Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Interview: Party Creation, Trade System, and New Classes

Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir is rapidly approaching completion. In your quest to save the Forgotten Realms from Zehir, the god of poison and snakes, you'll have several new gameplay upgrades at your disposal, including a party-creation system, three-dimensional overworld map, and a revamped crafting system. We checked in with lead designer Tony Evans from Obsidian Entertainment for the latest on Storm of Zehir, and he had plenty to say.

Skills such as listen will help you find things on the overworld map.

GameSpot: A big new addition that Storm of Zehir will make to Neverwinter Nights 2 is the ability to create your own party. Tell us about that decision.

Tony Evans: We decided to go with full party creation in order to give you ownership over several characters and to offer the tactical and role-playing benefits of controlling a full party. Party creation emphasizes the unique nature of your party and gives you more options to infuse it with your own personality and imagination.

Another consideration for party creation was to design it in such a way that it lets the community create their own party-based campaigns.

A lot of players love creating their own party, and will spend hours in the beginning of the game just fiddling with characters and finding the perfect matchup of different party members. Some players prefer not to spend as much time on creating characters. For them, we have a full variety of premade characters to choose from, as well as the recommend button, which allows you to blitzkrieg through character creation by selecting all the default options for your chosen classes.

However much time you spend on character creation, you can be assured that we are not factoring that time into the average gameplay length of Storm of Zehir, which weighs in at over 30 hours! That is right. At the low, low price of $29.99, you will get more than one hour of mind-blowing entertainment per dollar spent on Storm of Zehir. The only way you could get more bang for your buck is by packing your buck in gunpowder and setting it on fire (not recommended).

GS: Now that we know the expansion will let players create an entire party, what kind of customization options will be available for party members?

TE: In addition to the same detailed character creation of Neverwinter Nights 2 that players have come to either greatly enjoy or skip past with the recommend button, we have a new party-creation interface, programmed by Anthony Davis, who is also responsible for our sexy party-conversation interface, which I'll talk more about later.

In the Party Creation window, you can create new party members and add up to four of them to your party. You can also write your own party name, motto, and description--though there is absolutely nothing wrong with the default party name, motto and description, which I painstakingly wrote myself. But if you think you can write something better, go right ahead. Don't worry about hurting my feelings or anything.

Storm of Zehir includes two new races, the Yuan-ti Pureblood and Gray Orc. Yuan-ti are like gnomes except that they descended from humans and snakes, and aren't like gnomes at all. They tend to be evil and deceptive, but your Yuan-ti characters could be good if you're lame like that. The Yuan-ti Pureblood has a great deal of bonuses, including several new racial spell-like abilities, such as animal trance and cause fear. The Gray Orc has long gait, granting increased movement speed, and scent, which enables the Gray Orc to detect hidden enemies nearby.

There are also three new classes, the swashbuckler, doomguide, and hellfire warlock. These are described in detail below.

After you have created your party, if it turns out that your Yuan-ti Doomguide and Gray Orc Swashbuckler aren't working out too well, you can use the guest book in any tavern to remove the weakest links from your party and replace them with new party members.

GS: We understand that Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition rules come into play on the new three-dimensional overworld map, and skills such as search and listen come into play. Why the decision to switch from the two-dimensional map from the previous NWN games, and how does the new 3D map improve the experience?

TE: I don't think you'd find any argument at Obsidian if you came to our headquarters and threw a rock through our window with a note tied to it that reads, "Dear Neverwinter Nights 2 team: Your 2D map sux!" (Although you will probably have to pay for the window.) With the exception of our decision to reveal the Wendersnaven (I swore to protect their secret), there is nothing I have disliked in Neverwinter Nights 2 more than the 2D world map. I have always wanted to add one more D to it, but I had to bide my time--patiently, patiently--until the other lead designers at Obsidian either died off, devolved into producers, or accepted jobs at BioWare. What follows is an actual email to Ferret Baudoin, lead designer of Neverwinter Nights 2:

"Hiya Ferret, I betcha you're freezing your tooshy off in Canada aboot now, eh? Haha, did you notice how I misspelled 'about' because Canadians talk funny? Be sure to bundle up in your Bunny Hug, you Canuck!"

Anyhoo, aboot the overland map. I knew from the moment that our veteran area artist Scott Everts finished his first pass on the Sword Coast overland map that I was right all along: 3D is better than 2D. And when I returned from the hospital after recovering from the severe sprain I got from attempting to pat myself on the back, I ordered designers Nathaniel Chapman and Jeff Husges to begin the laborious process of tweaking the overland map until it was just right.

Head to the local merchant wagon for the latest goods.

There are a lot of awesome things about Tony Evans' Storm of Zehir (What? If Sid Meier and American McGee can do it, why can't I?), which you'll learn about as you read the rest of this interview, but the Overland map really stands out. It enhances the feeling of exploration and adventure. Traveling on the Overland map, you will come across various encounters, hostiles and neutrals alike, and you can choose to evade them, attack them, or parley with them. You can visit numerous different towns and trade goods between them. Also, if your party is brave enough to stray off the beaten path, you can find a wide variety of deep dungeons, deadly crypts, and monster-infested caves, each with unknown treasures waiting for you to, um...know them.

Pretty much all of your characters' skills are useful on the Overland map. Some are more useful than others, such as survival, which increases the speed at which you traverse the varied terrain of the Overland map; search, which increases your chance of finding hidden locations; and hide, which allows you to avoid hostile encounters.

GS: On the overworld map, merchants travel the land, hoping to sell their goods. Tell us about the dynamic economy and how savvy players can earn some serious gold by following the fluctuating prices of valuable items. Can certain event in the game like, say, an oil crisis, raise the value of certain items like, say, a Prius?

TE: First off, I am so glad I bought a Prius. They are especially handy in California, with the carpool sticker that lets me whiz past all the gas-guzzlers stuck in the slow lane.

Now regarding Trade... Unfortunately, some of the big plans we had for a dynamic economy were, well, downsized due to the recent troubles with the Waterdhavian stock market. Storm of Zehir still has many other neat trading features that will earn players some serious gold. One cool thing is the ability to create caravans to travel between nearby cities where you have built trading posts. The caravans travel along the Overland map in real time and can occasionally get waylaid by bandits if you are not there to protect them. When a caravan takes too much damage, it can no longer move and requires repairs. You can bring the materials needed to repair the caravan to get it back on the road again. You can also upgrade your caravans so that they stand a better chance against bandits.