Interview GameSpot looks at HOTU

[Spazmo]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark

<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc">Gamespot PC</a> had a <a href=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neverwinternightsxp2/preview_6077172.html>chat</a> with <b>Darcy Pajak</b> and <b>Trent Oster</b> about the upcoming <a href=http://www.nwn.bioware.com>Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark</a>.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote>TO: I'd just like to voice my appreciation to the fans of Neverwinter Nights and the great work the people in the community have done. Neverwinter started out as an ambitious project, and it has become an amazing, vibrant gaming system. I'm very proud to have been involved in the development of such a title, and I'm truly proud of the people I've worked with over the last six years on Neverwinter Nights and the expansions. We set out to do something amazing, and I honestly think we hit the mark.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
Yeah, it's pretty amazing when you get the fans to do all the work for you.

 

[Eron]

I think saying the fans did all the work is being a bit harsh.

Yeah, so NWN was a dissapointment.. But if the fan's are so successful at doing all the work, why don't they get together and write what they really want NWN to be. Hell, make a game.. From fans, to fans..

NOT gonna see that happen.

 

[Spazmo]

Of course not. Bio takes everything the fans makes and sticks it in expansions while calling it features.

 

[Voss]

Hmmm. The tone of that little blurb is interesting, it sounds like Trent, at least, is wrapping up his involvement of D&D. Though the official 'we're still discussing our future direction' is very 'we just aren't telling'.

I'd be surprised if they dropped D&D completely, but I wouldn't be surprised if they stop with the Neverwinter (or pawn it off on second parties like Obsidian)

 

[Volourn]

Hmm.. This seems to be something BIO, and Troika have in common - relying on fans... at least by your logic.

Yeah, Voss, I honestly think, unfortunately, BIO is done with D&D games which is too bad for those who like companies who use the D&D license to actually try to make their own original stories unlike a certain unnamed company.

Anyways, it's too bad that after KOTOR the next BIO game I can look forward to doesn't even exist yet.

Hopefully, BIO changes their mind, and make at least one more NWN expansion to make an expansion trilogy.

 

[Ibbz]

Hopefully, BIO changes their mind, and make at least one more NWN expansion to make an expansion trilogy.

I'd prefer a sequel with cloaks, z-axis and pixel shaders!

 

[Spazmo]

I'd prefer seeing somebody give Troika five years and a bottomless budget to make a game!

Seriously, Volourn, I admit that lots of stuff had to be done by the fans in ToEE, and that's inexcusable (Bad Atari and, yes, Bad Troika!) but that game was made in some 20 months. NWN had five goddamn years in development. In such pampered circumstances (even if they had to switch publishers), it's less understandable that so much stuff would be left to the fans to do, moreso that Bio would just gobble all this stuff up and call it NEW FEATURES!

 

[Volourn]

They did no such things. In fact, many fans have asked BIO to use their stuff but BIO has repeatedly stated that they won't. Yes, some things that BIO is adding in expansion packs have been done by fans; but that means nothing since BIO creates things themselves. I mean, you think BIO is stealing the community's idea because the community made beholders, and now beholders are in the expansion? If so, that's pretty lame.

All BIo is doing is adding things the fans want "officially" : Epic levels, multiple henchmen, etc., etc. To suggest they are using the fans as a crutch is also lame due to the fact that is common fans that most people who bouht NWN, and SOU don't even touch any fan created stuff as they do so strictly for the official campaign.

As for BIO being pampered? HAHA! Think again. You mentioned the change of publisher, and they wave it away like it was no big deal. Let's not mention, the lawsuit between BIO, Atari, and Interplay over that fiasco. Or the fact, that NWN offers way more than TOEE does. TOEE is a 30-40 (10-20 if some are to be believed ) hour campaign; NWN is a 30-60 (15 hours if some are to beleived ), and a toolset, and a DM client. Seriously, what the two products offer, quality aside, is so vastly imbalanced it's ridiculius to repeat that five year crap when it's also well known that BIO wans't working on NWN 24/7 since they had other products they were working on while Troika had almost 20 months to work almost strictly on TOEE notwithstanding the Vampire game they're making, or the undisclosed one as well.

As I recall, the fans are creating their own mods which is what NWN was also about. Dure, there were fans who worked to improved the OC; but it's not like BIO included those as accolades for themselves, ya know. I, for one, don't judge the OC or TOEE by what fans make of it. It's funny you are comparing a multi faceted game like NWN, and a single dimensional game like TOEE.

Once again.. pampered? Yo got proof of this?

Last i checked, bug fixes haven't really been done by fans for NWN (other than AI improvements) unlike TOEE where actual bugs were supposedly fixed by fans for TOEE. Go figure.

Once again, show me one time where BIO has claimed the fans' work as their own to make a profit out of it other than to say customers can play more than the official cmapaign which was always an intention with NWN.

Hmm...

 

[DrattedTin]

Hhehahahahhaa Volourn, you really don't want us to start digging into how shitty NWN was before its 20-some-odd-patches do you?

 

[Voss]

And we're off again...

And here I was hoping all the bile directed at Team Chuck and FOBOS would steer people away from doing the Bio dance yet again.



Someone wake me when theres something new going on.

 

[DrattedTin]

Ahhh man, there's only so far I can let people take hypocrisy.

But alright.

So, uh, how about that Brotherhood of Steel?

