Shadows of Undrentide Interview at GameSpy

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(Originally posted by Mollusken)

Rick Ernst and Paul Neurath from FloodGate Entertainment answer questions about the upcoming Neverwinter Nights expansion, The Shadows of Undrentide. Here's a couple of them:

Rick, you're the lead designer for Undrentide, so I'll hit you with my most impudent question: How hard can it be to make an expansion pack for a game that does everything possible to make it easy to create new content?

Rick Ernst: Would you say the same thing to a group putting together an expansion for Quake 3?

BioWare has made our lives easier in many ways with the excellent "Aurora" toolset. It's one of the most powerful and versatile in-house tools I've worked with. Though, I suppose, it should really be compared to off-the-shelf systems as far as polish and presentation goes. That being said, we've got a heck of a challenge in front of us. The fact that something like, say, map building, is so easy for designers, means that the difficulty is really just shifted over to the artists. Adding new environments for the map builders is an incredibly work-intensive task, and one I think we didn't fully appreciate when we started the project.

Are you adding or doing anything new with the henchmen?

Rick Ernst: We're adding quite a bit to the henchmen and their abilities. One of the things we've really tried to accomplish in Shadows of Undrentide is to integrate the henchmen more closely into the story. Thus, they'll actively participate in conversations with NPCs, comment on your actions, give advice, and if they don't like the decisions you are making, they may just up and leave. We hope this will make henchmen feel more like partners, or at least valued minions. We are also trying to add some significant new abilities to your partner/minion. We've also added more tactical commands to the henchman repertoire, such as "Go Stealthy" and "Don't Attack until I Do."

Read everything at GameSpy.