NWN 2: The Planescape Trilogy - Interview @ NW Vault

NW Vault chats to Mike Dismukes from Rogue Dao Studios about Purgatorio.  Among other things discussed, the current size is 150 areas and 4.5GGb (!) and hopefully the first handful of playtesters will get access in a month.  Here's the intro:

Why Planescape? Certainly there were easier routes to take in creating a module.

Easier? Definitely, but nowhere near as much fun. A lot of gamers consider Planescape to be the best game world ever created. The atmosphere, language, flavor, attitude and mythology of the place are all very unique, very well developed and a whole lot of fun to play.

This city of Sigil is located atop the Spire in the Outer Planes. There is no sky, simply an all-pervasive light that waxes and wanes to create day and night. Sigil cannot be entered or exited save via portals; although this makes it quite safe from any would-be invader, it also makes it a prison of sorts for those not possessing a portal key. For this reason many call Sigil "The Bird Cage" or "The Cage".

Citizens of Sigil call themselves “Cagers” and speak “The Cant”, a dialect loosely based on the Thieves’ Cant spoken in England about 400 years ago.

“Dark”
Anything secret is said to be dark. "Here's the dark of it" is a way of saying "I've got a secret and I'll share it with you."

“Cutter”
A complimentary term that refers to anybody, male or female. It suggests a certain amount of resourcefulness or daring, so it's a lot better than calling someone a berk.

“Cagestruck”
The expression of cluelessness which newcomers to Sigil always exhibit.

Sigil contains innumerable portals: any bounded opening (a doorway, an arch, a barrel hoop, a picture frame) could possibly be a portal to another plane, or to another point in Sigil itself. Thus, the city is a paradox: it touches all planes at once, yet ultimately belongs to none; from these characteristics it draws its other name: "The City of Doors".

When I first joined the project and saw Purgatorio, I was totally cagestruck and couldn’t understand what anybody was saying, but you actually pick up the cant and the lay of the place pretty quickly. We have an in-game Planar Cant Dictionary that can get you over any rough spots in the beginning. Purgatorio will visit eleven of the city hubs and offer a ride to rattle any cutter’s bone-box.

Planescape was a place that we thought we could build within the limits of the Electron Toolset. Another incentive was the flexibility of Sigil. You can go literally anywhere. A good part of the reason that we have been able to attract the people that we have to the team has been because we are going to The City of Doors. The Cant, The Rule-of-Three, The Lady of Pain, the architecture and all the factions struggling against each other, it’s a great metaphor for the modern world and really speaks to people. There are a lot of role-playing-only forums on the internet like “Dark of the Day” that take place in the Planescape Universe. http://darkoftheday.proboards58.com/index.cgi

The point behind doing a project like ours is to create something impressive, unique and cool that can’t be found elsewhere. Mikeland would be easier for us to build, but it would not get the attention of Planescape. Choosing Sigil helped us to recruit the people that we needed to make it. The thing has a tendency to feed itself. You can’t get that with a Mikeland. In this business you always have to learn, adapt and build what you are not comfortable with, and that kind of experience is what we are after at Rogue Dao Studios.

You can also check out 32 new screens here.