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Development Info Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance Finished

VentilatorOfDoom

Administrator
Staff Member
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Apr 4, 2009
Messages
8,600
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Deutschland
Tags: Divinity 2; Larian Studios

<p>... or at least the german version is finished. Swen Vincke of Larian Studios <a href="http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&amp;Number=414699&amp;gonew=1#UNREAD" target="_blank">gave a status update</a> on their forums.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think I'm not hurting the truth that in the past, many domestic releases through domestic publishers which were only later published outside of their territory sucked when it came to the amount of bugs, of which it is most likely that several were known up front. The responsible ones to be honest are usually the developers who slipped and weren't ready in time, and if a publisher risks getting into trouble because of the delay, they will usually release in the territories where they are the strongest to recuperate their investments as fast as possible. Personally, I never thought that a wise move, as I always thought it's better to ship when it's really ready, but as a developer, responsible for a delay, you're usually not in the strongest position to argue, so you do your best to limit the damage. I'm going to give you an elaborate example of this in a minute, but let me first talk a little bit more about Flames Of Vengeance and why I think this time around, the understandable and probably predictable comment "You are using Germany as a beta-testing country" isn't merited - knowing full well that my statement has a certain bias, and if the unexpected happens, I'll be forced to eat my words and walk the hall of shame.<br /><br />The main reason - we took our sweet time and managed to get away from external pressure for the development of this one. A dangerous thing in the mind of a lot of development managers around the world as developers tend to spend far more time than they should on their games (which is true) but we actually think ourselves that what we're offering you now is ready, and is a much better experience than Divinity 2 ever was. If it weren't for the reasons mentioned before, we'd happily release everywhere.<br /><br />Obviously it helped that we built Flames Of Vengeance on a finished game, but still, one year for an expansion pack is pretty long, though then again, it's a pretty big expansion pack. Some games nowadays are shorter than Flames Of Vengeance on its own, let alone when playing it combined with Divinity 2.<br /><br />Also, if required, our time to patch is going to be lot shorter this time, as we made sure that this time we can quickly react to anything that might go wrong. I really don't think it'll be necessary, but you never know. Did you know btw that for one of our games I once had to deal with the statement - "We don't do patches, our games are perfect" while these boards where being overloaded with messages of technical problems. The first patch for that game was actually "leaked" on purpose.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sounds as if they're planning to use Germany as a beta-testing country.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#15201">RPGWatch</a></p>
 

Monocause

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2008
Messages
3,656
I like the guy's style. He seems to genuinely consider gamers human beings unlike Bioware or Bethesda employees which are usually so PR'd that they could sell shoelaces with the same remarks with only a couple of keywords in need of a swap.
 

Cenobyte

Prophet
Joined
Feb 13, 2010
Messages
1,117
Location
Japan
Jep, Larian is awesome. They're really friendly to their customers and you've a good chance of getting direct support of one of the devs if you have technical problems.
Additionally, they can make great RPGs. Divine Divinity and parts of Divinity 2 are both very good. I've a good feeling that they've learnt from the criticism of Divinity 2's second half and will deliver a good and satisfying expansion pack with FoV.
 

dragonfk

Erudite
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
Messages
2,487
I'd hope they withdrawn from character being unable to harm enemies with level higher than your own. It makes impossible to feel satisfaction when you kill a higher lvl mob with shrewd and canny tactics. I also expect that with the expansion they've solved problems with the interface - mainly the lag when you enter logbook or inventory, it's infuriating.
 

Monocause

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2008
Messages
3,656
DraQ said:
I hope they fixed interface FPS drop, dragon camera, obstructive pause interface (I want my vanity mode bawww!) and injected dragon gameplay with tons of much needed cool.

I'm rather sceptical about the last one, it'd surely be mentioned by the hype machine if they took the time to improve that one.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Monocause said:
DraQ said:
I hope they fixed interface FPS drop, dragon camera, obstructive pause interface (I want my vanity mode bawww!) and injected dragon gameplay with tons of much needed cool.

I'm rather sceptical about the last one, it'd surely be mentioned by the hype machine if they took the time to improve that one.
A bit FFFFUUUU- if so.

Dragon combat in general has much potential. Dragons are inherently cool and can fly. Flying itself can be made quite enjoyable given enough freedom of movement and enjoyable flight model. In addition, dragons excell in the area of brutalizing everything - they are powerful in melee, can set everyone and everything aflame and often wield magic of mass destruction.

Imagine a game with even Drakan's basic level of air control, destructible environment and spells rivalling those from IoTD. Now add the ability to tear shit up and demolish buildings in melee. Sounds fun?

TBH I don't understand why no one ever thought about introducing some basic aerodynamics to such a game too. Not to make it realistic, of course (durrr), but stuff like diving to gain extra speed would be fun and add an extra layer of gameplay to aerial combat.
 

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