Is there a particular piece you’ve written that you’re especially proud of?

I was very pleased with the music I created for the Icewind Dale titles. Story-driven RPGs like these lend themselves well to capturing the different moods of their adventures in the musical score. This is the style of composing I enjoy most.

While it hasn’t been officially announced yet, Interplay is working on Icewind Dale 2, another BioWare Infinity engine game. While I’ve hinted in past ramblings that we may not have seen the end of the Infinity engine, and that Interplay was considering other Dungeons & Dragons products (in addition to Neverwinter Nights), I can now confirm that Icewind Dale 2 is in the works (and it’s not necessarily the only new D&D game that is being contemplated).

Details on what you can expect from Icewind Dale 2 will have to wait until the game is officially announced, but the game will use the same engine used by the original game and its expansion pack, with possible minor improvements, and likely won’t be as ambitious a game as BG2, given Interplay’s aggressive target release date (rumoured to be the end of this year, according to a Fatbabies rumour than ran today , although I hadn’t thought the schedule was that ambitious). I suspect that a lot of gamers are tired of the Infinity engine after an almost constant flow of new products using the engine since Icewind Dale was released over a year ago (and Planescape Torment and the original Baldur's Gate used the engine prior to that), but given the commercial success of Icewind Dale and BG2, there's probably still enough gamers interested in just having new areas to explore and creatures to fight (and Interplay will already have access to a tremendous library of creatures and items created for the prior games) to justify the creation of another game.

Since the backgrounds used by the engine have to be hand-drawn (as opposed to created using tiles, which Neverwinter Nights will use), it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see an Infinity engine “D&D Construction Kit”, like SSI released at the end of its line of Gold Box D&D games, but the creation of additional D&D adventure “modules” like Icewind Dale 2 should at least be appreciated by D&D fans. There’s also not a lot of single player RPGs in the works for the next 12 months (Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind and Dungeon Siege being the only real highlights, with Arcanum and Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor on the verge of being released).

In a way, I feel like I’m justifying a “guilty pleasure”, because the Infinity engine is getting a bit tired, but I’m pretty happy to know there’s another D&D game coming out in the near future.

Titus takes control at Interplay

PARIS, Aug 16 (Reuters) – French video games maker Titus Interactive has taken majority control of U.S. Interplay Entertainment Corp after exchanging a wad of convertible bonds for Titus shares earlier this week.

Titus, which rattled investors earlier this year when it mulled selling what is seen as a key strategic asset, said on Thursday it had increased its stake in Interplay to 51.53 percent versus the 34 percent it held in June.

“This purchase raises Titus Interactive’s voting rights and will enable, during the Annual General Meeting in September, a re-election of the board and a takeover of Interplay by Titus Interactive,” Titus said in a statement.

After exchanging 336,070 convertible bonds into 6.68 million Interplay shares on Tuesday, taking its holding to 27.09 million shares, Titus still holds a further 383,354 convertibles.

Shares in Titus were down 3.25 percent at 5.66 euros at 0754 GMT, underperforming the small-cap Nouveau Marche which showed a loss of 1.58 percent.

Titus, which generates half its sales in Europe and the other half in north America and Asia, posted annual turnover of 172.1 million euros in its 2000/01 fiscal year ending June 30 and reaffirmed its target to break even in 2001/02.

Jonric: In Black Isle’s own foray into the Forgotten Realms, Icewind Dale, you made a dungeon crawl with a pretty linear plot emphasizing combat and treasure-hunting. Why did you go in this direction instead of making an epic more like the Baldur’s Gate games, or using a stronger story emphasis like Planescape: Torment?
Feargus Urquhart: We wanted to use the Infinity Engine again on a game and needed to come up with a game concept that felt different than Baldur’s Gate and Torment. So, we thought back to our days of playing pen and paper D&D and the early modules like Tomb of Horrors. This gave us a direction that was distinctly different than that of Torment and Baldur’s Gate, which would mean that people would not feel like they were just playing those games again in a different area of the Forgotten Realms.