Interview Divinity: Original Sin Interview with Swen Vincke at Matt Chat + Kickstarter Update #8

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Divinity: Original Sin; Larian Studios; Matt Barton; Swen Vincke

Prompted by the Codex, Matt Barton has interviewed Larian's Swen Vincke about Divinity: Origin Sin, currently just about $20,000 short of its funding goal on Kickstarter:

​

Apart from this interview, there has also been a new update published by Larian on Kickstarter and discussing the game's drop-in-drop-out co-op multiplayer as well as the talents and traits (which are the $650,000 stretch goal) and the way they would work in the single player mode. Have a snippet:

Personality customization

Now because we have this cooperative multiplayer mode and we had to ensure that this particular gameplay element was going to be fun, it means it's deeply integrated into the core gameplay.

That allowed us to do something in single player that you haven't seen before (we think). Other than customizing the looks and stats of your party members, you can also customize their personality. That means that if you're playing alone, and you don't want to roleplay both characters, the party member you're not controlling at the time of initiating a dialogue might actually disagree with the choices you make, just like in the example where we had two players control the party members.

As with all new things, at first sight this might sound like folly, but think it through.

Imagine that this would be Ultima VII, and you would have Duprez (a known womanizer) in your party. In our system, whenever the option to flirt would pop up, you could rest assured that Duprez would go for it, even if you might think it'd be a bad idea. If he'd win the discussion, you'd have to deal with the consequences, adding to the fun and potentially showing you a part of the game you'd otherwise not see, because you'd instinctively have answered otherwise.

Obviously, it's also possible to make the AI shut up or always follow your lead, but we do advise trying out the AI personalities - you'll find it adds to your gameplay experience.​

Read the update in full here.

 

[MicoSelva]

It was a pretty nice interview, although I hope that Starforce DRM stretch goal does not make it.

Ok, so who else can we pester to spread the word about this game? :D

 

[Tolknaz]

Nice to hear about how they plan to approach questing and journal. I certainly like it, but let's hope, that it will not hurt the game too much. Still, it's hard not to imagine the butthurt, that will start to flow when the likes of Eurolamer, Gamespot, IGN etc. find out that there are no exclamation marks and magic GPS systems in their review copies.

 

[Zeriel]

Nice to hear about how they plan to approach questing and journal. I certainly like it, but let's hope, that it will not hurt the game too much. Still, it's hard not to imagine the butthurt, that will start to flow when the likes of Eurolamer, Gamespot, IGN etc. find out that there are no exclamation marks and magic GPS systems in their review copies.

I just went back and read an IGN review of Flames of Vengeance, and it's basically several pages of them saying "yeah everything here is of high quality, they addressed all of the problems the game had originally, but quests are too non-obvious," then they give it a score of 60.

 

[abnaxus]

Didn't Divinity 2 and expansion have quest markers?

 

[J_C]

Still, it's hard not to imagine the butthurt, that will start to flow when the likes of Eurolamer, Gamespot, IGN etc. find out that there are no exclamation marks and magic GPS systems in their review copies.

"I was standing with my fully geared character in front of our guild, and I had no idea where should I go first. Visiting every house and talking to every NPC felt like wasting my time, when I only had 30 minutes to play. Being an old school RPG player I had my fair share of dungeon crawling, but after playing Skyrim, I could never touch a game without a quest compass. I don't get how the devs expect us to read the journal every time it is updated. It is 2013, people need to get with the times." IGN Score: 6,8/10

 

[Zeriel]

Didn't Divinity 2 and expansion have quest markers?

Only for quest-givers, basically. No compass to tell you where to go. There was a quest in the expansion that had you search for five sigils to activate, and some of them were quasi-hidden behind bushes and whatnot. Which apparently warranted IGN to take 40 points off the score because, you know, gaming journalism. I feel like if gaming companies aren't willing to pay reviewers money for a better review, they should just implement a special "reviewer mode" that instantly boots into the "YOU WON THE GAME SCREEN!", since all reviewers seem to care about is beating the game as quickly as possible.

J_C



The crazy part is that that isn't satire. Read text? In my RPG? Get out, Larian! You blew it up, you maniacs!

 

[Cyberarmy]

Still, it's hard not to imagine the butthurt, that will start to flow when the likes of Eurolamer, Gamespot, IGN etc. find out that there are no exclamation marks and magic GPS systems in their review copies.

