Interview BeyDiv interview at VGpro

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Beyond Divinity; Larian Studios

<a href=http://www.vgpro.com>VG Pro</a> posted an <a href=http://www.vgpro.com/news/5146>interview</a> with <b>Joachim Timmermans</b> of <a href=http://www.larian.com>Larian Studios</a> about recently released <a href=http://www.beyond-divinity.com>Beyond Divinity</a>.
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<blockquote><b>If you had to choose one aspect that Larian Studios is most proud of in the game, what would it be and why?</b>
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It’s hard to pick one aspect out of the game but I guess it would be the Battlefields. If this concept could reach the next level it would imply you could create a strong story-driven RPG that generates quests and levels non-stop. This means endless hours of game-play without interaction from the developer later on. It sounds simple but it certainly isn’t. The Battlefields as they are now are an excellent way to spend some time in an alternative game world next to the main world.</blockquote>Yes, because what every story-driven RPG needs are some boring random quests and levels "non-stop".
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com/">Blue's News</A>

 

[Kamaz]

Nyah, it really seems people does not understand the "essence of RPG". Because if they did, they would not even think about random/computer generated quests. No computer-generated quest can substitute the fucking damned artificially made equivalent because its unique and made "with hands", ya know. In my opinion those false comp-gen quests should be removed from any game because they do not benefit the gameplay in no way. If the game is all about the hacking and slashing then I prefer one major quest where I go and hack and slash and no the millions of sub-quests/side-quests [that actually arent them] like in Sacred. It gets boring. Reaallly boring if you understand that what are you playing is just randomly generated stuff. And it really sucks when you understand that there is no background story for your so called "side-quest". And it fails to be a quest anyway. Its kinda Tetris, ya know. But why create Tetris by means of modern gameDEV technologies and resources if you can do hundred times better game by less developed tools. Take an exemple of Fallout. There were NO randomly genrated quests.[if you dont count random encounters which were ok anyway because they fitted well in the game's structure]
I wish there were an Academy of Good Game Developing and I would be a lecturer there .

 

[Human Shield]

I think quests should more towards being more computer generated. Inside of the same cliche crap over and over, the problems at hand within a game will try to solve themselves by giving out needed quests.

Instead of bandits defeating the merchant guards every play through the conflict would be rolled out according to skills (like the player's combat), and the bandits could lose sometimes.

 

[Barghest]

Battlefields on BD really suck. They should have just stuck with the main game, and made improvements to it.

I fucking hate random quests

 

[Nightjed]

totally random quests suck ass they always are simple and ultrarepetitive, i rather pregenerated quests with random pregenerated events (chars involved in the quests might or might not betray you in different games, enemies change from battle to battle, girl kidnapped by a different bad guy in town, your guy starts his quests by different reasons each game, etc) but they have to have plenty of combinations, the only few games ive seen doing this only had 2 or 3 possible events

 

[Fireblade]

Outrageous. The Battlefields are by far the WORST thing about BD. They're also the buggiest part.

 

[Nightjed]

i wonder why some ppl even cared about this game after the suckiest demo ever (which had quite a few bugs as well)
i was somewhat interested in BD until that demo... "He-Bastila lurks the land" ... *shiver*

edit: btw, i find kind of funny that the Larian guys are proud of their most hyped yet most hated feature

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm surprised as well. I mean, it's not an innovation, it's not cool, it's been done before and done better. Don't they realize that it sucks?

 

[Eddie]

Well he says when it reaches the next level. I think it's more like this.
They create the main story, NPC for the story, quest items... put it all in a big database and tthen tell the PC create a world where the npc is south of the cave with the quest item..So only the game world would be random and not the quests or npc's (exept for beeing radomly placed). As for the quest generator. I think thats just a database with quests where one is picked randomly.
But I must agree that they should stay with hand written quests for now.

btw: having a blast with BD. Don't do BF quest just go theire for the traders. Bit easy on tactical IMO

 

[Sol Invictus]

Battlefields have been done before in Yoda's Adventure (or whatever that game was called) and it sucked in that game. It still sucks in Beyond Divinity. If anything, I'd say that the game would stand well enough on its own two feet without that feature in it. What they should have done, and I'm sure many would agree, was to improve the standard gameplay and enhance upon it instead of investing all of their time into a relatively uninteresting feature like Battlefields.