Neverwinter Interview

VGChartz’ gamrFeed interviews Cryptic producer Andy Velasquez about their upcoming online RPG Neverwinter, talking about the story, gameplay design and AD&D roots.

gamrFeed: Can you say if the classes will have specializations or sub-classes? What kind of customization will people be able to do?

Andy: One thing I guess I can tell you is when we make out class builds, we try our hardest to be true to the D&D feel, so pretty much every one of our planning sessions for this class that we’re going to be doing starts with, well, what is their feel in the pen and paper games? What is the thing that they’re trying to do? If you’re familiar with 4th Edition, they have the Leader, Striker, Controller and the Defender roles. [We’re] making sure that the classes that we’re putting in the game offer up a good variety and selection for players, as well as trying to make sure that they work in the digital medium as opposed to pen and paper.

gamrFeed: Other RPG series like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Witcher have all gone in a more action-oriented direction. Is Neverwinter going to have real-time or turn-based combat?

Andy: We’re going for real-time, like other Cryptic games. There’s not going to be a stop-time feature. Whether that’s in your definition of an action game or not I guess is kind of up to the individual. We are trying to do a tactical gameplay experience, but this does not necessarily mean stopping time in order to command and then watching it unfold.

(…)

gamrFeed: Earlier, you mentioned that Neverwinter is going to be on the 4th Edition ruleset where the previous Neverwinter games were on the 3rd and 3.5 Editions. How will the 4th Edition rules affect the game play?

Andy: It’s pretty pervasive. We have your pretty standard at-will encounter set up through the power structure. The skill checks that you can expect will be in there. The races and classes will be pretty core to D&D 4th Edition. If you happen to play the classes in the pen and paper game, then you’ll even recognize power names and power functions.

gamrFeed: And luckily, there will be no more THAC0.

Andy: It’s funny that you mention that. We just had a UI meeting where we were trying to finalize the design requirements for one of our character sheets and the UI artist was a hardcore, old school D&D player, so they had a giant section on the right that said (THAC0.) Our lead designer was like, (No, no, no, that’s not a thing anymore.) And everyone went, (Yea! Awesome.)