Cryptic Studios, the developers of Star Trek Online, are bringing the fantastical city of Neverwinter from the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting back in an all-new online roleplaying game for the PC platform.
Neverwinter, due out in the fourth quarter of 2011, will update the classic BioWare/Infogrames RPG Neverwinter Nights and will tie in heavily with a trilogy of Forgotten Realms novels by R.A. Salvatore, as well as the Forgotten Realms tabletop roleplaying game books for D&D by Wizards of the Coast. The first book in the new Neverwinter trilogy, Gauntlgrym, drops Oct. 5 of this year and lays the groundwork for the new game’s storyline:
Once a bustling location, Neverwinter has faced a great many disasters in the past hundred years. Rule of the city remains unclear following the unfortunate demise of the last Lord of Neverwinter and factions still battle for dominance after the all-consuming Spellplague took a high toll on the population. Even Neverwinter’s dead are beginning to rise from their graves and march upon the city they once called home.
Players of Neverwinter will choose one of five classic D&D character classes and team up with friends online or with computer controlled allies to form five-person co-ops and go on quests. They will also create their own storylines and adventures using “an extremely user-friendly content generation system, tentatively codenamed Forge.”
There were hints coming out of Gen Con earlier this month in Indianapolis that a new PC game announcement regarding the D&D franchise was imminent, and I’ve heard rumors of a return to Neverwinter for some time. Cryptic is now owned by Atari, which absorbed Infogrames in 2008.