"I was standing with my fully geared character in front of our guild, and I had no idea where should I go first. Visiting every house and talking to every NPC felt like wasting my time, when I only had 30 minutes to play. Being an old school RPG player I had my fair share of dungeon crawling, but after playing Skyrim, I could never touch a game without a quest compass. I don't get how the devs expect us to read the journal every time it is updated. It is 2013, people need to get with the times." IGN Score: 6,8/10

wow...
When he was speaking about "his old school" experince, probably speaking of his Dragon Age Origins days ...

Ah, I can't belive I felt for that >_>

 

[Tolknaz]

That's speculative fiction not the real review by the way (not yet anyway) :D.

 

[Jashiin]

If your game is actualy good, then fucking retarded corporate sponsored dumbfucks reviewers are your enemy.

 

[norolim]

Oh man, Swen says the boxed Divinity Anthology was a disaster financially...and I bought it thinking, I was supporting Larian . I need to fix this with pledge amount.

 

[Tolknaz]

Oh man, Swen says the boxed Divinity Anthology was a disaster financially...and I bought it thinking, I was supporting Larian . I need to fix this with pledge amount.

Considering what was in the box i felt the price was kind of cheapish, so yeah, they probably lost money with it. However, i doubt the project as a whole was a disaster. The bundles were also available digitally and their release campaign brought at least some kind of publicity on digital distribution sites. There certainly was quite a ruckus going on on GOG when they released the bundle.

 

[MicoSelva]

Oh man, Swen says the boxed Divinity Anthology was a disaster financially...and I bought it thinking, I was supporting Larian . I need to fix this with pledge amount.

Swen already mentioned on his blog that they weren't profiting from it. From what I understood, it was done as a double deal to satisfy publishers distributors, so they would then distribute Dragon Commander and Original Sin. That's also the reason why there are DLC item vouchers for DC and OS in the anthology.

As for the reviews. Biggest Polish printed gaming mag CD Action gave Ego Draconis 4/10 or 5/10 (can't remember), with the reviewer basically saying "I cannot into RPGs, so it sucks!".

 

[norolim]

Oh man, Swen says the boxed Divinity Anthology was a disaster financially...and I bought it thinking, I was supporting Larian . I need to fix this with pledge amount.

Considering what was in the box i felt the price was kind of cheapish, so yeah, they probably lost money with it. However, i doubt the project as a whole was a disaster. The bundles were also available digitally and their release campaign brought at least some kind of publicity on digital distribution sites. There certainly was quite a ruckus going on on GOG when they released the bundle.

That's why I should've gone for the digital GOG version. I'm such a sucker for boxed copies, though.

 

[Infinitron]

Boxed editions are...yeah.

I've noticed that a lot of OLD SCHOOL gamers who aren't familiar with how the business works behind the scenes tend to complain that they feel like digital distribution is a ripoff.

When in reality, by insisting on buying boxed copies they're arguably getting ripped off MORE because less of their money is going to the developer they want to support.

 

[Jestai]

Divinity 2 + exp had some very nice moments and cool ideas but REALLY felt unfinished. Also, horrible balance, at least for fighters (let's enchant my two weapons with +xxx damage a few times)...
I wouldn't give it more than 7 or 7,5. It could have been great, but it was only "goodish".
Larian really look like they are bros and Original Sins feels pretty fucking good right now , but let's not blind ourselves when we talk about some of their other games...

 

[VonVentrue]

Ok, so who else can we pester to spread the word about this game? :D

All the Codex needs to do is convince MCA to mention it on twitter; the number of pledges would increase at a geometric rate.

 

[MicoSelva]

Ok, so who else can we pester to spread the word about this game? :D

All the Codex needs to do is convince MCA to mention it on twitter; the number of pledges would increase at a geometric rate.

Brian Fargo mentioned it twice already, and there was no super-boost. Still nice of him, though.

 

[Jaesun]

So no go here to the next stage of the quest brain dead journal shit in today's action games labeled as a cRPG. And no retarded quest compass.

I doubt even inXile and Obsidian will have anything like this.

