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Temple Of Elemental Evil Discussed
An anonymous reader writes "Just writing to let you guys know that UGO has an interview with Tim Cain, co-founder of Troika Games (makers of Arcanum), talking about their latest game, Dungeons And Dragons: The Temple of Elemental Evil. The game appears to be based off the popular D+D module of the same name. Cain is best known for his work on the fantastic Fallout games from Interplay."
The Greyhawk Inn - Unofficial Offical Board
Atari ToEE forums - Official Board
Troika are doing their absolute best to stay true to the module. Notable changes include the elemental nodes being somewhat smaller and more densely populated (anyone knowing the module will know just how large those elemental nodes were).
Other deviations include expansions of many minor characters in the module - for example one of the NPCs (a trader IIRC) is mentioned as not having being eligible for the militia because he's too short. This has been expanded such that there are quests revolving around this point.
One interesting - and to my mind much needed- feature is the concept of "party alignment". This is basically the "there's no way a paladin would work with a bunch of evil bastards" bit. Members of the party must be near the party alignment - for example, if your party is "Neutral Good" then all members must be Lawful Good, Neutral Good or Chaotic Good. This allows for a much more coherent game as characters you meet, etc respond accordingly. Previous Troika-member games (Fallout 1&2, Arcanum) have had the concept of developing your alignment/karma as the game progressed, but that doesn't carry over well to a party-based game.
Bwahahahaha! You made a funny!
ToEE is a completely new game. It uses a much enhanced version of the Arcanum engine, but uses 3D sprites on pre-rendered 2D backgrounds. It's a lot closer to Baldur's Gate than NWN, but not very close to that really. For example, it uses a *turn based combat system*, which is probably the best possible news for Fallout fans.
Apart from anything else, Troika wanted to implement the ruleset correctly (unlike NWN). In fact, ToEE will be the first game released using the 3.5 D&D rules.
And no, you won't be able to make your own modules (or at least it won't be supported). This is a single-player only game, with no modability. This is a Good Thing(TM) - it allows Troika to concentrate on what they do best, which is creating an immersive game with a strong but fairly non-linear storyline. I would be willing to bet a *lot* of money that you could not create an NWN module that would come anywhere close to what ToEE will be like.