Black Isle Studios Board Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

There's a good selection of comments today from the BIS message boards, so enjoy!

Neverwinter Nights

Feargus Urquhart, President/Black Isle Studios:

Official Board moves!: Actually this board is now the official board, Bioware will be moving over here permanently and will be phasing out their answering of questions on the Interplay.com site. I was able to swing a new server that could be dedicated to just the Black Isle boards. So, this should be the official spot for NWN discussions for the forseeable future.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

New Official Boards: We like it, too. For the most part, I think the Dev team intends to migrate to these boards.

Ability Point Distribution: Just to clarify, we don't have a firm decision on the number of points to distribute at this time. 25 is the official 3e figure but we're going to run it through some Neverwinter playtesting before we decide on anything final. My personal guess is that the final number will probably fall somewhere between 25 and 30.

Single Player Storyline: Good question, and I've actually got an answer for it. For some of the reasons you outline and also because we want the story to be equally enjoyable in multiplayer, we've built the Neverwinter story around the concept of the player being part of a small community of adventurers. When the city succumbs to the Wailing Death, Lady Aribeth puts out a call to all adventurers within the city, not just you (some of them NPCs, some of them other PCs such as yourself). If you choose to play through all of the modules in Chapter 1, then you're a very prolific adventurer - if you choose only to play a few of them, however, it's assumed that other adventurers must have completed the ones that you did not. Either way, you'll always end up playing a significant role in the climax to each chapter.

The result is hopefully a game that gives you a lot of freedom in defining who your character is, while still driving you forward in a dramatic fashion that ties you emotionally to the story at hand. It's a context that makes equal sense to the single player, to the tight-knit party that plays as a group, and to the fly-by-night adventurers who have new party members join them for every module. When the game ships, you'll have to let us know how well it worked for you.

Single Player Concerns: I'm the fella in charge of story around these parts (though I rely heavily on folks like Lukas Kristjanson, creator of Minsc & Boo, and Bob McCabe, our good man from Jersey, to keep the whole ball of wax together), so take my thoroughly biased opinions with a grain of salt. But just between you and me, I think we've got the most exciting story BioWare's had yet. In the BG games, the focus was really on your small group of henchmen - they were the ones who grew and adapted and with whom you became emotionally involved with. For Neverwinter, we're trying to take that concept and apply it to the entire gameworld. The city of Neverwinter is going to be a very dynamic place that grows and develops along with your character over the course of the official campaign. The NPCs that you encounter and interact with on a daily basis are all going to change and grow - they'll experience joy and tragedy and love and vengeance and you'll be there at the center of all of it, taking part and playing a vital role in their lives. When you finish the fourth and final chapter, be it in single-player or multiplayer, I'd like to think that each of you will feel that you've taken part of something really special.

So if you want to hear more about the official campaign, by all means keep asking these sorts of questions (and whip off a few emails to your favorite gaming mags and sites, telling them that that's what you want to hear more about). As our release date gets closer and closer, you'll notice that our marketing effort is slowly transforming. Phase 1 was designed to catch the interest of the DMs, the module builders, the server operators, the tech-heads, the hardcore gamers (and I think we've done a good job of that). Now we're just starting to enter Phase 2, which is all about reaching out to the mass market. You folks have all of these campaigns and persistent worlds and competitive modules in the works, now, and we want to make sure that you have plenty of people eager to play them. The official campaign and a rich BioWare story are going to be key to making that happen.

Item for One Character Only: If you want to limit it to you and only you, you'll have to rely on custom scripting. However, you can still get pretty specific just by using the standard properties. After all, how many neutral evil gnomish bards can there be?

As a general idea, though, I think it would be really cool for players to fiddle around in the toolset and create custom weapons and armor for themselves, with descriptions tied into their own backstories and the like. It has the potential to be a really strong roleplaying tool if people choose to use it as such.

Dialog and Text System: The underlying file formats are going to be a bit different but, from the player's perspective, conversation will behave the same as it did in the BG titles (and yes, while the keyword system won't be used in the official campaign, it will still be available for use in your own modules).

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer:

Single Player Concerns: Neverwinter Nights is going to continue Bioware's tradition of creating epic role-playing games.