 

[Arkeus]

Can you rotate the camera?
quote:

at the moment you cannot rotate the camera (you can zoom in/out though). Basically because a lot of our levels are build specifically for the fixed view direction. We have put a lot of effort in creating nice vistas in our regions, which we wouldn't want you to miss out on .
DS might actually be a great game to play in 3D, since the levels are very "layered". There is a lot of stuff going on close to the camera as well as far away. Anyway, it's on my nice-to-have list to add stereoscopic rendering the our engine
- Bert. (from somewhere in the Kickstarter comments.)​

For those who didn't listen, here's the Matt Chat summary. (I hope you appreciate this. My wrists are hurting now.)

• (9:30) Quests aren’t going to hand-hold you through them. There isn’t going to be a “Quest Completed!” pop-up. Instead, your journal will have little parts of information, like “we found a book by a dead guy that talks about lying statues”, later if you talk to a statue, you might find “we met a statue, It might be one of the lying statues from the book”, and if you deal with the statue somehow, it’ll just be a thing, and you may not even realize that it was a quest.
• (13 min) In that demonstration battle on the 10-minute kickstarter video, they died three times. That’s one reason why they never showed the conclusion to that battle!
• (22 min) The main characters relationship is not specifically a love story. You can certainly take it in that direction if you wish, though. Their relationship is defined by two different axes: Affection and Affinity. Affection is how much they like each other, Affinity is how well they agree with each other on moral dilemmas. So they might hate each other, but work well. You aren’t going to accidentally end up as your friend’s gay lover, it’ll be a conscious choice if you go for that.
• (23:30) The main characters are Source Hunters, and one of the perks they get form being trained in that area is that they can talk to animals.
• (24 min) No sheep henchmen at the moment. They are thinking about adding weresheep in the game, but you cannot have a deep meaningful personal relationship with sheep yet. You will have to make a tough moral decision about the sheep at some point in the game. And the rabbits. And a cow.
• (25 min) I think there may be multiple different ways to try and get your way in a dialogue (Charm/Reason/Intimidate), instead of the current “I agree/I disagree” system. I’m not sure. The context of the situation is also important. I think that for example, the “dead body on the beach” would probably be a Charm or Reasoning situation, and Indimidation would have a penalty.
• (27 min) No minigames. Lockpicking will be item based and dexterity based.
• (28 min) The Source (elemental) magic is not just for mages casting spells. It also gives you Source-based warrior and Survivor skills
• (28:40) The editor is not about making it easy for a novice, it’s more of a tool to do powerful things. They’ve used that technology (or parts of it) for over a decade to make their games, and that’s why as a small team they have been able to make such big games.
• (30 min) They’ll integrate the modding scene with Steamworks, and there will be another TBD thing to centralize mods for those who don’t use Steam. If the community picks it up, Larian will support the hell out of it.
• (31 min) “Have you thought of adding any DRM to this?” No.
• (32:20) Larian admits that some of the reward tiers for the Kickstarter may not be cost-effective for them.
• (33:30) What’s the minimum pledge tier for fans to get the full experience? Just the $25 for the base game, although it does play well with a friend ($40 for the duo-copy pack).
• (35 min) If Divinity 2: Ego Draconis had been a PC game, it would have been released a year earlier and in much better shape. Development for Xbox lead to a lot of compromise just trying to finish the production.
• (36:10) Beyond Divinity was bad, it was a game they company made just to survive. They never got a dollar of royalties from Divine Divinity. They were only able to get a deal to make Divinity 2 because they were going to do it for Xbox. If they asked to do it for PC only, the game wouldn’t have happened.
• (37:50) "Why did you end Ego Draconis the way you did?" (I’m going to save my fingers from typing and just link to that spot in my LP. Watch the videos for the actual experience, not the text I added.)
  
  - It goes back to Divine Divinity. They decided not to cut the game at the end of the Council of Seven sequence and instead went ahead and added a new “Wastelands” zone, despite warnings they’d never finish it. (Spoiler alert: It was a huge combat zone with no quests.) The publisher wanted them to show variety in the environments. “If there is not a screenshot with orange stuff, we’ll sue you.”
  
  - For Divinity 2, Swen figured it would be better to stop with a cliffhanger and cut hard, instead of making another weak ending area.
  
