Extended mysteries

It seems like many moons ago that I wrote a column about Mysteries of Westgate, an adventure pack for Neverwinter Nights 2 that was crafted by Ossian Studios. I had great expectations for it, since Ossian’s founder, Alan Miranda, was producer of the outstanding Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, and Ossian’s NWN modules were popular. The version I played wasn’t quite polished for release—there were a few graphics missing, for instance—but it was essentially done, and its largely urban setting didn’t disappoint. Rarely has an RPG delivered a more interesting cityscape—Westgate’s sprawling metropolis was festering with devious and malevolent factions. But months later, Westgate still isn’t commercially available. In the lairs of D&D players around the world, Bigby’s Scowling Mouth is bellowing “WTF Atari!”

Westgate’s scheduled release has unfortunately been a casualty of an anti-piracy measure, as Atari/Ossian and Obsidian (developer of Neverwinter Nights 2) have been working to incorporate a new digital rights management (DRM) scheme into the game. Westgate is still on its way, but it’ll be released concurrently with the NWN2 1.14 patch. It’ll be followed later this year by the second official expansion pack from Obsidian, Storm of Zehir. Obsidian’s first pack, Mask of the Betrayer, was an intimate, experiential adventure and a genre classic. Zehir should provide a larger-scale, strategic perspective, as it’ll allow players to establish their own economic empire. It may be the last D&D game to be released under the 3.5 rule set, so Obsidian is aiming to provide a massive sandbox for enduring adventures.


The city of Westgate is patiently waiting for adventurers

What else does Atari have planned for the D&D license? Years ago, Atari told us it was trying to line up a developer to work on Baldur’s Gate 3. But it sounded like an official sequel to BioWare’s classic series in name only, as it would be made by a different developer and not use the setting or characters of the original game. In other words, our spider-sense detected a lame attempt to take advantage of gamers’ awareness of the Baldur’s Gate brand by releasing a sequel that had only tangential association with its beloved predecessors. Baldur’s Gate is the name of a city in the Forgotten Realms setting, and since Atari has the exclusive rights to make games in that setting, Atari may have had the rights to use the “Baldur’s Gate” name, but not the rights to the original characters and story line of the previous Baldur’s Gate games. At least until very recently, that content was likely still owned by Interplay as publisher of the original series. But on July 24, Atari acquired various intellectual property rights related to Interplay’s D&D games, which may have cleared the path for Atari to release a Baldur’s Gate 3 game that actually feels like a sequel to the original series. So, perhaps we haven’t seen the last of Minsc and, more importantly, his miniature giant space hamster, Boo.

Unless Although it’s not a D&D game, BioWare’s Dragon Age may be the most legitimate successor to the Baldur’s Gate series

Baldur’s Gate 3 is already well along in production—which is certainly possible, since Atari confirmed its intentions to produce it years ago—it could be the first D&D game to incorporate the new 4.0 rules. While I’m far from a boisterous fan of the new rules, their combat focus and extensive use of special attacks should translate well to the computer screen. I’ll revisit this topic after I pry more information from Atari.

August 29, 2008