They could just as 'easily" make it real time again.

2. They can twink the rules to fit real time. Heck, they have alreayd twinked a lot of D&D to fit the engine so might as well twink it some more.

3. And, in the biggest shocker, if Troika/Atari feels its not worth turning the TOEE engine into a RT/phase base engine; by gosh, they can make a NEW engine! Holy moly! What a concept that is! I'm surprised the genius that is you didn't figure that out.

In conclusion, before crying that your silly 'facts" are trounced and shown to be nothing but hearsay and wishful thinking, actually use common sense and think it through.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

 

[Whipporowill]

1) It had RT and TB, and guess what - it sucked ass! Can't seem them going there, fans of either ToEE and BG would be highly sceptical I believe. Do we need to guess why the ToEE version of the Steam Engine only had TB?

2) They can twink the rules into oblivion, sure. But what'd be the point?

3) New engine, sure. But the ENGINE was one of the few reasons why people believe Troika should/is doing BG3.

So, what's your point Volourn? I don't see any facts in that list of yours? I'm right on this one and you're just being an annoyance, as usual.

And no Blackie, Troika probably don't want to work with Atari anyway. Unless being given a lot more lucrative contract - or if they are broke...

 

[monkey]

Does Atari make a new D&D game set in an existing series (frex, BG3 or NWN2) or do they set in the new WotC setting (Eberron)? I would think the latter would draw in the rabid Eberron fanbois, plus it's all new and shiny (and I'm sure Wizards would love to pimp the hell out of it)...

monkey