PC.IGN’s NWN: Shadows of Undrentide Interview

PC.IGN has posted an interview that they conducted with BioWare’s Tom Ohle and Darcy Pajak. They discuss the upcoming Neverwinter Nights expansion Shadows of Undrentide. Here’s a snippet:

IGNPC: Can you introduce the overall perspective of the expansion pack in a way that will both be understood by Neverwinter Nights enthusiasts and new, potential gamers?

Tom Ohle: Shadows of Undrentide will introduce a brand new 20+ hour story-driven campaign, as well as a slew of other features. Among them are 5 new playable classes, 16 new creatures, over 50 new spells, and over 30 new skills and feats. To give module creators even more to work with, we’re including three new tilesets: Desert, Rural Winter, and Ruins. All of which are going to be experienced in the official campaign. It expands the original Neverwinter Nights game in pretty much every way.

IGNPC: Can you also describe the experience that is Neverwinter Nights? Could you possibly detail the experience you’d expect all types of gamers to receive from Shadows of Undrentide?

Tom Ohle: Neverwinter Nights is one of the closest adaptations to date of Wizards of the Coast’s 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules on the PC (soon to be Mac and Linux, as well). Aside from a great CRPG, Neverwinter Nights also offers gamers the ability to create their own adventures with the BioWare’s Aurora Neverwinter Nights Toolset. There are currently over 2000 user-created modules available for download through the game’s numerous fansites, and the BioWare Live Team is continually developing new features for the game. Shadows of Undrentide gives those module creators even more customizability, and offers a number of new features for all fans of role-playing games. All of the new creatures, character classes, spells, etc. are officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons elements.

IGNPC: BioWare is extremely determined to create an intriguing, imaginative storyline for the singleplayer portion of the game… How have you gone about in creating the story? Have you used external Hollywood scriptwriters or developed the experience solely in-house?

Darcy Pajak: The story was internally developed by both BioWare and FloodGate Entertainment. Our designers are very imaginative and creative. They play pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons, and were inspired by the fantastic world of Forgotten Realms. They took their inspiration from the source books and wanted to explore the interesting areas of Faerun.