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Interview Massive Interview with Swen Vincke at Rock Paper Shotgun

Infinitron

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

Following up on his Divinity: Original Sin Let's Play session from last week, Rock Paper Shotgun's Nathan Grayson has posted a nice big interview with Swen Vincke. Swen goes over topics such as Larian's plans after Original Sin is released, their troubled history as a company, how Early Access has helped improve the game, and of course, RPS's favorite topic, gender parity. Here's a particularly inspiring excerpt:

RPS: Conventional wisdom used to say that no one wanted these sorts of games anymore. And you’ve gone from making Ego Draconis, which was much more an RPG fused with an action game to Original Sin. But this is like, by many standards, a niche within a niche. You’re making a very specific type of game. Are you at all worried about a worst case scenario? A small crowd buys it and loves it, and everyone else says, “eh, not my thing”?

Vincke: Yeah. But you know, they’ve always said that about every single game I’ve made. From Divinity 1 onward. They went on to sell really a lot of units. We’ve calculated Divinity II sales at, what, 1.3 million units? That’s not a small crowd anymore. Divinity 1 must be over a million units now if you take the entire life cycle into account. That’s a lot of people already. I refuse to believe that our players currently are the only ones who want to have an evolution of the RPG genre as it existed and that was cut off. It was cut off because it turned out that the action-RPGs sold easier and were easier to make.

I personally think that, in the early 2000s, RPGs were cut off, because there were a number of production values that went up, and it was impossible to… Well, it was possible, but it was decided not to do it by the powers that be. So the genre stopped evolving. This was the case for a lot of genres. Now we have the resurgence of the indies. We have Steam Early Access and Kickstarter. Suddenly we have games that nobody would have ever invested in. Like Wasteland 2, for instance. Do you really think a publisher would have put a dollar into that? No. Look at it, how it’s soaring up the charts. That’s conventional wisdom for you.

The guys that have the conventional wisdom, I’m sorry, but I never agreed with them back then and I still don’t agree with them nowadays. It’s easy to go along the beaten path, but then you’re not going to have any evolution in games. You’ll have rehashes of the same thing over and over. There’s a lot of gamers out there, more gamers than ever, and they’re looking for a little bit more intelligent content. That’s where we want to be with this one.

Plus, the fact that I really think that people, when it’s going to release, are going to… The Trojan Horse in this particular case is co-op. Like that guy I was telling you about. His blog entry was exactly what we were hoping for when we envisioned the game originally. He starts playing and says to his wife, why don’t you try it? Then they don’t go to sleep. They keep on playing until the sun comes up. They have their own adventure, a kind of adventure that they probably wouldn’t have if they’d been playing single-player and loading and saving and loading and saving. That’s quite a feat, actually, that people don’t just load the game and continue. They debate with one another. Are we going to a load? That’s pretty cool.

RPS: Do you think that just in terms of your own creative direction, you’re going to stick with fantasy, or do you think you would ever go beyond that?

Vincke: We had quite a lot of concepts. The problem is, once you’ve made a game that’s sold a little bit, you’re stuck in the franchise, right? After Divinity 1, actually, we had an entire concept for a different style of game. And then, no no no, we want to do Divinity II. That’s how we ended up doing it. Because publishers were saying, okay, that’s something that interests us. We’re not interested in the original stuff.

But I’m sure that we’ll do something different. Larian has had some setbacks in the past. We’re not yet on the path where we can be completely free and do what we want. We have to make sure that we still make money and at least break even on the games that we do. With Original Sin, I have good hopes, because Early Access has been successful. Kickstarter has been successful. There are still a lot of people out there who don’t want to touch Early Access because they’re afraid they’re going to spoil the main story, which is a good way to play an RPG, actually. I think there’s still people who are underserved. If you look at the success of other large RPGs that have been… There’s still room for growth for us.
Read the entire thing, it's a really good interview. Even the gender parity question has an interesting answer.
 

abnaxus

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The publisher DTP mentioned in the interview is responsible for the sinking of Radon Labs. The 'good' publisher is Focus Home Entertainment.
 

