Behind the scenes





Questions for Ray Muzyka







Why are you creating this game?


Well, the game is basically a dream of ours - to make the RPG that we
have always wanted to play. This RPG combines the best features of a
lot of our collective favourite RPG's - games like Wizardry, Ultima
Underworld, Betrayal at Krondor, System Shock, Might and Magic III,
Bard's Tale, Fallout, and Wasteland. The only problem with this idea
is that a lot of the team will be too familiar with the game to really
enjoy it after we are done!



What's going on in general lately with this game?


Well, we are working to finish the game engine and data entry. This
is going well, and we plan to have both complete by early-mid May.
After this point we plan for 2-4 months of exhaustive QA to ensure
that the game is balanced and all known bugs get fixed. The game
should be released in mid-late summer.



What is the future of your RPG development?


Well, I can't say much about this yet. We are working on one other RPG
that we should be able to talk about sometime soon. We plan on either
one or two mission packs for Baldur's Gate, and probably two full
sequels.

DR Ray Muzyka
CFO and joint-CEO, Bioware Corp.

---

Questions for Chris Parker




How did this all start(BG that is)?

I exerpted this from a new piece of material that will be going up on our
website when it gets rebuilt. Sorry its not original, but as you'll read
below, I wasn't working on BG when it all started. Ray wrote this:

Baldur's Gate was originally going to be a game called Battleground Infinity.

We started work on this game back in January 1996, and it was going to be a
monster of a game. Perhaps even larger than Baldur's Gate, though that's
hard to imagine. Essentially you started out on as a lesser deity on one
of the outer planes (Norse, Egyptian, Celtic, etc.) and traveled around the
planes solving one quest or another. One problem with this idea is that it
was originally intended to be a full Online world - and we planned a
ridiculously small team and budget to finish the game.

One good thing that came out of this game is that we actually sat down and
prepared a short demo of the game which showed off some rather primitive
terrain and animations.

After shopping the idea around a few publishers, our favorite, Interplay
decided to bite. They had in their hands the AD&D Forgotten Realms license
that we and they felt would be a perfect match for the engine that we planned -
so we promptly began developing the game that would later become Baldur's Gate.


How is QA going?

QA is back and forth.
We just finished the first phase of QA, which was testing all the lowest
level data. Primarily maps. This took a really long time because there's
so many of them.
Anyhow, starting Monday(27 April), IP QA and Bioware's QA will be working on QAing
all the higher level data (Bioware has actually already been doing this
for a couple of weeks). That is, making sure all the characters, weapons,
spells, etc, all work correctly by themselves.
After that we QA to make sure everything works together.
We were about 3 weeks behind a month ago, but our internal QA turned up
the heat and surprised both me and Bioware. They are all caught up
(after a lot of OT), and we're on schedule to move into the next phase.


How did you get into this project?

Its a long story that I can't go into all the details on, but...
When this project started, I was working in another division (but
still doing the same job). Anyhow, by the end of 1996, I was burnt
out on the types of games I was doing before and wanted to get into
something I was really interested it. Since RPGs were always my
favorite, I managed to get myself moved to our TSR division and
immediately began working on BG in early 97.

ps
I hope to get some Dune Screenshoots from the movie up very soon, so if
you like Dune take another look my site in a while...

I like Dune the movie, but the book was better. I tried to read the
second one, but I couldn't get through it. Anyhow, I have the tape
and, although it gets watched less than the Star Wars movies, I dig
it. Somebody needs to make an RPG out of it. It would be awesome to
be a fremen warrior.

(*I totally agree.I hope that someone will make a Dune RPG*PJ)

Chris Parker
Producer, Baldur's Gate, Interplay




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