While the technical systems are being designed to allow for multiplayer gameplay and an end-user toolset, the campaign itself is getting more than enough work put into it to make it a great game.
We have most of the Baldur's Gate team (plus many talented additions!) working on Neverwinter Nights, so we will be shipping a game as good or better than any in the Baldur's Gate series. BioWare's goal is that with each new game we make, we build on our prior experiences and create a new game that rises above anything we've done previously.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Release Date: I hope it's pretty obvious that we try to release a game that you don't need a patch for. While making the perfect game is really hard to do, especially when you are implementing a complex, already established role-playing system into a game with as many hours as some of our past titles have had, try we do, try we must. I don't think you'll ever see us back down from that commitment to releasing the highest quality game that we are capable of. And, when mistakes are made, we'll do our best to fix them.

The BioWare logo means a lot to us, and we take great pride in maintaining it.

Ability Cost Breakdown:
Ability Score -- Ability Cost
09 -- 1
10 -- 2
11 -- 3
12 -- 4
13 -- 5
14 -- 6
15 -- 8
16 -- 10
17 -- 13
18 -- 16

Tracking Quest Variables: Well, the way we do them is the way that they were done in the Baldur's Gate series of titles: global variables.

If the quest has not been triggered yet, then set the global to 0. If you talk to the NPC that offers the quest, and the global is 0, he says, "Hey, come here a second. I got something you might like to hear about."

As soon as he finishes speaking, he sets the global to 10. If you try to talk to him when the global is set to 10, he asks, "What's the matter? Didn't you hear me the first time? Do you want me to repeat it all again?"

Item for One Character Only: And just think of the obvious places you can go with that [items based upon your own backstory] - you're putting your stamp upon the world in a way that can only make that world more rich and fulfilling. Imagine coming across a specific item, and finding that player while adventuring through the game. And think of it from the point of view of the other player, wondering how you got his abandoned item, and what adventure's it's been taken on since that time.

Reminds me of a story Brent told me of his playing through Ultima On-Line. Said he had one character keep an elabroate journal, and, when he eventually died, he made a second character whose whole raison d'etre was to find the original characters journal.

He'd walk about from town-to-town, asking people if they'd ever heard of the prior character, or a book written by him. Role-playing possibilities abound!

BioWare Characters: Here’s the quick update on Wu-Wei, my Level 5 (almost level 6!) LN Monk of the Yellow Rose:

Str 11, Dex 16, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 8 … HP 26, AC 15 … Skills of note: Tumble (11), Listen (10), Move Silently (8), Hide in Shadows (8), and Balance (8). I’m starting to put more of my skill points into Knowledge: Arcana (useful in Aidan’s campaign) and Jump, for now. I’ll likely put my level 8 bonus (if I make it that far) into Int, and my level 12 bonus into Wis. At that point, I’d have 2 points left, and only one odd stat. I’d probably put two more into Wisdom from there, and ignore strength. I see the use for having a high wisdom as a monk, but I don’t really see any necessity in it. Perhaps I’m not up enough on the strategies needed to maximize my character.

On a related note (not maximizing the combat potential of a character), fellow designer Preston is starting up a campaign this Friday the 13th (creepy!), and here’s the character I created for that game. Unlike the 4d6 method we used for Aidan’s game (resulting in my 22-point character), Preston wants to try out using the higher 30-point creation method (personally, I still prefer the 25 point buy, but maybe our opinions will change as we explore different avenues, and eventually balance the game):

Jandle Sorrowfield … Neutral Bard … Str 7, Dex 16, Con 10, Int 16, Wis 9, Cha 16 … Hp 6, AC 15 … Skills of Note: Perform (7), Decipher Script (6), Gather Information (6), Knowledge (Arcana) (6), Knowledge (History) (6), Knowledge (Nature (5), Knowledge (Religion) (5), Spellcraft (6), Use Magic Device (6) … I’m playing her as the inquisitive scholar. She’s obsessed with learning, tinkering, and just plain figuring out how everything works. She uses her natural talents as a performer, along with her high charisma, to manipulate people into helping her gain knowledge.

I’d been wanting to play a bard for the longest time, so I’m excited that I’ll finally get a chance.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

Shield Bug: Actually, the shield switching hands depending on which way the PC is facing, is not a bug. It is a technique called mirroring, which allowed the animators to reduce the amount of the time and data required for each model and consequently resulted in more content in the final game.

This is a good thing.

So, from a 'real life' point of view, it may not have been as accurate, but I think the trade-off was worth it.

Toolset Limitations: Using the NWToolset aspiring module creators will be able to design and construct their own adventures. This includes building the maps, designing and placing unique items and creatures, writing NPC conversations, and programming your own scripts. Don't think that you will have to do all of this on your own however, as there will be plenty of stuff included to help get you started.

