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(Originally posted by Darien)

Once again, the latest from the game developers at the Black Isle Studios developer boards.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

On the possibility of a new Drow NPC: I personally thought Solaufein would have been a great NPC... if a bit drow-like. But part of the reason I think everyone thinks about him in that context is because you can actually ask him in BG2 to join your party (to which he refuses).

Good character, though. I enjoyed writing him. Had we had the option of including multiple NPC's, I would have added the following:

Sarevok (of course)
Solaufein
Saemon Havarian
the Spectator Beholder

And, for crissakes, it's Solaufein, not Soulafine or Sauleifin or however many other ways I've seen it spelt. Sheesh. If I knew people would have this much difficulty, I would have called him George.

Mind you...I still see Imoen and Anomen spelt wrong half the time. Heh, oh well."

More on options for evils: Well, I won't claim that was the best example. I can see how someone might look at that and think that the fourth option was the only 'evil' one, but that's not what I was trying to convey. I was simply trying to say that we're including as many options as possible...and that the evil paths will be as rewarding as the good ones. I know of a couple plots in particular where the player gets to do some pretty nasty stuff and not only gets away with it, but gets a reward that the good path wouldn't.

(At least, this is the attempt... seeing as how there's always someone to pounce upon something I write and criticize it, even if it's not something from the game, I doubt we'll satisfy everyone.)

So nyah, nyah I say. Stick that up yer pipe and smoke it.

Heh. Ok, back to work.

More on crowded cities: No, I'm sure that could be done.

But what would that mean? The person on the low-end machine gets the deserted city, while the high-end machine doesn't? The person on the low-end machine gets sparse battles against armies (that are much easier) vs. the person with the high-end machine that gets the full, intended battle?

Our goal has always been to provide the same experience regardless of the power of the computer involved. Yes, that means we have to scale down a lot of the battles involved, especially those that have a lot of animations or magic... but the only alternative would be to restrict low-end machine-users to simplistic battles, and why even include them under the min-spec at that point? (Never mind the impossibility of trying to balance combat if you have to include another variable such as processer speed... yeesh).

I realize you're probably only talking about how crowded a city would look, but this is the sort of thing we have to decide up front when building an engine, and it was decided against.

As the min-spec bar raises, though, the sort of thing you're talking about will definitely become more of a possibility... either that or we'll find some way around it (when the infinity engine was made, crowded cities weren't exactly on the top of the list).

Mark Darrah, Lead Programmer:

Equipping more than one bow: The reson you can't have more then one bow is that in the case of missile weapons its actually the ammo that is the current weapon. Due to the way that things are set up, the weapon doesn't know which launcher it is using and just uses the first one that matches. If we allowed you to equip more then one bow, it wouldn't actually matter as it would still use the fist bow that it found.

I'm going to play a little bit of devil's advocate, here. This isn't necessarily my position, but I'd like some of you to think about it.

In regular D&D rules, the higher level you get, the greater the XP increment between levels. Which is funner... increasing the XP rewards so that people can increase at least several levels over the course of their game or leaving the XP rewards as per the rules and the characters raise, say, 1 level throughout the game?

Note that I didn't ask which is closer to D&D canon rules. I asked which is funner. And, yes, I realize one can go too far to the extreme... 15,000 XP for a 2-second plot is a bit extreme, sure, but would it be worse if the characters didn't advance? Or is the difference, like in PS:T (Planescape: Torment)and BG2, simply that there was more gameplay to spread out those massive XP rewards and so it was disguised better, that compacting that much XP into the smaller IWD just made it too obvious?

Something to consider. Personally I totally understand the reasoning behind what IWD did. And crying 'that's not D&D!' is maybe missing the point at this stage when you're dealing with such high levels.

On Boo: Boo is a hamster.

He does not really go for the eyes, either, although I could imagine Minsc throwing the poor rodent at a foe and scared little Boo scurrying off until Minsc found him again.

But, regardless, Boo does not have any special powers. He cannot 'call' other hamsters and while I suppose he could trip traps like the original hamsters did for that character, I'm not sure that's the fate we'd want to subject Boo to, himself.

At best, Boo is an animal companion for a ranger. But that still makes him a normal hamster, wishful thinking aside.

On the Elf bonus in BG2: You are correct, the Elf bonus is comming straight from the BG1 proficiencies which are much more generic then the BG2 ones.

Mike Geist, Designer:

On time sensitive quests: In my opinion, the response to some other games that involved Time Related quests was less than overwhelming. Given the sheer number of quests involved in BG2, it already seems overwhelming, and adding a time restraint on top of that might have been a bit much.

Some of the quests started out with some restrictions, but when it came down to playing the game, we ended up feeling more and more 'rushed' in order to complete them if there was a time restriction involved. So we had to be careful about where we included these types of quests.

The way I think of it, if you're in the mood to just explore, or go to a tavern, or just kick some kobald butt, it would be a bit frustrating knowing you have to kill a dragon, free some slaves and locate that hidden treasure all before dinner time.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

Scott Everts, Designer:

Music mp3s: Hi all, I have permission to put up 2 tracks of music from HOW. They should be up in a day or two. The first piece is the Seer music you hear in the ice caves, the other is a piece from Dragon Isle. They have the same theme, but one is a beautiful slow piece, and the other is more actiony. I think you'll enjoy them.