What is the greatest challenge to creating a D&D game title?
Broad scale, the greatest challenge is translating a pen and paper, turn-based game that relies heavily on imagination and verbal story telling into a real-time “living and breathing” interactive world to be explored. And making it in such a way that long-time D&D fans and MMO fans find it compelling and true to what they expect and love. Luckily many of the people on the team are in one or both of those camps and are making a game they love.
But if I were to pick a more specific challenge it’s all the effin’ loot! Seriously . . . holy crap . . . there are a lot of armor and weapons that need to be created and hooked up. The good news is we have a pretty efficient process now and the stuff looks fantastic!
There is a lot of “stuff” in a D&D world, huh? To be honest, I think it was often the “stuff” that I enjoyed talking about and seeing the most. I still use the “level sheet” we created for the armor and weapons as a reference for appropriate ways to “level” items. That leads me to my next question: What were the challenges of bringing an inherently 2-D world into the 3-D world?
Characters are pretty straightforward. There is an abundance of awesome art from the 40 or so years of official D&D sources like Player’s Handbooks and Monster Manuals. Very often the most we’ll do is concept an armor set that is made of modular components and fits our guidelines to get the variety needed for the game, since we don’t have the time or manpower to make custom one-off armor for every creature in the game.
Environments, on the other hand, are often a different story. We still start with reference material, like the Neverwinter Campaign Guide. But there is usually limited visual reference. So we examine the written descriptions and begin with concept art to try to hit the overall impression. In addition, we push to have a selection of outstanding landmarks in any area, or “zone.” This is extremely important for navigation in a 3-D world.
For example, Vellosk is described as a mountain forest that is inhabited by the Uthgardt barbarian tribe (who also happen to be werewolves). I asked the concept artist to try to “capture the essence of a werewolf mountain forest.” As a half-joke, his first pass featured a huge mountain peak in the shape of a wolf head, complete with a smoking bonfire in its open cave “mouth.” Guess what? You guys loved it, and it was a hit. The half-joke turned into the real deal.
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Another challenge to taking a pen and paper product to a video game title is with all the symbology in the IP that needs to be interpreted to make for a great user experience. What types of visual symbology did you have to create in the game to show concepts like leveling, powers, and so on?
That is an interesting difference in a video game vs. pen and paper. We have to rely heavily on visuals and often, they need to be fairly visceral and exciting.
Leveling up is one of the most awesome moments in D&D, and we capture and portray that moment with golden lightning and sparkles and a giant level number framed in engraved dragons! If you think about it, it’s pretty over-the-top and arguably a bit ridiculous, but when that moment happens, you want that feedback. You want the game to say, “Yeah! You’re a bad ass!”
Even something as small as powers icons. In some ways it’s subconscious, but take a close look they’re colorful and flashy. There is often a lot of motion happening in them. The powers are exciting, and the icons should represent that.
I’ve been having fun sneaking in and playing during the beta every now and then. There are so many great areas in the game. What are some of your favorite areas in the Neverwinter world? How much was from lore, and how much was created whole cloth for the game?
Ooooohhh, my favorite areas are anything Shadowfell. It’s a parallel plane of the dead and shadows. When we began the first Shadowfell area, there wasn’t a huge amount of reference art. What is there either looks expectedly spooky and dilapidated, which is definitely cool, but wouldn’t really stand out that much from other spooky and dilapidated places in the game. Or the reference art is too hard to achieve in a small scope for the game. Yet we still wanted it to feel like you were entering another realm.
Since we have only a few small instances of Shadowfell, we had to find ways to make things stand out by mostly repurposing our existing assets. Our solution was a small set of spiky bolt-on pillars, chains, and floating debris. And the final touch is how we treated the lighting. It’s very desaturated in the distance, and we use a lot of green flames that enhance the otherworldly look. We also use a lot of ambient occlusion, which creates thick heavy shadows in ridges and crevices almost giving the impression that the shadows are permeating or even growing on everything in this realm.
In answer to the second part of the question, nearly all of our game zones have a solid foundation in the lore. Our content team is diligent about digging everything up from the popular and well known to the obscure. Of course we aren’t necessarily interested in retelling the same stories we craft experiences that fit the lore that are fresh for the players of Neverwinter. Furthermore, there are different amounts of reference information available for any area we feature. So we communicate weekly with Wizards of the Coast to make sure we fit the IP and don’t contradict any of their goals. What’s great is Wizards of the Coast understands the needs of different media, so it’s a really positive relationship and we’re all working together to make the game an awesome representation of D&D.
Elaborating, some areas have a lot of description and even a bit of reference art. This can give us clearer goals when making the concept art. That said, there are times where the description doesn’t offer those impressive, zone-defining landmarks mentioned earlier. In those cases, we brainstorm and kick out a quick high-level concept and then present and discuss with Wizards of the Coast. The wolf mountain above is an example of this. Also, Ice Spire Peak is a great example. There aren’t really any outstanding landmarks mentioned in the lore. So we created a backstory that a frost giant tapped into the elemental chaotic power of a magic item known as the Winterforge. It was too much power for the frost giant to contain, and he physically grew to immense proportions until the power overwhelmed him and killed him, leaving behind a carcass the size of a deity frozen as one with the mountain. It offers an outstanding visual in the game and tells a story in the environment. After talking with Wizards of the Coast and ironing out some of the details, boom! freakin’ frost giant in the mountain!
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