2001 E3 Part 1

NeverWinter

It doesn't snow in Neverwinter either

Throne of Bhaal's refinements centered mostly around adding content and smoothing out the rough spots. Neverwinter's improvements are far more noticeable, since they affect the game engine and toolset directly.

The demo team showed off the capabilities of the toolset and they were probably not far off the mark with the claim that anyone could use it. The toolset, at first, reminds me mostly of WarCraft/StarCraft map editors, since it deals with easy-to-lay tiles, doodads and enemies.

Shhh...

Didn't even break a sweat

However, it is slightly deeper and smarter than the xCraft editors. For one, NWN is a full-3D game and the tools take care of all the lighting, shadow and clipping issues. In addition, the tools also let you zoom in, change view angles and rotate around various objects and characters.

Click on an enemy that you place, and you can edit his stats, abilities, name, items, looks and scripts. Creating encounters is just a matter of point and click. Drop a few bugbears down, some goblin archers behind them and a goblin shaman, and they will work together (within reason) to bring you down. If there is a cleric among the enemies, he will heal his comrades while casting debilitating spells upon you.

What if I don't want to seek adventure in the graveyard?

We're here. So where's the adventure?

The scripts are easy to edit and understand for most computer junkies. BioWare is taking steps to make scripting even more accessible for novices. There will be many pre-made scripts for the less-experienced Dungeon Master to choose from, and in addition they will be open-sourced. The open-sourcing will make it easy for players to look at scripts, modify them, use them as templates, or copy and paste code from one script to add to his own.

NeverWinter will of course be 3rd Edition D&D and have 7 standard races with 11 classes. Character creation is quite simple and looks a lot easier than it is in the pen and paper game. As in 3rd Ed., characters do not roll for stats but instead start with basic stats, and then use points to buy attributes. After that, you select a 'package' of skills and feats to customize your character's abilities. It is possible to make a battle mage who can wear plate armor, or a warrior with excellent stealth with such packages, making character creation much more interesting than it has been in the past.

I am a jelly donut?

A small but very welcome feature that the development team demonstrated was the "Quick Chat" in NWN. You simply hit a keystroke combo to say a specific thing - say "t" to open the talk menu, another letter to choose a certain kind of command/question/comment, and finally another letter to select the comment itself and enter. Then a voice plays your message, in addition to showing the text on another player's screen.

This is almost identical to Tribes 2, but with one small exception - Quick Chat is multilingual. If you are playing with someone from Germany, he will hear your message and read the text, but in German. This allows for some communication between players on public servers who don't speak the same language. Nifty or what?

Stay near the middle, and don't look down.

It's brave to travel alone. At least until you die - then you're just stupid.

Stay tuned!

That's it for our first E3 update. Expect updates on CnC Renegade, Sid Meier's Civilization III, Microsoft's PC lineup (Dungeon Siege, Freelancer playable, Sigma, and Age of Mythology), Sierra stuff (Half-Life Blue Shift, Lord of the Rings, etc…), Eidos' offerings (Commandos 2, Startopia, etc), and all the hot upcoming shooters: Unreal 2, Unreal Championship on X-Box, Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Soldier of Fortune 2, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The second half of 2001 is going to be chock full of FPS!