Early Access has allowed Larian to open up a window into the minds of the playerbase, and see just how people are exploring their world. We questioned Vincke on what surprised him.
"There were two things that struck me at first," he says, "I underestimated that a group of players would really have that hard a time with the dice. I was reading a comment the other day from a guy convinced the game was horribly bugged because he rolled a miss in combat eight times in a row. I really sympathise with that guy, but you’ve got to say ‘well, that’s my luck!’ But the game is intended to be played by lots of types of people, so we need to put in something that helps these players deal with the rolls. Loaded dice as an option is an obvious solution we could work in, but there’s multiple ways to handle it.
"The other thing that surprised me, in hindsight could’ve been predicted. We put in the evil and neutral NPC companions first, so there was a bit of backlash from people complaining that all the characters were so haughty and snarky, but it was really just those characters acting as their natural selves. I didn’t realise it would be such a thing, but in reality we just hadn’t put the good characters in yet. There’s a much wider variety, and hopefully it’ll settle down in time, but it’s interesting the conclusions people draw when there’s only a small selection."