NWN Witchwork Interview at HomeLan Fed
Posted Thursday, November 7, 2002 - 20:53 CEST by Mollusken

BioWare Live Team designers Derek French and Rob Bartel and community manager Jay Watamaniuk answers a few questions about the Witchwork module series, which will be released later this month.

How is the beta testing coming along and what has the response been from the testers to the module?

It's gotten to the point where I can't imagine developing the series without these guys. The testers have been phenomenal and have done a great job of patiently slogging through the module again and again, documenting bugs and making suggestions about how they think things should be. It's not easy work but they know that I'm taking their comments, criticisms, and ideas very seriously. As for their overall response to the module and where it's headed, they've been overwhelmingly positive. Going into the beta, I had just assumed that someone out of the 300+ beta testers would be posting a "this module sucks, I'm going home" message. After all, you can't please everyone, right? Well, for whatever reason, that post hasn't come. Everyone seems genuinely excited about the module and, provided I can clean up the bugs, they're pretty convinced that it's going to be well-received by the fan community.

HomeLAN - What can you tell us about the storyline for Witchwork?

Rob Bartel - It's a much darker storyline, perhaps more in keeping with what we did for Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. The game starts with you regaining consciousness in the midst of a raging battle, unable to remember what has brought you to this point. With his dying words, your prince instructs you to "Tell the king that she is dead." When you next awake, the battle is over and you find yourself surrounded by the corpses of the fallen. In short, the basic story structure is that of a mystery thriller. Who was this prince? Who is the "she" he refers to? What were you doing here and where is this king you must return to? Who, if anyone, can you trust? While I have some ideas about what some of those answers might be, I'm taking a good Dungeon Master's approach: let the players find their own answers and then start weaving those into the story.

Get the whole interview here.