NWN2!! YEEHAA!!!

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Article Here: http://nwvault.ign.com/index2.shtml
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Dragon Age = NWN2
I have just seen the future of NWN and it's Dragon Age. We all knew a sequel was in the plans and when BioWare announced Dragon Age, I wasn't sure if it was the sequel, as there is still one more unannounced title they are working on. I should also emphasize that BioWare has NOT officially said that Dragon Age is the sequel but put it as more of a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and NWN. However after viewing the demo, there is no doubt in my mind that Dragon Age is what we were waiting for and oh man does it look good!

The demo was presented by BioWare's Scott Greg, and a much slimmed down Tom Ohle. I was starting to set up my camcorder to film the demo but was told that that there would be no flash photography or filming. It's really unfortunate because I don't think I can properly describe just how cool this game is going to be, but I will do my best. If you want a super abbreviated version, I've set up a Dragon Age Quick Sheet which will start collecting all the information as it gets released.

The first part of the demo was a trailer showing off concept line art of different characters and creatures in various poses. The style of the art was very much Medieval Fantasy. As this is going on, they highlighted all the awards they've won for their various titles and how Dragon Age is going to be the "Spiritual Successor" to Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Neverwinter Nights. As the series of concept art finishes, it zooms out to a full color image showing a party of characters readying for combat in what I imagine will be the wallpaper of many desktops when/if it's released. Speaking of marketing, they haven't laid out their plans as yet, and will be tackling things like a Dragon Age specific forum once E3 ends.

Before the second part of the demo started, Scott explained that they have created a huge design document which drew on existing history and literature to help mold the background for their new intellectual property. This means that no longer will they be at mercy of having to get approval from dozens of partners which has seriously cramped BioWare's ability to get things done. If they want to kill off main characters, it's as good as done. This will surely be an amazing benefit to the community as we can expect lightning fast reaction to ideas, when compared to what we're dealing with now. To help in the creation of the universe, they even hired a Ph.D. linguist to create all new languages, so that if they use non-English words in the game it will have a real meaning. They also hinted that these dictionaries might be released to the community.

While creating a new universe from scratch offers a lot of flexibility, it's critical that it's believable and doesn't alienate the existing D&D loving fans. From what I've seen, I have full confidence they will achieve this and so much more. They have drawn on all the lore of the various races that are used in almost all RPGs such as elves, humans and dwarves, but have also added their own custom races. They showed off one of them which looks demon-like with horns coming out of its head, though it currently doesn't have a name.

Speaking of names, they confirmed what BioWare Designer David Gaider mentioned a few days ago. Dragon Age alludes to a specific time in this new universe, much like Earth has had a stone age, middle ages, and industrial age. Seeing as how this is the "age of dragons", one could expect a solid emphasis on the magical beasts though there was nothing revealed. If NWN was any indication of it, don't expect anything until much, much later.

Dragon Age will not be using D20 or any known rule system. It has been written from scratch specifically for this game. To test out it out early on, they decided to conduct "pen and paper" sessions between themselves and to help speed up the calculation process, even built a simulator to do all the calculations. When asked whether a "Pen and Paper" version of Dragon Age would ever be released, they didn't rule it out and reconfirmed they can do whatever they want now since it will be their intellectual property.

Starting the game has familiar menu options such as new, load, save, update etc.. and was set in a granite like stone. It didn't look at all like a placeholder graphic, however the mouse cursor was the familiar hand used in NWN. They used other NWN resources as this helped reduce the time to build the demo, which took 18 months. You could see a major NWN element when they started the game, as the right hand corner of the screen, had the familiar character box with 4 additional characters in the party. Yes. Dragon Age will allow you to have a full party. They haven't decided on whether it'll be 4 to 6 characters, but these will be fully controllable characters much like players enjoyed in Baldur's Gate and not simply henchmen.

The next thing I saw in the demo made my jaw drop. The camera flows over a desert like area where a huge battle is taking place with literally hundreds of characters fighting. Fire effects, arrows flying, and all that you would imagine in a full scale war were taking place. It's the kind of scene that would literally lock up NWN if even attempted now and Tom emphasized that everything we were seeing in the demo would be the minimum level of detail for a mid-level machine, when Dragon Age comes out. More on release dates later.

The camera then continued to fly by, crossing a bridge until we come to see a party at the top of a tower. They confirmed that the whole demo was done in game and even at this stage, the quality is mind blowing. The character animations were done with motion capture and are incredibly fluid and realistic. The subtle movements such as the hip and hand movements as characters shift their weight was very realistic. When you get a close up of the characters faces, you see such things as movement of mouths, eyebrows raising and eyes tracking. No more static images for faces. The result is light years from what we are seeing now in NWN and comparable to pretty much everything I've seen at E3 this year. Of course the development is still very much in the early stages, but I did confirm that work started right after NWN shipped and currently there are about 25-30 people working on it. They are all laying down the groundwork for the bulk of BioWare employees that will join once Jade Empire ships in early 2005. I remember when BioWare released the first shots of NWN back in 1999, and how better it looked when it finally released in 2002. If Dragon Age progresses at the same rate I think we'll be in for a major treat, with an environment so real, that eye candy would be a poor description.

