Trent Oster Interview

GameZone Online has posted an interview [archive.org backup] with Trent Oster of BioWare about their upcoming multiplayer RPG, Neverwinter Nights. In it, Trent talks about several of NWN’s main features, the work ethic of BioWare, and how much more advanced the game will be over their former titles. Here’s a snippet:

Q: With such a rich tradition of role-playing fantasy games, each of which seems to get better graphically and plot-wise than the one before it, what advances will Neverwinter Nights bring to the fore to separate it or make it unique from other BioWare titles?

Trent: (The largest advance Neverwinter Nights brings to the table is the toolset. With the NW Toolset, players can easily create high-quality content, and then, if they wish, later share that content with other players. No feature in Neverwinter Nights will have the same impact as the toolset, which is even more powerful than the system that we used to create Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.”

As the original interview is no longer available, we’ve reproduced it here for posterity’s sake:

Neverwinter Nights pushes the single-player genre, expands multiplayer gaming
By Michael Lafferty

It is a tale of faith, war and betrayal along the windswept Sea of Swords. The storyline promises to be as rich, and detailed as any program that has preceded it. The name of the game is Neverwinter Nights, and BioWare is hard at work getting it ready for release.

In spite of the flurry of activity, Trent Oster, the game’s producer, took a few moments to talk with GameZone.com about the program, some of the misunderstandings surrounding it, and what fans of BioWare games and the genre can expect when they launch the title.

But before getting to the interview, a few notes about the program are in order. Neverwinter Nights is a role-playing game that employs the Dungeons and Dragons rule book. It features real-time play, and is designed for multiplayer gaming – though the single player game will likely be strong as well.

With all that in mind, on to the questions and Trent’s answers …

Trent: “The largest advance Neverwinter Nights brings to the table is the toolset. With the NW Toolset, players can easily create high-quality content, and then, if they wish, later share that content with other players. No feature in Neverwinter Nights will have the same impact as the toolset, which is even more powerful than the system that we used to create Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.

“NWN (Neverwinter Nights) will push the genre as a single player game, with the player controlling a single character through an amazing story, and it will push the genre as a multiplayer game, as the first truly story-based multiplayer role playing game. As well, NWN will push the genre in graphics and environmental immersion. The powerful, 3D Aurora engine gives us atmosphere and emotion in environments, which we could only dream about in the past. As you walk through an environment, your torch lights the immediate area, shadows sweep across the walls, and creatures run at the edge of your vision. In short, we are pushing every aspect of computer role-playing games as far as current technology allows.”

Q: How hard is it to create a game, take advantage of current technology but still keep the game in ‘affordable’ realm of system requirements? (Are the current gaming engines substantial enough to power the vision you have for the game, or are breakthroughs pending that will propel upcoming games into new realms of visual excellence while still allowing people to play on mid-end systems?)

Trent: “The key to managing system requirements is to create a scalable system, and then ‘aim low’ with certain aspects of the title. We have NWN running internally on a Pentium II 300 MHz system with a 16MB TNT 1 video card, and we’re getting around ten frames per second. While this won’t be the best way to enjoy the game, it will allow a person with a lower-end computer system to play the game. We did this by designing NWN within a strict polygon budget for models, and we stuck to those targets. For those with high-end systems, you’ll not only get the better frame rate, you’ll also get more shadows, more particles, and higher detail to improve the look of the game.

“Like everyone else in computer gaming, I want to create a perfectly realised vision of the concept I’m carrying around in my head. So, yes, I’d love to make an amazing game using every last cutting-edge feature that the graphics card fellows can jam into silicon. The only problem with this is timing. By the time I have everything I wanted into a game, two or three more generations of cards would have come out and the ‘latest-and-greatest’ features would be even more amazing. In essence, NWN is my perfect vision of what is possible on a broader spectrum of cards, not just the on leading-edge hardware.”

