Nice Interview with R.A. Salvatore

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Talks about His novels...his gaming..and how Atari and him teamed up for Demon Stone.

GameSpy: Did you approach Atari about Demon Stone or did they approach you?

R.A. Salvatore: Atari approached Wizards of the Coast. And Wizards suggested me because they knew I'd been wanting to do this for years now. It's a natural extension of my writing. I want to explore where the author fits into game design process. So I jumped at it, it's one of the best things I've done!
GameSpy: What's the difference between writing a novel and writing a game?

R.A. Salvatore: Writing a game script is very collaborative. They have all these builds, it's all right in front of them. When you're writing a novel you've got 100,000, 200,000 words to play with, and in a video game you have to be really precise. You get maybe 5,000 words. Every word in there has to count. The challenge was to still make it flow as a story, while keeping it short.

The characters of Demon Stone.

GameSpy: Did you find that liberating or limiting?

R.A. Salvatore: It wasn't liberating it was difficult, very difficult. It wasn't as limiting as I thought it was going to be because the game design is a big part of the storytelling.
GameSpy: You don't have to describe things?

R.A. Salvatore: Yeah, players should feel like they're in the middle of an adventure, or story. I think, I hope, it's the next evolution of storytelling. I mean, I can selling several hundred thousand books, but games, man, those really sell!
GameSpy: How much did you work on the game itself. Did you get veto power on game design ideas?

R.A. Salvatore: Oh no, no, no, no. These people know gaming better than I do. I let my kids do a lot of the playtesting. (laughs) I gotta tell you. Even though I'm really proud of the story in the game, I'm even prouder of the gameplay. You can switch on the fly between three characters and the AI does a great job playing them
GameSpy: Was there anything you wanted to make sure wasn't in this game? Stuff you hate?

R.A. Salvatore: Yeah, big cinematic video clips.
GameSpy: The game is due soon, in a couple weeks. Do you have anything to add?

R.A. Salvatore: This game is great. Look forward to it!

-For the first half go here: http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2...on-stone/54121 9p1.html