CG Online recently posted a preview of Neverwinter Nights that talks about changes to the game's single-player mode. They talk with Bioware Director of Writing & Design James Ohlen and Senior Producer Trent Oster about why they decided recently to go back to the drawing board on some major issues.

Neverwinter Nights was originally expected to ship with a number of individual modules to make up its solo campaign. Unfortunately, playtesting revealed this strategy wasn't going to work well for how they wanted the massive 3D RPG to play. Straying from the Baldur's Gate-style linearity, they've adopted a new approach that should open up the world of Neverwinter Nights. References are even being made to the much-acclaimed Fallout. Here's an excerpt explaining more:

Here the game is less about triggering the next scripted piece of the story and more about making decisions. An evil non-player character has an item that you need; do you kill him and take it? Or do you offer to do a quest for him—perhaps murder a group of innocent people—in order to obtain the item? "If you're an evil character, you are always given the option to be evil," says Ohlen.

Choices that you make when you generate your character also have an impact on how the game plays, and not just during combat. "If you are playing a stupid character," says Ohlen, "it's going to show up in your dialog, much like it did in the Fallout series." If you are playing a wise character, then you might have little Wisdom insights that give you extra information. If you have a high Charisma and a high Persuasion skill, then you can persuade people to do things they wouldn't normally do. How the game reacts to you is completely dependent on the type of character that you build. One quest might only be available to fighters, or to characters with a high Charisma, or to elves.

IMG Preview: Neverwinter Nights

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CG Online: Neverwinter Nights Preview

Neverwinter Nights (add to watch list)

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