We just finished a two week “get in early and play the game every morning “ review session and I think the general feeling among everybody present in those review meetings was – bloody hell, this game is bigger than we thought. We were playing in god mode, using cheat keys without engaging in combat and it still took us a really long time to play through everything.

One thing which I think we’re getting pretty right is our dialog presentation. I’m talking about the entire voices/lip-synching/animations/cameras thing. An immense effort is being done to get all of that dialog presented to you in an entertaining way, and I’m really happy at how it turned out.

The user interfaces are also getting more and more complete, and the difference between the PC and Xbox360 user interfaces is pretty sharp. I play games on both systems, and I was happy to see that some schizophrenic part of me could appreciate the nuances the UI guys put in for both audiences. You look at one UI and you say – yep, most definitely PC RPG. You look at the other and you have this thing of, ok – works well for an Xbox360 RPG. The underlying functionality is the same, but it’s surprising how much the look needs to fit the platform for there to be… well, call it gameplay. The same actions with a non-appealing UI on a particular platform feel a lot different than when it is appealing. Don’t ask me why, I tried explaining people in the team multiple times: “you watch, when the UI will look nice and fit, this will be fun” and they all looked at me in a disbelieving way, but now I feel vindicated. It’s a discovery we made when making Divinity - for a long time there was absolutely no item fever in the game, and then one day we got the presentation acceptable, and suddenly it was there. Magic...​