• (41:40) Dragon Commander is going to take a lot of people by surprise. The leader writer and animator spend a month in London recording dialogue – more dialogue than they’ve ever done before (Divinity 2 had like 9 hours of dialogue, and it felt like more). That’s just to cater for the choice and consequence in the game. Dragon Commander is probably the most complex game they’ve ever made from a gameplay point of view.
• (43:50) “What would you need to personally hear or see about Original Sin to get you to buy it?”
  If you invest in it now, you’ll have more fun in a couple of months. If you’re planning on buying it anyway, buy it now and get it better later. It’s future profits from the game being invested into the game before it’s released. They’re not taking your money for an already funded game, they’re taking your money and giving you a much better game (at a discounted price!). They’re not pushing Original Sin as far as it could go because they haven’t enough resources, not enough time, not enough budget.
• (48 min) Final thoughts: Other non-human playable races is a huge, impossibly high stretch goal, because it would be so much work, because of how the game reacts to how the players are. If you wanted to play as an orc, they’d have to cater for that all over the dialogue lines in the entire game.
  
  - He’s not keen on full voice acting, because there are more tangible gameplay things that can be added instead for the same price or cheaper.
  
  - They hope to get enough for the Perks stretch goal (650,000), and do things like have synergy bonuses if the party affinity go up if they perform combos with each other, or maybe solo bonuses if they don’t work well together.
  
  - In Dragon Commander, there is an extraordinarily complex depth to your generals/councillors/princesses, because of the way that game was specifically constructed with that in mind. You couldn’t do that for Original Sin at this point, but at the 800,000 stretch goal, they hope to add more depth to party interaction and give the henchmen more personality and story presence, with branching choice and consequence based on how you treat them. Ideally, tying that into the players social stats and perks as well.
  
  - It’s a bit tough to get professional authors in at this part of the development. They’ve worked with a bunch before, but it’s tough it they’ve never done videogame work.
• (55:10) The game would work well on the console with a controller, but that was killed early in development. Maybe as another stretch goal in Kickstarter, but they probably would react poorly to that idea.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Oh man, Swen says the boxed Divinity Anthology was a disaster financially...and I bought it thinking, I was supporting Larian . I need to fix this with pledge amount.

As for the reviews. Biggest Polish printed gaming mag CD Action gave Ego Draconis 4/10 or 5/10 (can't remember), with the reviewer basically saying "I cannot into RPGs, so it sucks!".

I buyed it for DMC 4 and to see how they declined. Funny, it was first and the last one.
They gave it 3/10. Gameplay:2, Graphics and Audio - 6. But after reading codex megathread I was intrigued. And considering how much fun was the main part and expansion I will only add - fuck those loosers.

 

[mikaelis]

I buyed it for DMC 4 and to see how they declined.

There's been nothing more to decline from, since they gave 1/10 (or 2/10 can't remember right now) to King of Dragon Pass. They were pretty much scrapping the bottom of the barrel at that very time.

On the topic:

There is this one thing that bothered me when Sven was talking about two people playing the game and one being in one part of the world (in combat) and another buying stuff in town doing nothing. And that once the combat starts the other person can leave the affairs in town and help the other in combat with some pyramid teleport thingie.
Isn't that sort of rule breaking? In a way that, how the hell the person in town would know "in reality" that the other person is fighting and need help? Or is it in some way explained with the lore of the game (through said portal pyramids for example?)

 

[CyberWhale]

: ))))))))))))))))))

Wait, what kind of games get 7/10 and higher scores? Call od Duty?

 

[mindx2]

Boxed editions are...yeah.

I've noticed that a lot of OLD SCHOOL gamers who aren't familiar with how the business works behind the scenes tend to complain that they feel like digital distribution is a ripoff.

When in reality, by insisting on buying boxed copies they're arguably getting ripped off MORE because less of their money is going to the developer they want to support.

I don't care.... I WANT MY BOXED COPY, DARN IT!!!!!




The collector in me can't help it.

 

[Infinitron]

Boxed editions are...yeah.

I've noticed that a lot of OLD SCHOOL gamers who aren't familiar with how the business works behind the scenes tend to complain that they feel like digital distribution is a ripoff.

When in reality, by insisting on buying boxed copies they're arguably getting ripped off MORE because less of their money is going to the developer they want to support.

I don't care.... I WANT MY BOXED COPY, DARN IT!!!!!




The collector in me can't help it.

Boxed editions are still okay, but it would make more sense if either:

1) Boxed copies were made more expensive than digital copies
or
2) Digital copies were made cheaper than boxed copies

Of course, Kickstarters already do this, so that's a start.