No word on the story of the official campaign, but it will come in two flavors. The first will be a single player, designed specifically for people that prefer to play on their own, and the second will be a multiplayer version, specifically tailored for cooperative play. Regarding the maximum number of simultaneous users, this is still under consideration. Each version of the campaign will each have the same main storyline but will be designed specifically to take advantage of what works best in each way of playing. As we know, what works in single player doesn't always work in multiplayer and vice versa, so creating two specifically designed campaigns will most undoubtedly create two unique experiences though telling the same story.

They then showed how conversations take place, which is very similar to what we see in Jade Empire. As conversations start, the camera cuts to an eye level view of the characters in the letterbox format with what the NPC are saying at the top of the screen and the player options at the bottom. Once you finished the conversation, it cuts away to the original view. Camera angles have also been specifically tailored to take into account the different styles of combat. You can have a very free floating camera much like is now available in Hordes of the Underdark, or you can zoom out and lock to a Baldur's Gate angle. When asked whether we'd have a first person view, they didn't have a final decision on that but were considering it.

When in combat, you will be able to pause the action and carry out actions for your party members similar to Baldur's Gate or if you feel confident in the AI, you can take over a single character and let the AI take over the other characters. They demonstrated this as they took over a fighter type character while letting the party dive into the war going on. After a few seconds of combat, they took the character into a nearby building. The level of detail of the architecture and terrain is very high and realistic. This is because Dragon Age will not have a tile-based system. There are no details on exactly how areas will be created officially but there will be a toolset and full support of the module building community. SPECULATION : Based on what we've seen in the community, I think there will be a mix of tools to create varying areas and terrain along with better support for 3D Model importing and maybe even a similar setup like the folks at Valve did, by partnering with SoftImage and creating a modeling suite specifically for Half-Life 2.

As the demo continued and the character entered the building, it showed off the much higher level of interaction that they have planned. As he walked in, a flock of birds had crossed his path. He was startled and his body twisted and reacted as his head followed the birds flying away. They then explained how all the animations were motion captured and that each head actually belongs to a real life actor. The reason is that the models they are working with will have over 2 million polygons, which is needed to grab an intense level of detail. Some of the concept art slides shown later in the demo, shows how they are not just creating the rough strokes of the model outlines but getting down to the fine detail on everything. For example, on boots, they have detailed what they will need right down to the seams and trim. All those nooks and crannies that exist in real life objects are being recreated digitally. These models will then be scaled to the various systems that they have planned. For those of you not familiar with polygons, the most detailed models in HotU have about 3000. They haven't capped what the upper limit will be in Dragon Age and will most likely depend on the current hardware available at the time as it gets closer to release. So even if hardware goes by leaps and bounds they still have a lot of room to work with.

They then explained how the party will be able to traverse different elevation perspectives, where you can have some party members on one level and others at lower or higher levels, unlike you could in Baldur's Gate but as you can do in multiplayer with NWN. Some people on the boards have assumed this means there will be a Z axis, but the official word is "no comment" to anything that was an issue of contention with NWN. The engine will have full dynamic lighting system and all the bells and whistles you can think of but they are super tight lipped on horses, cloaks, Z-Axis or anything of the like. ". SPECULATION : There's a better chance of David Gaider being a women than them not including everything that the community had to create for NWN.

As the demo continued, the female magic user and the fighter who acts like a mix between Minsc (BG) and Daelan (NWN), walked down from a higher level to a lower level using a z like road (hmmm...) that wound back on itself so that the whole path could be seen on the screen. Once at the bottom they were standing in front of a lake and the female magic user starts saying how she can't find her ring of focusing with her body language mirroring what she was saying. It's really like a scene you would see in a pre-rendered scene but was done all in game. The Minsc/Daelan character demands to know how can she not know where it is? He states, that he doesn't forget his sword when going into battle. She then continues on how she must concentrate and starts to cast a spell as her body levitates off the ground! Pretty solid confirmation of a Z-Axis if I ever saw one, but I digress. As bursts of light shoot out from the ground beneath her, an incredibly detailed monster, much bigger than anything in NWN, starts emerging from the water before the whole scene fades to black and the demo ends.

I've asked around as to whether there would be a "DM client", and from all the various feedback it seems that it's all under consideration. They haven't ruled it out, but it doesn't seem to be a sure thing. We'll have to wait for more details to emerge but I'm confident that BioWare knows how important the DM client is. While it's true that it's not used as much as the player client, the ratio of DMs to players is comparable to what we would see in pen and paper version of D&D, a game that would not exist today if it wasn't for the Dungeon Master.

Thankfully moving between areas will not involve clicking blue rectangles and will offer different methods depending on where you are going next. Sometimes you will simply click in the area ahead to move forward and in certain situations you will be warned before the transition takes place. They have also confirmed that there will be a world map in the game. It's details like this that shows they are looking at ALL the games they have done and seeing what it would take to create the pinnacle of roleplaying games whether it's a single player or multiplayer, and there is no doubt they will support the community as much as they have done to date.

Speaking of dates, while Scott and Tom were very tight lipped on even suggesting a release date. I did get some additional info elsewhere that we're probably looking at a release 2 to 3 years from now. It's going to be a long wait but so far it looks like something that will be well worth it and we'll be following it every step of the way. I'd like to thank BioWare for letting me check out the demo and everything they do for the community!
back to top - posted by Maximus @ 11:02 PM PDT

[Stratos]

Looks nice, but I don't see how Dragon Age will be a successor to NWN. It might be a similar game, but Bioware are still using their own intellectual property.

BTW; check out the old pictures of NWN.

[Larry_OHF]

No words to express my thoughts. All I can say is thank you.