Turok

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"Like Wasteland 2, for instance. Do you really think a publisher would have put a dollar into that? No."

lOl
 
Last edited:

Jack Dandy

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
They’ve been very vocal about that, though, so now we have map markers in there, which will show you a little. We have more map markers than we originally intended.

:decline:
 

Delterius

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So, all of this, all of these rules that you’re seeing, that are determining, for instance, strength and what it does, and this entire system with the action points, where you can stack them and put points into this stuff to get turn action points… It’s really cool gameplay. All of that was not there when we went on Early Access. That’s all the result of following threads on the Larian forums, or on forums like RPG Codex and RPG Watch, where we’re watching what people are writing, what their problems are, and saying, okay, we can fix it that way.

PRESTIGIOUS MAGAZINE.
 

himmy

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They’ve been very vocal about that, though, so now we have map markers in there, which will show you a little. We have more map markers than we originally intended.

:decline:

When done right and not abused, map markers are great and clearly preferable to entering every single house in town just to find who gave you that quest 6 hours before.
 

Delterius

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They’ve been very vocal about that, though, so now we have map markers in there, which will show you a little. We have more map markers than we originally intended.

:decline:

When done right and not abused, map markers are great and clearly preferable to entering every single house in town just to find who gave you that quest 6 hours before.
In what other ways could the game be improved by assuming the player has memory issues?

Nonetheless, what is most important is that the game was originally planned to lack map markers. Meaning that, as long as dialogue and the journal supports it, disabling them (either through modding or an in game modding) there shouldn't be many issues.
 

Dorateen

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No, the player should mark down the house and the person who gave the quest 6 hours before, using coordinates if available or any other identifying cues. RPG players are supposed to be expert note-takers, without being dependent on the game telegraphing such vital information.
 

VioletShadow

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Divinity, it’s now called a classic. It was in PC Gamer’s top 100 games. But at the time, when it was released – and it was CDV’s fault – it was a shit game. Because we were taking our time to finish it, and I actually discovered that it had went gold on a press trip here in the U.S. I didn’t even know it had been gold mastered. It wasn’t ready at all. What happened, as a result, it was a buggy release, it had lower reviews than it should, and so I remember sitting there behind my desk, getting saved games and fixing them manually.
:(:|:|:|

That’s why you’re not seeing us release Original Sin yet, and why we keep on postponing it. As long we’re finding bugs – and we still have a long list of bugs to squash – we’re not going to release it. If it’s not ready by spring, we’ll just postpone it. We’re not going to release it early. Not this one. So much love and effort has gone into it, and so much hope on our side, that it would be suicidal to release it.

:bravo:
 
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They’ve been very vocal about that, though, so now we have map markers in there, which will show you a little. We have more map markers than we originally intended.

:decline:

When done right and not abused, map markers are great and clearly preferable to entering every single house in town just to find who gave you that quest 6 hours before.
In what other ways could the game be improved by assuming the player has memory issues?

Nonetheless, what is most important is that the game was originally planned to lack map markers. Meaning that, as long as dialogue and the journal supports it, disabling them (either through modding or an in game modding) there shouldn't be many issues.

Ass Burgers
 

Xenich

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No, the player should mark down the house and the person who gave the quest 6 hours before, using coordinates if available or any other identifying cues. RPG players are supposed to be expert note-takers, without being dependent on the game telegraphing such vital information.

Yep. Note taking, map making, close attention to detail, etc... were all part of playing an RPG. Now I don't mind when they make those things a part of the system, like how Wizardry later added mapping as a skill that allowed for more detailed maps as your skill went up or how some games will provide you with more info if one of your characters happens to have a skill that allows for more detailed information gathering or spotting, but to just hand it to the player? What a waste.
 

