BioWare Interview Part 3

RPGVault has conducted their third interview with Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk of BioWare, talking about the Baldur’s Gate series, Neverwinter Nights, and what influences they have had over the years. Here’s a snippet:

Jonric: In Neverwinter Nights, multiplayer seems to be a core design element whereas the Baldur’s Gate games were basically single-player with multiplayer capability added. To what degree is this description accurate, and in what ways has the shift in emphasis affected the development process?

Ray Muzyka: Yes, the Baldur’s Gate series was single-player focused while the development approach for Neverwinter Nights has been directed right from the start towards multiplayer. In fact, we learned a lot in the development of Baldur’s Gate about how to design a game to be easily adapted to multiplayer. Based on what we have learned, we created a powerful multiplayer engine for Neverwinter – the single-player game is basically a multiplayer session with only one player in it. This doesn’t detract in any way from the storyline of NWN however – we’re working hard to ensure that the story in NWN is just as good in solo mode as the storyline of say Baldur’s Gate II. Neverwinter Nights has very compelling single-player – both in the campaign shipping with the game, and in modules created by the fans. In fact, in some ways NWN will be more interesting to play, because you can alternate sessions (continuing through the storyline all the while) in either single- or multiplayer modes depending on how you want to play the game at various times.