Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer Interview

With Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer finished and on store shelves, we fired over a handful of tough questions to lead designer and producer Kevin Saunders. Our questions and his answers to follow:

GB: Tell us a little about yourself and your role in the creation of Mask of the Betrayer.

Kevin: My name is Kevin Saunders and I was the lead designer and the producer for NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. My educational background was in environmental engineering, but I’ve been a game designer for over nine years, working on titles such as Shattered Galaxy (MMORTS), C&C Generals: Zero Hour (RTS), and Knights of the Old Republic 2 (RPG). I’ve been playing D&D since I was 5 and have a deeply rooted passion for the game.

GB: What was your primary goal with Mask of the Betrayer and do you feel that you accomplished it?

Kevin: My answer is boring, but our primary goal was creating a great game on time and within our budget. Fans probably hate to hear this, but at the end of the day, developing games is a business. Unless we can do it efficiently enough, we go out of business. While it’s true that some in game development get rich, most of us work hard just to be able to pay the bills and live a life like everyone else (our big payoff is that we tend to love our jobs).

Of course, we wanted to make the best RPG experience we could, while improving the tools for the mod community as much as we could. We wanted to have reactive, realistic characters, a story that adapted to the player’s decisions, an immersive world with stunning visuals, etc. – and I think we achieved all of these things at least to a large part. But on MotB a priority was to maximize the game play experience without requiring more time or additional resources from our original schedule and budget. Yes, we achieved this goal.

GB: What aspect of the expansion pack are you most proud of?

Kevin: As a project, I’m most proud of how the team truly excelled. Everyone worked together very well and no one was deterred by the numerous challenges that come up in game development. A lot of individuals did stellar work and the quality of MotB reflects their efforts and their cooperation and teamwork.

As a game, I’m most proud of the consistency and coherence of our depiction of the world. From the characters, to the visuals, to the individual minor quests, I feel we did a great job of presenting the game’s setting (Rashemen and a few more exotic places) and telling a story that players will remember.

GB: Is there any content that you regret leaving out or didn’t have time to add?

Kevin: No (but see below). There are a few things I wish we could have added. One was a side quest we called Patron of the Arts. It was a complete tangent from the main storyline and mostly for nostalgia value and comic relief. It involved organizing a play using the actors at the Veil (and competing with actors at the Sloop).

The play would be about your adventures from the NWN2 campaign and would culminate in a cut scene of the play that would have depended upon how you “wrote” the script and which actors you convinced to play the roles. It was an idea that we all really liked, but it became clear that we just wouldn’t have the time to do it well, so we dropped it from consideration early on.

GB: Mask of the Betrayer has even garnered some comparisons to Baldur’s Gate II and Planescape: Torment. Did you draw any inspiration from BioWare/Black Isle Studios games of the past decade?

Kevin: Not directly. Many of the MotB developers have played those games so they certainly had an influence, but no specific ideas or inspiration was drawn from them. We didn’t go into MotB with a plan to make it like either of those games.

GB: The expansion focuses more on an inward story combined with cosmological elements than on any of the classic down-to-earth approaches of RPG storytelling. Why did you choose this route?

Kevin: It was the type of story we wanted to tell. NWN2 had a classic fantasy RPG story and we didn’t want to do that again. As an expansion, we felt we could try something different and gamble a bit with the story. The majority of people who buy an expansion for a game like NWN2 are pretty hard core gamers and role-players and we thought they’d appreciate an atypical story.

Kevin: All opinions are valid when it comes to something like game design. Our goal is to entertain the player, so when someone dislikes an aspect of the game, we’ve disappointed that person in that regard. I’ll briefly discuss each of the elements you mention separately.

Bugs. We shipped with very few known bugs, especially for an RPG. That is, we fixed most everything we found through our internal testing. So where we failed was that we didn’t allocate enough resources for finding bugs. Fortunately, from the reports/reviews/posts I’ve seen, most of the bugs people have encountered have been either fairly minor or easily circumvented. Still, most people seem to come across at least a couple notable issues while playing the game and that’s disappointing.

For the camera and UI, part of the issue was resources. In making an expansion for a game, your primary audience is people who played and enjoyed the first game. For this reason, combined with having a relatively small team, we didn’t make overhauling the camera and UI a huge priority. We did make some major improvements, I think – the two camera modes play much better than NWN2’s camera, the inventory interface gained a sort button and notification of newly acquired items, companion influence was clearly communicated, etc. But since we saw our primary audience as people who enjoyed NWN2, we didn’t see recreating major portions of the interface as a priority (as those who liked NWN2 were at least OK with the original interface).

With regard to the spirit meter, I think the situation is slightly more complicated. I’m not sure that the system itself was flawed, but rather our presentation of it. For example, some reviews have mentioned that the “evil” path is inferior to the “good” one. But there are actually some huge game play benefits you gain by succumbing to the spirit hunger. You gain new combat abilities as your craving increases and you also acquire unique essences that can be used to create artifacts or add very powerful enchantments to your existing items. So I think where we could have improved the spirit-eater implementation was to better train the player in how the system works and what the trade-offs were.

Now back to your original question: how do I feel about the criticism? Terrible. The team did a fantastic job creating Mask of the Betrayer and, because of a couple specific decisions, they aren’t receiving the praise they deserve for their incredible work over the past year.

GB: While Obsidian’s games are well-executed, gameplay issues seem to be one of the biggest concerns for critics – even going back to the Black Isle Studios days with titles like Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment. Do you feel this (the mechanical side of game design, so to speak) is something that needs more focus or additional player input in future games?

Kevin: That’s an interesting question. Actually, most of the Mask of the Betrayer team (myself included) didn’t work at Black Isle Studios. I think the problems mentioned are by no means systemic issues or Obsidian issues. The criticisms come down to a couple specific decisions and it’s as simple as that.

GB: Would you say that more time could be spent on polishing the gameplay without sacrificing any focus toward storytelling?

Kevin: For the most part, the two things (story quality and “mechanical” quality) aren’t exclusive and both can be done well. There’s one huge exception, though – bugs. Some aspects of good game storytelling – specifically things like branching storylines, character development paths, and outcomes – are very difficult to test thoroughly. That is, in general, a deeper, more reactive story means more bugs to find and fix and thus more bugs that will reach the players. With MotB we did make those sacrifices in some cases – choosing a less awesome story event that we felt would result in too many bugs to be a net gain. For example, we certainly could have implemented the Patron of the Arts quest I mentioned earlier – but if we had, it would have had bugs we wouldn’t have been able to fix and other bugs we did find and fixed would have slipped through.

Or we could have hired more testers, but then we would have had fewer people in other departments and other things wouldn’t have gotten done. Everything is a trade-off.

GB: What are your final thoughts now that the expansion pack has been released?

Kevin: I’m very proud of what we accomplished and think Mask of the Betrayer is the best game I’ve worked on yet.

But, as mentioned above, I’m unhappy with our review scores. It’s frustrating to see a number of reviews saying how MotB is a big improvement over NWN2 and then giving MotB a lower score. An 81% average isn’t bad, but I really thought we’d be closer to 90%. So I’m disappointed in myself for not getting the team the recognition and success they deserve.

Thanks Kevin!