Neverwinter Nights Visit Report

In addition to the many new NWN screenshots over at RPGVault, they've also published an article that gives all the details of their visit to BioWare and the hands-on look they were able to get of Neverwinter Nights:

    The initial section of gameplay is an in-game tutorial that teaches you how to play while taking you along the first part of the main storyline. As a hero recruited into the above-mentioned Academy, you meet a series of NPC characters. Each steps you through certain actions and interface elements. For example, the first is a character called Bim who shows you the default mouse functions, the quickbars, the character sheet and the three camera modes. The first of these is isometric top-down, which resembles the point of view in the Baldur's Gate games, except of course that Neverwinter Nights is 3D, which allows for camera functions like rotation and zoom. The other alternatives are chase cam and stiff chase cam where you use the keyboard to control movement, turning and strafing. One notable element about the quickbar is that it uses the 12 function keys plus Shift and Ctrl, which makes for a total of 36 slots where you can drop weapons, spells et al.