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SasqWatch
Alan Miranda has popped up at a site called Bitmob to talk about Mysteries of Westgate. Since we all know the game so well, here's a different snip:
More information.Bitmob: Mysteries of Westgate received better review scores in Europe than in the United States. Is the U.S. market more critical of RPGs, or do single-player RPGs have a larger following in Europe than in the U.S.?
AM: I've heard several opinions on this from people in the industry, and it likely boils down to cultural taste differences with regard to new game features. What this means is that the features North American gamers expect from a new RPG are different from what European gamers expect, or Asian gamers for that matter. Unique cultural tastes are well known among publishers, although I hadn't expected to see it with MOW. As far as I can tell, North American reviewers are more expectant of flashier features for a new RPG product, whereas European reviewers are not.
We focused on making a fun game using what already existed in NWN2 in the spring of 2007 since that was the directive from Atari in order to release the game before the first expansion. So MOW had no new "real" features to speak of, like the typical bullet points you see on expansion packs with new races, classes, spells, or game mechanics that require engine code changes. So apart from some great new art and an intriguing story in a new setting, the city of Westgate, North American reviewers saw it as "more of the same" with no additional coolness factor. Europeans didn't have a problem with more of the same, as long as it was good.