Snozgobler

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The game in its original alpha state already offered the ability to write custom map markers, and the quest journal was pretty extensive even without that. I don't believe automatic map markers were a necessity for anything other than as a way to hold your hand. The first time I played through I added custom map markers for the Dr's/Hospital, Barracks, Jail, Arhu, every portal, every NPC that gave me a quest, every cave entrance and notable NPC that I didn't yet have a quest for (talking head etc). The list goes on, and perhaps it was overkill, but no-one else was going to remember for me so why shouldn't I take detailed notes? If you're treating the map as an item you are carrying with you, it makes perfect sense to jot down notes on it, and while I could say auto map markers are because "source magic means I know where to go", fuck that.

Just after the game went early access I posted a brief review on Steam and one of the things I said was "The game doesn't hold your hand, but if you're into RPG's, your so interested in seeing what the next person is doing, or how to solve the next puzzle that you wouldn't want it to anyway." (forgive my typo with your/you're). I saw it as a benefit that the game left you in a world to find your own way and I'd value the option to turn off automatic map markers in the final version of the game.
 

Kz3r0

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No, the player should mark down the house and the person who gave the quest 6 hours before, using coordinates if available or any other identifying cues. RPG players are supposed to be expert note-takers, without being dependent on the game telegraphing such vital information.
In Arcanum you can do that in game.
 

Xenich

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I saw it as a benefit that the game left you in a world to find your own way and I'd value the option to turn off automatic map markers in the final version of the game.

If it is optional, I don't care. If it isn't, well... that would piss me off. All I can say is a developer has no room to bitch and complain about players devouring their content like WoW players when they put that stupid hand holding crap in their games.
 

Jack Dandy

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
Nonetheless, what is most important is that the game was originally planned to lack map markers. Meaning that, as long as dialogue and the journal supports it, disabling them (either through modding or an in game modding) there shouldn't be many issues.

That's what I'm hoping for. :)

Although, having a player ability to mark shit down on their map + add notes is always the best option imo
 

JPB

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Sven Vincke said:
There’s a couple of forums that I follow very closely, on which they discuss our games extensively. A lot of very good ideas are coming from there, so we’re implementing them [...] That’s all the result of following threads on the Larian forums, or on forums like RPG Codex [...] I didn’t want to do any quest markers, because I didn’t want to do that kind of hand-holding. They’ve been very vocal about that, though, so now we have map markers in there, which will show you [...] male prostitutes.

Sven Vincke made me sign up for the forces of incline!
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
In Arcanum some building had signs on them. In a small village it might be "Luke's Blacksmith" or "Friendly Arm Inn" in Tarant it was like "202 Water Street". If you read the sign it would add a marker on the map for you.
 

Snozgobler

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MrEvilGuy

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[On hiring the female writer to match the male writer] It’s balanced completely the dialogue writing, which was indeed too male-focused. Now we have this balance going on. You notice in the dialogue, we have a much bigger variety of characters. You get better interaction between them going on, which is more realistic.

Amazing. I'm tired of reading through all this male-perspective bullshit in RPGs, I get enough of that kind of dialogue in real life.
 
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Except for games where mapping and mapmaking-misdirection are gameplay components (eg early Wizardries), I have no problem with map markers being used as an automap function. They should only appear once the player has been given the relevant information within the gameworld. Basically, the game itself should operate as though it expects you to mark coordinates for yourself - but I have no problem with it then saving me the trouble of doing so manually. The problem with things like quest arrows is the arbitrariness and disconnection from the gameworld, as well as the elimination of exploration. Being able to ask a NPC for directions to a known landmark, like a town hall or hotel (i.e. something where you would expect 'exploration' to be a matter of asking for directions, as opposed to the supposedly mysterious hidden cave of demons being magically marked out for me), and then having the option to ask the NPC to point out where it is on the town map, causing a map marker to appear, is fine. I only have a problem with it when it applies to things that shouldn't be common knowledge, or where you shouldn't really have a 'map' of; or where it becomes a 'quest compass' situation that eliminates exploration as a gameplay component.
 
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Divinity: Original Sin
Divine Divinity had those mapmarkers, and you could get your own. I believed it appeared only after you discover the place. If it is like that, i see no problem at all.
 

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