 

[Sol Invictus]

TOEE might have a shorter campaign length than NWN but the replayability value is so much higher. I'm into my fourth TOEE game and I'm loving it very, very much. I'm up to 80+ hours, baby. NWN only lasted 25 and I never touched it again.

 

[Volourn]

Exitium, replayablity is in the ye of the beholder. imo, Neither one has that much replayability for me.

 

[Spazmo]

Hhehahahahhaa Volourn, you really don't want us to start digging into how shitty NWN was before its 20-some-odd-patches do you?

I disagree. NWN is still shitty.

Volourn, NWN's OC may have been 60 hours, it may have been 100 hours, it could even have taken a month of gameplay: it still sucked. Troika had 20 months to put together a team and make an entire game--they already had an engine, sure, but I doubt the programmers were idle during that time. BioWare had five goddamn years (which is, right there, proof of pampering. FIVE YEARS?!) to make their game, often with teams much bigger than ToEE's. And in the end, ToEE is a hell of a lot better than NWN, even with it's bugs and other issues.

Incidentally, there is no third team with an unannounced project at Troika. Only two teams: one under Tim Cain that just finished ToEE and a second under Leon Boyarsky doing Vampire.

 

[Volourn]

Sorry, a game that lacks story, interesting characters, and quality quests is not better than NWN OC. They have the same quality. They are good games, and that's it.

5 years is not about pampering; it's about having the time to make a game that encompassed all that NWN does.

You should stop making exuse for Troika's step backwards from Arcanum, and just deal with the fact that TOEE just isn't as good as you think.

I never said Troika had 3 teams. However, I have ehard people here like SP talking about some game that Troika hasn't announced yet so that's where I get the "secret project" from.

 

[HanoverF]

Sorry, a game that lacks story, interesting characters, and quality quests is not better than NWN OC. They have the same quality. They are good games, and that's it.

Thats completly untrue for two reasons, The quests/character interaction/etc in NWN have no quality, they are pure shit, grab X items and come back and have another awful conversation. In ToEE whatever you think of the quests/npc interaction (they're hardly as stupid as 'go grab 4 ridiculous items to cure a plague, we're too lazy') other then learning the location of the moathouse and the temple, you can ignore/avoid them. In NWN to you are forced to do the shitty quests and have the shitty interactions to progress the game.

 

[Volourn]

Really? You forced to do the two trials? Help the woman look for her children? And, the list goes on. Seriously, the TOEE quests for the most part are fed ex quests as well; just with worstw riting and less interesting characters. What you meant to say was that TOEE's quest/interaction has no quality and even the pure shit of NWN is better. Yeha, that's it. NWN has tons of quests you don't have to do. To say otherwise is to lie.

 

[Spazmo]

I don't have to get punched in the head either. NWN OC sucked.

 

[EEVIAC]

What you meant to say was that TOEE's quest/interaction has no quality and even the pure shit of NWN is better.

No, what he said was written in his post. "In NWN to you are forced to do the shitty quests and have the shitty interactions to progress the game." In the first chapter of NWN you have to do four shitty quests. In all of ToEE there are about that many actions forced on you - Moathouse, Temple, Skull, Fungus Lady.

 

[Spazmo]

Not even. I never saw the skull on my playthrough.

 

[Sol Invictus]

THe skull isn't mandatory. It just makes fungus lady a whole lot easier. In fact, you don't have to do the nodes at all! How's that for freedom?

Also, if you like, you don't have to kill Hedrack at all, either - just get the skull, open the throne and go in.

Hell, you can choose not to kill anyone at the Temple, if you want - and join Hedrack.

That's how cool TOEE is.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I don't have to get punched in the head either. NWN OC sucked.

Aye, that it did. I do love NWN, but I never even finished the OC. I forced myself to finish the first chapter, but that's where it stopped. I was so disappointed in the banality of it all. What I am loving about NWN is some of the high quality work the fans are doing with modules and hakpaks. THAT'S where the true meat and potatoes of the game lie. Screw the generic OC and it's generic quests.

 

[Volourn]

Geenric quests? You must of mistaken it for other games. The biggest problem with lots of NWN's quests are the collect x ammount of items stuff that many of them had. Otehr than that; they weren't any more generic than other games. I have already given examples of some of the better quests in the game which just happen to be some better than most quests in most games.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

By generic, I meant it was the 'been there, done that' syndrome that plagues alot of rpgs these days. There were a couple of original quests that I ran across, yes, but for the most part it was just variations of the same damn thing. The same has been said of many other rpgs out there, including my all time favorite: Daggerfall. One thing people fail to understand though, is Daggerfall did a wonderful job of making random quests in a time when that was unheard of. And with the quest editors out there, the company and the fans added alot more content quest-wise to the game, making it one of the best quest generating games out there IMO. The OC for NWN sucked. Plain and simple. This is MY opinion though. There are alot of player created modules out there that rock though. And some of the persistent worlds are pretty decent as well, but they run into the same problem with quests. Until someone can come up with a decent random quest generator script, the persistent worlds are only good for so long before they become stale. And I just realized that I said all this in one paragraph. :shock: My old grammar teacher would kill me is she saw this.

 

[Volourn]

That's true, in that sense, the quests were "generic". Like you hit on, though, most if not all crpgs are guilty of this.

As for the persitent worlds gtting stale... well.. that's why, I for one, tend to switch between them, every so often, that way I'm never stuck repeating the same quests verbatim.

Now, to DF. I won't say a thing about that game. I'll just move on.