The bottom line is that the NWToolset will be powerfull; so powerful that our own designers are building the fantastic single / multi - player campaign that will ship with the game using it.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Downloadable ToB Expansion: Throne of Bhaal was a tremendous effort that added both the final chapters onto the story of BG2 (and ended it) as well as a dungeon that was larger than Durlag's Tower in TotSC.

It adds 30-50 hours of play-time (depending on how you play, naturally) onto BG2 and we are immensely happy with how the expansion turned out. Black Isle has its own reasons, I'm sure, for expanding HoW...but we have not had the same outcry over the length of ToB that there was for HoW. The fact that Black Isle was willing to put aside some people to work on a free expansion in response to their fans is to their credit.

There are people who have commented that they wish ToB was a full sequel rather than just an expansion...who doesn't? It would have been great if we could have done that, of course, but it wasn't realistic...and for an expansion, ToB is just about as large and complex as an expansion can be.

But now the story is done, the Infinity Engine is done and we can rest our tired little brains after putting in what was a tremendous effort for a labour of love and move onto other things. So, no...sorry, but there will be no expansion for the expansion.

BG2 end sequence: When the end-scene was done for BG2, we had a pretty good idea of how the story was going to go in ToB...we knew that there was a group of Bhaalspawn working together...but the details weren't penned at that point (the animations were done while BG2 was still in progress keep in mind).

The intent of the end-sequence was to get across a hint of the story to come, and that's all it was meant to do. The actual characters depicted just aren't specific...might have been weird, I suppose, had we actually had a fire giant, a half-dragon, a drow and so forth at the table...but at that point we hadn't even considered it. The Five didn't trust each other an inch...so maybe they were meeting in polymorph form? Maybe those were illusionary projections? There are lots of possible explanations...but we're not offering anything as an 'excuse'.

Perhaps the illusion that's being dispelled is that we at Bioware didn't have every detail of the series planned from the get-go. The end-scene had Bad Guys planning Bad Things for the Too-Powerful Bhaalspawn...and that's all it was meant to do.

Illasera: The problem with the original Illasera fight is that there was no way around it...the player had no choice but to have the fight. And, considering that the player could have just generated his character or imported, he could be alone or be any of a number of levels.

The fight with Illasera scales and she has companions if you are higher level/have more people in the party...but it couldn't be made that difficult simply because making an unavoidable Boss Fight right at the beginning of the game would lead to potential frustration for some.

So she underestimated you or was weaker than the rest, or whatever you prefer.

There was a plan originally that Illasera had feared that Mellisan was trying to kill her by sending her after the PC, so she sent in her Simulacrum instead...and the PC would run into Illasera again in Amkethran where she would try to help you (although ultimately still deceiving you because she discovered you didn't know the truth about Melissan yadda yadda yadda). Anyway...it was a complex plot that we couldn't add, so that was that. Which was too bad, because Illasera kinda got the short shrift, no?

Imoen's Story: Seriously, though, there IS a story behind Imoen. Who knows if we'll explore it in the future? The only reason we couldn't explore it in depth in ToB is because there was no guarantee that Imoen would be with the party...and no time to put that much work into a sequence that not everyone would see (unfortunately).

Until then, it's up to your imagination (as it probably should be).

Killing Saemon: Actually, Saemon is meant to be killable... both at the soldier encounter and later. He just tries to escape rather than fight, so you have to be fast.

If, of course, killing's him what you feel the need to do. Personally I think he's the most awesome character. Couldn't you imagine Saemon in your party? (I mean, eventually you'd figure he'd have to owe it to you.)

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

Steve Bokkes, Designer:

Paladin Quest: To answer your question, the encounter was designed not as a traditional quest, but rather as a simple moral dilemma. After talking to Harald, it should've been apparent that his experiences inside the lure had driven him quite insane. He holds himself responsible for the deaths of his comrades and sees his own death as the only way to redeem himself in the eyes of Tyr. However, despite his madness, he still clings to the basic tenets of his faith--a fact that has prevented him from taking his own life long ago.

So you see, there is no "right" or "wrong" way of dealing with the situation. You can do as he asks and give him the warrior's death he craves, or you can simply leave him to his own personal torment. Either way, there is no happy ending. I realized when I was designing this NPC that the absence of a neat and tidy solution might provoke some frustration among certain players. However, every once in a while I like to "muddy the waters" a bit by injecting a bit of cold, hard reality into an otherwise pristine fantasy setting.