Obsidian Entertainment - Interview - on IWD3 and More

I gotta say I'm getting kind of tired of the Forgotten Realms setting. It's not a bad setting and it can offer more original stuff when you move away a bit from the most "generic D&D fantasy" areas of Faerun… but I just wish we could have more games with other D&D settings.

I mean… back in the SSI days, granted Forgotten Realms was still the most prominent setting, but we also got games based on DragonLance, Mystara, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljamer, Al Qadim… quite a bit of different settings, which was cool.

Since the end of the SSI days, we got like… one Birthright game, one Planescape game, one Greyhawk game (and Greyhawk ain't exactly -that- different from the Forgotten Realms) and one Eberron game.

The rest? All Forgotten Realms. Enough to get a overdose of Faerun :p

I'd kille for a new DragonLance or Dark Sun CRPG.

-Sergorn

Yeah, I'd pretty much kill for a Dragonlance game. There were a couple attempts at mods for NWN and NWN2, but didn't look like they actually ever finished any. I remember getting extremely excited when a couple Knights of Solamnia make an appearance in BG2!
 
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It was called "Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance" - a strategy game released by Sierra in 1996. I never played it so I don't know if they are any good.

I loved the Dark Sun games. They looked pretty nice back at their release, and I feel they really were some of the forerunners in term of actually offering choices in CRPG games. The beginning of the Shattered Lands was pretty awesome notably in how it offered real multiple ways to escape from the Gladiator's arenas.

I really was dissapointed that the engine never got used much after that, especially since after all the Gold Box games I expected they would make lots of game like Dark Sun in different settings. Well they did reuse the engine for Al Qadim, but it was more an action/adventure game (though a pretty great one), and I'd assume its spiritual sequel Entomorph (in the short lived World of Aden setting) used an improved version of it but these aren't that many games. I remember they had sci-fi RPG called "M" using Dark Sun's engine in the works, but I don't think it was ever released. Oh well…

At least I guess Dark Sun remains somewhat a possibility down the road since it's one of the rare old settings which got official D&D4 support.

-Sergorn

Birthright was a strategy / RPG / godgame hybrid - but the strategy part was confusing, the RPG part boring and the godgame part was fiddled with bugs and hindered by an atrocious interface. Call that a botched up licence!

They used the "Dark Sun" engine for the MMO, too. But it always remained notoriously buggy. "M" was in fact never released. Entomorph was more Action-Adventure than RPG anyway.

I still have hope for a Dark Sun game - magic post apocalypse still seems very cool to me.
 
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They used the "Dark Sun" engine for the MMO, too. But it always remained notoriously buggy. "M" was in fact never released. Entomorph was more Action-Adventure than RPG anyway.

Right I forgot about the Dark Sun MMO. We never had it over here, so I tend to blank out its existence, just like the original Neverwinter Nights :biggrin:

And yup, Entomorph was more an action/adventure game at the core. It was basically Al Quadim in a new setting - done by the same team and using the same basic gameplay and interface. While I loved Al Quadim, I could never trully get into this one though... the feel and setting just didn't grab me. (Ditto for Thunderscape which used the same setting in a EOB/Ravenloft kind of game).

I wouldn't have minded more D&D games by SSI back then

.-Sergorn
 
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In the Planar Sphere, right?

Iirc there were also some characters from Dark Sun in that same quest.

Yeah, the Planar Sphere. First time through I played as a mage and was able to send them home. Second time, I played as a Paladin and wasn't. I spent hours trying to figure out a way!

I remember getting so excited, hoping that it was some type of easter egg indicating that a dragonlance game was coming out. But alas, it was not.
 
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