The Septermber issue of PC Gamer has got an interview with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, and he gives away some interesting new info about strongholds, henchmen and mounts.

Bioware is developing NWN 2"s graphic engine. How will it differ from the one used in NWN?

The display engine is going to be largely rewriteten to support a lot of the latest technologies, like normal mapping and per-pixel lighting. We want to have things like flowing cloaks, armour that appears frosted in cold enviroments, mounts for players to ride, and as much character customization as possible. We've had the good fortune to hire Marc Holmes, who was the art director on NWN. He's going to help us immensely in figuring out the direction in which to evolve the graphics engine.

You'll find parts of the interview at the Obsidian forums (http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=9536&hl=).

We want to have things like flowing cloaks, armour that appears frosted in cold enviroments, mounts for players to ride, and as much character customization as possible Sounds good. Also sounds like a lot of work, but we can still hope.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being cynical/paranoid, but that list almost sounds like it was made by hitting the Dragon Age and NWN boards to see what people were complaining about not having.

Not that there's anything wrong with that; it'd be strange to not try and implement the things that you know the fans want, but still... I don't know.

Notice that he did not say that those features would be in the game, just that they "want to have things like..."

Lots of people want to have things like that. Why should the development team be different?

All things are doable but not all things are doable fast. Or cheaply. Fancy things require more artists, programmers, designers, whomever, time for the works and money to pay for the mighty machines and software needed for development. Developers can't always afford that.