General:Mark Nelson: Dunces With Wolves

This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon. The original diary can be found here.

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Mark Nelson - Designer

To be fair, that's what we were when we started Bloodmoon. Let me explain.

It all began right after we had finished Tribunal, Morrowind's first expansion. Head Honcho Todd Howard had some ideas about what he wanted to see in the second expansion, and it was my job to turn these ideas into a cohesive story. My name is Mark Nelson, and I'm one of the designers here at Bethesda Softworks.

So, Todd had to tell me his ideas for the expansion. But, you see, Todd sits as far away from me as he possibly can. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but he's in one corner of our giant warehouse space, and I'm in the other. Different time zones. I pack a lunch if I'm walking over to his office. It's a long way.

But, the information had to get through.

So, he pulled the big, silken bell rope by his desk, summoning Ashley, and he told Ashley his ideas. Ashley tapped out the ideas in Morse code on his cube wall to Matt. Matt transcribed all the concepts into complex pictographs, folded them into a paper airplane, and flew them over to Gary. Gary got up, walked to Ken's cube, and wrote them backwards on Ken's forehead while he was napping. When Ken woke up, he saw the reflection in his monitor, got up, leaned over to my cube, and gave me the necessary information.

"Todd wants to wear wool shorts and phony leather." Then he went back to his nap.

Gotcha. "Todd wants werewolves, Nords, and snowy weather." No problem.

The ideas were sound, but actually making all of this work together was going to be challenging. Nords were easy, as we already had them. Snow, we were sure the artists and programmers could handle. It was the werewolf part that was going to be especially tricky. There were a lot of issues to work out to make being a werewolf fun and interesting for the player. We already had a model of player werewolves from Daggerfall, but Morrowind is a very different game, and the same model wouldn't work as well in the new system. So, we started building our system from the ground up.

One of the early decisions we made was that a player should be able to complete any quest in the game while being a werewolf character. Since the change only happens at night, it made sense that if no NPC had reason to believe the player was a werewolf, he should react normally to him. So, NPCs will only react negatively to a player who actually changes to or from werewolf form in front of them. This allows players to truly roleplay a werewolf character-hero by day, monster by night. The careful player can still complete every quest in the game, and he can still spend half his time terrorizing the populace. It seems like a cool plan.

We also wanted to stress that being a werewolf is a curse, not a blessing. The wolf form is powerful, so there had to be a drawback to balance out gameplay. Since power in Morrowind is mostly item-based, the decision was made to lock the player out from his inventory while a werewolf. Anyone playing as a werewolf will have to rely on the skills and abilities provided in order to survive. Additionally, every night a player becomes a werewolf, he is immediately overcome by werewolf Bloodlust. The character's health will slowly decline until he feeds...on an NPC. So, players will need to be careful if they get caught in the middle of the wilderness at dusk.

But being a werewolf also needs to be fun. To that end, a werewolf can do things a normal player can't. A werewolf's only weapons are his claws, and these do physical damage to NPCs and creatures, where a normal NPC could only damage fatigue. Werewolves are strong, fast, and agile. They run fast and jump far. They have the ability to see in the dark and to detect other creatures. And they get the oddest dreams when they sleep-since they can't normally speak with NPCs, this is how they get quests. It should be a totally different experience playing a werewolf, and we think it'll be a good time.

Another major decision we made was to do separate quest paths for both normal player characters and werewolf characters. We wanted the story to remain the same, but allow it to be viewed from opposite sides of the conflict. This is something we hadn't tried to do to such a large scale in previous quests, and it proved to be challenging to manage. It makes for more open-ended gameplay, though, and gives a bit of extra replay value. In the end, it works well. For a good chunk of the main quest, players will have to choose a side. Regardless of which side is chosen, the same events will take place in the world-the player will just have the opportunity to view them from a different angle.

In order to make this happen the way we wanted, a lot of scripts were needed, as well as some new scripting functions. One that should make modders happy is the new PlaceAtMe function. It works much like the PlaceAtPC function, but can be used at an activator instead of the player. This became really handy on one of the werewolf quests. I wanted a steady stream of Skaal warriors (the Nords native to the island of Solstheim) to attack the werewolf player. But, too many onscreen at once could be crushing to framerates. It's possible to just activate new instances of the warriors, but I didn't want the player to see the new instances popping into the world, because that's just, well, tacky. The new function allowed me to make three "teleport sites," activators that checked distance to the player and used PlaceAtMe to spawn a new warrior at the site farthest from his location. The PlaceAtMe function should be a versatile tool for the mod community to play with.

And this barely touches on what went into the programming aspects of player werewolves, or the art, or the animation, or the testing. A lot had to be taken into account, from how the player's stats would be stored, to how menacing the werewolf should appear, to how a werewolf swims backwards, and how this all affects the gameplay balance. Making these beasts work has taken a lot of work from all the members of the Bloodmoon team, and we hope the results will please Morrowind fans as much as we think it will.

Of course, werewolves are only a part of the story of Bloodmoon. There's still a whole new culture to explore, a colony to be built, books to read, ingredients to find, and quests to discover. There are bears and wolves, spriggans and horkers, and some other nasty creatures that will remain nameless for now. There's snow and ice, and some cool new spells that you'll find yourself casting. Now if I could only find a way to work in Todd's wool shorts and phony leather....

I've gotta get a better cube.