Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer Interview
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GB: The expansion has been praised for its dialogue, story, and NPCs, but somewhat criticized for bugs and gameplay elements like the camera, UI, and spirit meter. How do you feel about such criticism? Kevin: All opinions are valid when it comes to something like game design. Our goal is to entertain the player, so when someone dislikes an aspect of the game, we've disappointed that person in that regard. I'll briefly discuss each of the elements you mention separately.
Bugs. We shipped with very few known bugs, especially for an RPG. That is, we fixed most everything we found through our internal testing. So where we failed was that we didn't allocate enough resources for finding bugs. Fortunately, from the reports/reviews/posts I've seen, most of the bugs people have encountered have been either fairly minor or easily circumvented. Still, most people seem to come across at least a couple notable issues while playing the game and that's disappointing.
For the camera and UI, part of the issue was resources. In making an expansion for a game, your primary audience is people who played and enjoyed the first game. For this reason, combined with having a relatively small team, we didn't make overhauling the camera and UI a huge priority. We did make some major improvements, I think - the two camera modes play much better than NWN2's camera, the inventory interface gained a sort button and notification of newly acquired items, companion influence was clearly communicated, etc. But since we saw our primary audience as people who enjoyed NWN2, we didn't see recreating major portions of the interface as a priority (as those who liked NWN2 were at least OK with the original interface).
With regard to the spirit meter, I think the situation is slightly more complicated. I'm not sure that the system itself was flawed, but rather our presentation of it. For example, some reviews have mentioned that the "evil" path is inferior to the "good" one. But there are actually some huge game play benefits you gain by succumbing to the spirit hunger. You gain new combat abilities as your craving increases and you also acquire unique essences that can be used to create artifacts or add very powerful enchantments to your existing items. So I think where we could have improved the spirit-eater implementation was to better train the player in how the system works and what the trade-offs were.
Now back to your original question: how do I feel about the criticism? Terrible. The team did a fantastic job creating Mask of the Betrayer and, because of a couple specific decisions, they aren't receiving the praise they deserve for their incredible work over the past year.
GB: While Obsidian's games are well-executed, gameplay issues seem to be one of the biggest concerns for critics - even going back to the Black Isle Studios days with titles like Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment. Do you feel this (the mechanical side of game design, so to speak) is something that needs more focus or additional player input in future games?
Kevin: That's an interesting question. Actually, most of the Mask of the Betrayer team (myself included) didn't work at Black Isle Studios. I think the problems mentioned are by no means systemic issues or Obsidian issues. The criticisms come down to a couple specific decisions and it's as simple as that.
GB: Would you say that more time could be spent on polishing the gameplay without sacrificing any focus toward storytelling?
Kevin: For the most part, the two things (story quality and "mechanical" quality) aren't exclusive and both can be done well. There's one huge exception, though - bugs. Some aspects of good game storytelling - specifically things like branching storylines, character development paths, and outcomes - are very difficult to test thoroughly. That is, in general, a deeper, more reactive story means more bugs to find and fix and thus more bugs that will reach the players. With MotB we did make those sacrifices in some cases - choosing a less awesome story event that we felt would result in too many bugs to be a net gain. For example, we certainly could have implemented the Patron of the Arts quest I mentioned earlier - but if we had, it would have had bugs we wouldn't have been able to fix and other bugs we did find and fixed would have slipped through.
Or we could have hired more testers, but then we would have had fewer people in other departments and other things wouldn't have gotten done. Everything is a trade-off.
GB: What are your final thoughts now that the expansion pack has been released?
Kevin: I'm very proud of what we accomplished and think Mask of the Betrayer is the best game I've worked on yet.
But, as mentioned above, I'm unhappy with our review scores. It's frustrating to see a number of reviews saying how MotB is a big improvement over NWN2 and then giving MotB a lower score. An 81% average isn't bad, but I really thought we'd be closer to 90%. So I'm disappointed in myself for not getting the team the recognition and success they deserve.
Thanks Kevin!
