Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide, the first expansion pack for BioWare's highly acclaimed Neverwinter Nights role-playing game, will be on display at E3 2003. Shadows of Undrentide is being developed by Floodgate, a new studio formed by several former employees of Looking Glass, which was best known for its outstanding games Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2.

The expansion pack includes a new single-player campaign that promises more than 20 hours of gameplay. The campaign is designed with first-level characters in mind, and it will include plenty of new content, including 16 new monsters, three new tilesets, and a new story unrelated to the original Neverwinter Nights story. In fact, Shadows of Undrentide takes place in an entirely different portion of the Forgotten Realms: the ancient nation of Netheril and the Anauroch desert. Undrentide is one of the ruined cities of Netheril, a formerly powerful nation of wizards.

Shadows of Undrentide introduces five new prestige classes to the Neverwinter Nights game universe. Prestige classes are highly specialized classes with unique abilities. Adding a prestige class is similar to a becoming a multiclass character, except that prestige classes are unlocked only when a character meets certain criteria. For example, a player who has high enough proficiency with moving silently, hiding, and tumbling can begin to add levels as a shadowdancer. The shadowdancer has special abilities such as hiding in plain sight and being able to summon a shadow. Complementing the new prestige classes are more than 50 new spells such as magic fang, which bolsters animal companions with added damage potential. More than 30 new feats, including dirty fighting (damage bonuses) and zen archery (bonus damage for ranged weapons) round out the new content available in Shadows of Undrentide.

All the new content will be available for use in Neverwinter Nights once Shadows of Undrentide is installed, offering additional gameplay possibilities in the original campaign. Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide is expected to be released this summer, but no official release date has been announced. We'll have more details on Shadows of Undrentide from the show.