Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer Diary #1

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer lead designer Kevin Saunders has penned his first developer diary for RPG Vault, in which he reveals the team's three primary goals for the expansion (or NWN 2.5, as he puts it).
We designed Mask of the Betrayer so that most of what we did for the single-player campaign was of benefit to the community. We chose locations and creatures that we felt would provide great new content for the modders to use. We designed our campaign-specific features so that they'd either be of general use to the community, or require minimum implementation time. These decisions freed more resources to invest in updates to NWN2 and improving the overall quality of the product as well as the health of the franchise.

Second, we wanted to polish NWN2 further. Some have complained about it not being as polished as it could have been. The harshest critics are here, working on Mask of the Betrayer. Neverwinter Nights 2 was a massive undertaking. And while Obsidian, Atari and Wizards of the Coast are all thrilled with what we accomplished together, we absolutely recognize where we could have done better. We're simultaneously proud of our accomplishments and ashamed that we didn't achieve more.

Therefore, we're continuing to do better. We're using Mask of the Betrayer to improve upon the NWN2 engine and toolset. (Again, don't tell the marketing guys this - they think we're just an expansion.) NWN 2.5 will bring us closer to the ideal D&D computer role-playing environment we're all striving to create.