Q: There are legions of BioWare fans that salivate over the prospect of a new title (and certainly NWN has received its share of advanced publicity). What kind of pressure do you feel to live up to the hype? Who puts more pressure on you – the fans, or yourselves? How do you approach creating a new mythology?

Trent: “The pressure the fans put on us is quite substantial, but it doesn’t even register when compared to the pressure we put on ourselves; BioWare is not a group of game gods – we don’t have magic people who always make the right decision. We aren’t the greatest thing in RPG-development since sliced bread. But we are a group of hardworking people who are pushing as aggressively as we can to make the best games that we can make. Of course, every month a few new games come out which advance the industry, and we have to be able to keep up with that. We have to push to get ahead in one or two areas so that we can continue to have a chance and continue to make the games that we love making.”

Q: Can you give us a general time line for the creation of such an amazingly detailed product?

Trent: “I started, as the only person on NWN, on the initial design of the project around July of 1997, and it was the few months after that when the core team was assembled. As development progressed, we added team members until we reached a team of 46 full-time game-development people dedicated to the project. Since then we have varied a little from month to month, but we are always staying over 40 people. NWN is a monster project, and it is taking a large team to complete. But in the end it will be worth it.”

Q: Perhaps it was a misconception on my part, but I thought I had heard that NWN was originally going to be a massively multiplayer game. If that was true at one time, what prompted the change in the format?

Trent: “NWN was never planned to be massively multiplayer. We tossed around an idea for a massively multiplayer game before we started development, but we never started development with that idea in mind.

“NWN seems to breed a lot of confusion for people. The problem, as I see it, is simply that we have too many features. As a result, the game cannot be simply classified, and each person who hears about the game categorises it as they see fit.

“I see NWN as the best story-based-RPG-with-a-toolset that we could create, hosted ‘occasionally’ or ‘persistently’ online (multiplayer), or offline on your own (single player).”

Q: What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this title to life? What has been the most satisfying aspect of seeing the vision realised?

Trent: “The biggest challenge has been the complexity of bringing all the various aspects together, and managing the integration of such a massive project. The most satisfying aspect will be the moment when we can all sit down and play the game, and really start having fun. After years of hard work, you can finally see the end and understand what game development is all about.”

Q: Can you give us a little personal background information? (Such as education, how you got into the gaming industry, what games you play and have worked on.)

Trent: “I dropped out of Computer Science in university, following my third year of a four-year undergraduate program, for the purpose of starting a computer gaming company with my brother and a friend. We started development on a shareware title in the summer called ‘Blasteroids 3D.’ The game was a ‘feasibility test’ for us as a development team, answering the question: ‘can we create a full blown computer game?’

“After completing ‘Blasteroids 3D,’ we started on the title which became ‘Shattered Steel.’ I filled a variety of roles, starting as an assembly programmer and moving over to a 3D Artist to complete the project. I finished the title after joining BioWare and I’ve been here ever since. I served as the 3D department head through the development of BG and assisted in the early development of MDK2 as a prototype artist, aiding with the design of the project art pipeline and animation system. During my MDK2 work we started discussing another project and I leapt at the opportunity to lead it.

“Thus NWN was started.”

Q: What game would you like to see hit the markets and where do you think the industry is headed?

Trent: “Right now, I’d really like to see NWN hit the markets. I have my blinders on and I can’t see much beyond NWN. As for direction, the industry is headed the same way that it has been going for a while now – cycles of hit games and clones of those hit games.

“People will continue to ask the question, ‘Is single player gaming dead?’ People will continue to rant that ‘innovation is dead.’ Major publishers will continue to ship sequels, and people will continue to buy them because they want a similar experience to what they enjoyed the last time. But every once in a while a new game will come out and shake everyone up and cause the whole industry to rethink ‘what is a computer game?’ In short, I see the future as an evolution of the present. Paradigm shifts are marketing speak and games are all about the entertainment.”