While at GenCon 2011 in Indianapolis, we got a quick look at what we can expect from Atari and Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming social game on Facebook, Heroes of Neverwinter, including, some quick gameplay.
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter brings the beloved lore, ruleset and legacy of Dungeons & Dragons to the Facebook platform. This engaging mix of bite-sized play sessions, top notch RPG gameplay, viral dynamics, and extended features promises to deliver the deepest RPG experience ever seen on the platform.
Peter Banks, Senior Product Manager at Atari, showed us some of the features and talked us through some basic encounters and what we can expect from the game. It does an excellent job of taking the core Dungeons & Dragons rules (although they are e4) and putting them into a digital form. From the sound of it, the e4 rules are ideal for video games and fit well with the strategy RPG action that they were going for in Heroes of Neverwinter. Hardcore RPG fans shouldn’t expect this to be an intense role-playing experience but more of a quick hack-and-slash, style of play that focuses more on combat and looting, at least from the little of the game that we saw. There are some other things like dungeon building involved where some might find an outlet for more creative endeavors but until we can see the dungeon builder, we can’t comment on how in-depth it will all be.
Here’s the video interview, including gameplay, with Peter in the Wizards of the Coast booth at GenCon 2011 August 5th. Just after this was shot, Rory, the GDN Tabletop Games Editor, was heard to say, "this is the game that will get me fired," so it’s must be quite cool.
