Neverwinter Nights 2 Interview

GamePro has conducted an interview with Obsidian's Feargus Urquhart, in which they discuss the upcoming Neverwinter Nights sequel. An excerpt to follow:
Q: Are you planning to change the henchmen system in any way?

A: It still will use a henchmen system. Is it going to be two or three or four we're not sure yet, we're guessing three, just based on how well it'd control. We wanted to keep the henchmen system for a variety of reasons. For one, because that's the way it was in the first game. Another reason is because we really want to make the story about the central character, and sometimes when you have a party it dilutes who is the central figure in the story. However we do want to involve the henchmen in the story much more. They're going to come and go in the story, much more than they did in Neverwinter. There will be parts of the story where henchmen join with you automatically. There will be henchmen available because of something you did or didn't do, and won't simply be waiting in a room for you to talk to them. That's a big thing about this game that we don't want to do--that everything is waiting in a room for you to come in and make it happen. We wanted to make it seem, or be that everything is going on even when you're not looking. Also, we're looking to see how to make it easier to control them. In combat we want to make them do specific things--it could be that a fighter attacks your target, or a cleric comes and heals you. We're also looking to have a context-sensitive help button, where a thief comes to open a chest that's locked, or somebody helps you in combat because an enemy is kicking your ass--we think that'll make it seem like the henchmen are doing more.