GameSpot's Nox Preview

Developer:
Westwood

Publisher:
Westwood/EA

Target Release Date:
March 2000
By Amer Ajami

Page 1 of 5

The story behind the development of Nox, a top-down action-RPG played in classic Diablo fashion, is a tale of rags to riches. Michael Booth, a software engineer at a driving-simulations company, came up with the general concept of the game in 1995. His aim was to capture the reflexive elements of games like Mortal Kombat and infuse them into a game that shares aspects with Magic: The Gathering and the original Gauntlet, two of Booth's favorite games. With the help of a friend, Booth began to sketch some basic characters, animate the monsters, create sound effects, and program preliminary code all in the bedroom of his apartment. Nox remained a spare-time hobby for Booth until it caught the attention of Westwood producer John Hight at the Computer Game Developers Conference in 1997.

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Hight describes Nox the first time he saw it as simply "awesome." Despite the fact that it was being shown on a bulky laptop, Hight instantly recognized the game's potential and wasted no time in securing Booth's talent. "I knew [Nox] would be perfect for Westwood. It had all the elements. It was accessible, yet there was lots of depth to the gameplay," says Hight. A few weeks later, all the paperwork between Westwood and Michael Booth's startup, Hyperion, was finalized, and development on Nox was suddenly given a giant boost in resources. Immediately, a group of artists, a pair of programmers, and a level designer were hired to work on the project. Westwood also provided Booth the services of its internal sound-effects team.

Booth and his team continued their external development on Nox until August of 1998, when Westwood president Brett Sperry and John Hight, after realizing they could very well have a true Diablo killer on their hands, decided to buy the rights to Nox outright. Development was moved to Westwood's newly acquired Irvine offices, and since then, the Nox team has grown to a total of 20 programmers, level designers, artists, and sound-effects engineers.

We first wrote about Nox from the show floor of this year's E3 in Los Angeles. Now we have enough information to take a closer look at the intricacies of the game.

Next: The Story