Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate Interview

GameSpy offers an interview with Ossian Studios’ Alan Miranda, talking about the Neverwinter Nights 2 adventure pack Mysteries of Westgate.

GameSpy: Explain the concept of “adventure packs.”

Miranda: Adventure packs are smaller-sized adventures than a full game or an expansion pack, in terms of gameplay length and art and audio content delivered. The budget for an adventure pack is similarly smaller. The focus is to create another adventure for players to enjoy and to develop it within a shorter time. Granted, we’ve been waiting to release Mysteries of Westgate for a while now but that delay has to do with Atari’s new distribution system and not the game (which was ready back in September).

We’ve been told by some people that it took them about 20 hours or more to play Mysteries of Westgate (not counting multiple play-throughs to play the other paths and endings). That enters into expansion-length territory. The main reasons that keep Mysteries of Westgate classified as an adventure pack are the smaller amount of new art content (like creatures), the limited amount of VO we could budget for and new program features added to the game and toolset.