NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer - Interview #1 @ RPG Vault

RPG Vault's Jonric talks to Kevin Saunders from Obsidian about NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer.  Here's an early question to set the tone:

Jonric: How will Mask of the Betrayer build upon the base game, its strengths and your initial goals for it? What aspects have you focused on improving?

Kevin Saunders: Our goal with Mask of the Betrayer was to get it right, to build upon what we learned on NWN2 in order to craft and convey a rich story and a compelling RPG experience. One of our difficulties with it was an initial scope that was unrealistic. So from its conception, Mask's focus was to emphasize quality above all else. We were highly conservative in many respects, and quite a few cool ideas were discarded because they were too risky. We considered how much any specific idea would really add to the players' entertainment, and chose our battles carefully. We didn't try to reinvent what NWN2 was - we built upon the design and decisions of the original game and concentrated on polishing it.

Thus, the Mask team has placed emphasis on strengthening the core NWN2 product. Throughout the course of the project, we fixed many bugs, optimized performance, made better use of the graphics technology, and in general, tied up loose ends. For example, we revamped the camera and party controls, adding an RTS-like strategy mode that makes combat much more enjoyable.

We greatly improved upon the Dungeon Master client (courtesy of programmer Anthony Davis), making it easier for players to run their own NWN2 games as a virtual DM. We made numerous improvements to the toolset, thanks to the efforts of programmer Josh Verrall. When possible, we've included these general improvements in updates (patches) to NWN2, but these enhancements have been part of Mask's development. Our goal is that when gamers pick up Mask, they view the overall NWN2 product as one of the best computer role-playing experiences created.

In all respects - graphics, gameplay, story, characters, audio, performance - Mask is a much more polished product. We built upon all of the amazing work that had been done on NWN2 and tapped into the experience of the team to show what we're really capable of achieving.