Storm of Zehir Hits Neverwinter Nights 2

It's semi-official. Atari isn't saying much, but developers are making it clear that Neverwinter Nights 2 is getting yet another expansion pack. It even has a separate discussion on the BioWare forums. Even more, it seems that the developers are already answering a lot of the questions regarding the game, which means it's pretty far along in the development department. The new expansion is called Storm of Zehir.

Neverwinter Nights has already received one expansion, called Mask of the Betrayer, that vastly improved the original game while also offering some interesting new mechanics that made progression through the game more challenging. Now, Obsidian seems to be taking the same approach with the new expansion, trying to deliver a more difficult challenge, better suited for veterans of the Dungeons & Dragons universe than for newcomers.

The plot of the expansion will focus on the efforts of the reptilian Yuan-Ti, which have been a constant presence in the game universe since the Baldur's Gate series, to take over a significant portion of the realms and on the efforts of a few brave adventurers to stop them.

Even though Wizards of the Coast is releasing a new set of Dungeons & Dragons rules, the 4th Edition, Storm of Zehir will resort to the same 3.5 Edition ruleset that all Neverwinter Nights games have used. The developers at Obisidian say that, at this point, a transition would only serve to alienate the player base that is used to the rules employed for previous games and has had little or no experience with the new official 4th Edition.

The single player campaign is expected to offer around 15 hours of gameplay and Obsidian will also update the Dungeon Master module of the game, which lets players create their own adventures using the game engine.

Atari is set to be the publisher of the expansion but, so far, no release date has been made public.