Game News Divinity: Original Sin 2 Kickstarter Update #13: Chris Avellone is in!

[Zorba the Hutt]

I'm sure they were but unless one of those various ways was "design" or "writing" I'm not calling it heavy involvement.

I agree they don't seem to have been involved in design or writing, but it seems they did a bit more than: "Feargus told them to make a D&D RPG and came up with the name "Baldur's Gate" and that was about it."

 

[Xzylvador]

Well, after 10 years of quietly lurking this site, this actually got me to sign up so I can change my KS pledge to the codex fundraiser...
and probably raise the amount to the Double Dibs amount, too.

Now to figure out how that works.

(Also, someone please mock my join date so we can get that over with.)

 

[Roguey]

I'll always consider the BG series to be BIS games first and foremost.

To quote Volourn, "No."

BG and BG2 feel very much like Bioware games to me (whereas the Icewind Dales are very Black Isle). The things you like about 'em came from D&D, which they dropped, and amateurishness, which doesn't last forever.

 

[a Goat]

Joined:
Today

 

[Taluntain]

Taluntain has ways.

Nobody's ever actually done it though as it means money order or EFT and what-not. We don't have any other online payment method as yet.

Eh, even if the guy's banned from PayPal (whatever that means), I expect he could still just do a credit card payment via PayPal (doesn't require an account) or purchase a prepaid MC that's offered pretty much everywhere and use that. Unless he lives in some shithole of a country, anyway...

 

[Xzylvador]

Wow, I feel so at home now!
If only I could remember what the emoticon-thingy here is for the tranny-with-a-hardon, I'd be crying manly tears of joy while posting this.

Also, quadrupled the amount. Now I can get a hoodie and a lot of codex prestige points, right?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Now I can get a hoodie and a lot of codex prestige points, right?

Location: Banana republic

 

[Stelcio]

I'm sure they were but unless one of those various ways was "design" or "writing" I'm not calling it heavy involvement.

Part of any design phase should be creating a feature list. (...) We used two routes - the first was to make an internal list (generated by BioWare and our publisher Black Isle/Interplay) of what was feasible and reasonable considering the engine (...)
13. Character interaction on par with Final Fantasy.
14. Character romances.
15. Definite evil and good paths to allow for alignment-based roleplaying.

Looks like they indeed were involved in a key design phase that formed what we know nowadays as Bioware archetype.

 

[sstacks]

Over in the Chris Avellone and Shanna Germain on Shane Plays Radio Sat 19th talking Numenera thread I mentioned that Chris Avellone had offered to do a special podcast with me to focus on questions and comments from Codexers that I didn't have time to get to during the live radio show.

After hearing this cool news I reached out to Chris and he has agreed to also include discussion about D:OS 2 in the special podcast. More soon! (still scheduling)

Still scheduling, but looks like this will likely be the week of October 6.

Best,
Shane

 

[GarfunkeL]

This is fantastic.

 

[Zeronet]

Have to say I'd rather see him as a lead writer on a project so we get a complete story from him rather than him writing a small area or a couple characters in a game.

Aye, the best writing in a lot of games has been his characters/areas and all i think is 'i wish he'd done more'. When he gets to be the lead again, it will be true incline.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

I damn hope he one day leads the story on a Larian game. It will be a truly beautiful day that will solidify the crpg genre forever.

 

[Shevek]

Have to say I'd rather see him as a lead writer on a project so we get a complete story from him rather than him writing a small area or a couple characters in a game.

Exactly. The writing in D:OS was complete shit. Adding MCA to do sections will just bring the Larian shit writing into glaring relief. People who think that the difference in quality between Durance and other PoE NPCs was a bit jarring will have epileptic seizures at seeing Chris' flashes of brilliance juxtaposed with Larian's hackneyed tripe.

 

[mindx2]

I damn hope he one day leads the story on a Larian game. It will be a truly beautiful day that will solidify the crpg genre forever.

Remember Swen still wants to make "The Ultimate, Super-duper cRPG to end all cRPGs" so there's still a chance....

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Exactly. The writing in D:OS was complete shit. Adding MCA to do sections will just bring the Larian shit writing into glaring relief. People who think that the difference in quality between Durance and other PoE NPCs was a bit jarring will have epileptic seizures at seeing Chris' flashes of brilliance juxtaposed with Larian's hackneyed tripe.

I fear this as well. But I dont care as long as this is just the beginning of a very promising relationship. Lets hope they do a better job on the story this time around.

 

[lurker3000]

People who think that the difference in quality between Durance and other PoE NPCs was a bit jarring will have epileptic seizures at seeing Chris' flashes of brilliance juxtaposed with Larian's hackneyed tripe.

Its funny but I finished PoE maybe 5 months ago and the only NPCs I remember are Durance and Grieving Mother. I think there was a elf mage and maybe a blonde fighter? Literally none of the others made any impression.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I've set this to run for another 3 days to tie in with the closure of the KickStarter, assuming I can PayPal it over to Larian as I did last time. Angthoron can you confirm if that's ok to PayPal this straight to Larian again?

 

[Shevek]

Its funny but I finished PoE maybe 5 months ago and the only NPCs I remember are Durance and Grieving Mother. I think there was a elf mage and maybe a blonde fighter? Literally none of the others made any impression.

Well, the worst of the rest of the npcs in PoE are better written than any character in DOS. I liked the PoE npcs. I am just saying that if you felt the difference in quality between Aloth and Durance (for example) was bothersome then the difference between whatever MCA does and whatever the Larian folks will do will probably sink the game for you because the gap in quality will be 10 times larger.

 

[Angthoron]

I've set this to run for another 3 days to tie in with the closure of the KickStarter, assuming I can PayPal it over to Larian as I did last time. Angthoron can you confirm if that's ok to PayPal this straight to Larian again?

I'll confirm it officially on Monday once I catch someone to give me an official go-ahead. And thanks for extending, was going to ask you to do that - got some notes from people about it.

 

[a Goat]

The writing in D:OS was complete shit. Adding MCA to do sections will just bring the Larian shit writing into glaring relief.

Writing in D:OS is bad because it was rewritten in the last year of development. When you look at Larian games as a whole, writing is decent with good parts at times(but always in a "lol RPG clichés" manner).

I think there was a elf mage and maybe a blonde fighter?

Helloooo? hellooooo?

As quiet as a calm sea, which is, not very quiet...

 

[Unbeliever]

It's fantastic that this is direct involvement, not one more MCA stretch goal. Congratulations, Larian, nice move. Maybe this signals that here MCA will do some serious job.

And he need we need his own game. Soon.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Divinity: Original Sin 2; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

... Chris Avellone ...

Backed, for fiddy dolla' !

 

[Ulrox]

Writing in D:OS is bad because it was rewritten in the last year of development. When you look at Larian games as a whole, writing is decent with good parts at times(but always in a "lol RPG clichés" manner).

Also, hasnt Larian hired a ton of new writers for this game...? If so, then the doomsayers saying that the writing in D:OS2 will be bad, is inaccurate because Larian wont be writing it, but the new hired writers will.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Writing in D:OS is bad because it was rewritten in the last year of development. When you look at Larian games as a whole, writing is decent with good parts at times(but always in a "lol RPG clichés" manner).

Helloooo? hellooooo?

As quiet as a calm sea, which is, not very quiet...

Decent? No it isn't, it's shit.

 

[a Goat]

Decent? No it isn't, it's shit.

I liked it everywhere outside of OS and Beyond Divinity...