Personally, I think this is a good thing:
Good for them, delay the game to make it (hopefully) a better game. I'd like to see more of this kind of thing.Beyond Divinity heeds its fans
RPG developer pushes back release date to integrate community feedback
The street date for the English version of Beyond Divinity's has been postponed to late April 2004.
The main reason for the delay is Larian's commitment to give the fans the RPG they want. With the release of the Beyond Divinity demo last month, the studio obtained a lot of a valuable feedback from the RPG community.
While the overall comments were very positive, there were a few issues that troubled players. With the support of North American publisher Hip Games and UK publisher Digital Jesters, the developer is in the process of addressing these issues:
By employing the services of high quality improvisation actors in Toronto, any doubts that fans might have had about the voice recordings in Beyond Divinity should soon be history.
Likewise, by introducing multiple game modes allowing players to play Beyond Divinity as either an action RPG or a tactical RPG, fears that the game might be too hard for some existing Divinity fans should now be quelled.
The extra available time will also be used to do further polishing of the game, integrating further feedback from the forums at www.larian.com.
"We are very sensitive about what our community thinks about our games, and when we saw they were all but pleased by the voice recordings, the decision to go back to the recording studio was easily made." says Swen 'Lar' Vincke, project leader at Larian Studios. "With the support of Hip Games, whom I really want to thank, and a crew of sound engineers and actors who were willing to burn the midnight oil on this, we'll manage to set straight something that could've gone very wrong. Voice recording all the dialogues in a RPG as extensive as Beyond Divinity was a very ambitious task, and we didn't get it right the first time. I'm happy we've been given the opportunity to rectify that."
On the subject of the different game modes, Vincke said "One of the design goals of Beyond Divinity was to introduce more tactical combat to the mix. We thought everybody was going to prefer this over the typical hack & slash gameplay you found in the original game. To our surprise it turned out that a part of the community didn't want that at all. So we introduced different combat modes. The game now offers you the choice between action, tactical or hardcore combat, each leading to very different gameplay experiences. I think this is exactly what our audience was looking for."
Divine Divinity, launched in 2002 was critically acclaimed for its depth and level of interactivity. In Beyond Divinity, Larian Studios takes what made Divine Divinity so deeply appealing, and pushes it one step further. Using an enhanced version of the original engine, the final product delivers infinite character development, unparalleled levels of interactivity, a wide variety of enemies; tons of quests and a brand new combat system. By catering to all of these elements with equal levels of importance, Beyond Divinity will truly deliver a total RPG experience.
In Beyond Divinity, you become soul-forged with a Death Knight. Your fate is to spend the rest of eternity bonded to this creature of evil, unless you can undo this curse. You and your unlikely partner embark on a great adventure to unlock the secret of rift-running … your only answer to this life of darkness.
Beyond Divinity is due for release on PC-CD ROM in May 2004. For more information on Beyond Divinity, visit www.beyond-divinity.com.
That sounds incredible!
... on paper.
How the heck are they going to pull it off though? Infinite kudos to Larian if they succeed, because it sounds like the game will allow you to play it either as a Diablo or Baldur's Gate clone!
The voiceacting issue is unequivocably great, though - I got to watch my friend play the demo and we just laughed and laughed at times, but not necessarily for the right reasons.
Wasn't that the idea of the first one?Originally Posted by curst
I agree curst. More power to 'em if they can pull it off, and I just like the IDEA of them trying to improve the game due to fan suggestions. Whether or not it's successful remains to be seen, of course.
I'm not really interested in this one but I'm tempted to buy it just because of the attentiveness of the developer to the concerns raised.
Kudos to them and their ever-improving game!
Interesting, hopefully it doesn't cause any new problems. I didn't really have too many problems with the demo, all minor things not worth complaining about. I especially liked it since it ran well on my computer! :D I've been looking forward to Beyond Divinity for a while and had every intention of purchasing it. I think I will wait for the Japanese release that will probably come, since the original was quite successful here and received an absolute stellar localization. Larian seems like a truly talented and nice team of people who care about quality, and have seemed that way, ever since I read that fabulously classy letter from the developer in the opening to the manual.
That said, while I can't argue its a good idea to delay a game until all its issues are ironed out, 'cause as they say, delays are temporary, but mediocrity is forever, I do not like to see to much of developers listening to fans. I hope for instance, that whatever the Beyond Divinity developers had in mind still comes through and these different modes don't dilute the original intent, just because people couldn't be arsed to decide to find what they wanted and play that instead. For instance, the idea that the fans say a sequel is a not "real" game in the series because it doesn't have this or that never fails to piss me off. While of course you have to realize audience demands and expectations with anything, I'm firmly on the side of the creators to do whatever the hell they want to do. Feedback and criticism may be an important part of that, but too often I think people ascribe too much to themselves to be able to do this accurately to works in progress. Go to far, its like that game-making by committee type of thing. I know major companies already have lots of feedback and testing and stuff and that characters like Sonic was created through a vote, and such, but I'm stubborn that way.
Then again, its fans that create stuff like Exult, so you can play the older Ultimas on newer computers for free, so there's a definite good side to it. Maybe its because I have to deal with some of the most fanatical and out-of-reality human wastes of fandom on the planet that rubs me the wrong way.
-Kitsune
Enh, DD is honestly much more like Diablo than BG, to such an extent that I don't see where it warrants a comparison to BG. If anything, it had traces of Ultima and Might & Magic in it, with things like alchemy and the ability to get at least small use out of almost every little object in the world. Larian themselves say as much when making comments like "We thought everybody was going to prefer this over the typical hack & slash gameplay you found in the original game".
Of course saying something like "DD has a more 'hardcore RPG combat' mode in it" is pretty nebulous. Is it more hardcore like Fallout, or BG, or Arx Fatalis, or what? I'm definitely curious to find out. Will there be turn-based combat in this 'hardcore' mode? Something like that could cover a lot of ground, which is why I'm both intrigued and a little worried that they might spread themselves too thin trying to appeal to all audiences with one game.
Wild. How on earth can they do this without rewriting huge chunks of the game?The game now offers you the choice between action, tactical or hardcore combat, each leading to very different gameplay experiences.
I really liked Divine Divinity, so if the sequel truly allows tactical combat, I'll be in heaven.
They'll probably add pausing for orders ala NWN. No way can they hack in phased turn-based tactical combat like TOEE in a month. I'd be happy with NWN style combat. I vaguely remember combat in the original DivDiv as pretty lame.
The original Divinity really came out of nowhere and surprised me. I'm glad to hear them put the extra effort into this sequel. I can think of worse reasons to delay a game.
The game was designed from the start to allow you to pause and give orders. It's the Action Mode that's new. If I recall correctly, they'll be lowering enemy resistances and hit points in that mode as a way to make combat simpler, quicker, and more fun for the Diablo crowd.
Adding this new mode has unbalanced the existing game a bit, which is part of the reason they sought to push back the release.
-Vede
Oh? I remembered DivDiv combat as a fast-paced clickfest like sacred or diablo. It's been a year or two, I guess.
I didnt get a BG vibe at all from the first one. I got a Diablo vibe with more quests.
olaf
You remember correctly. Beyond Divinity is just meant to be a bit more "hard-core" than DD when it comes to combat.
-Vede
Really? That's all you got - even though you could interact with almost every little object in that world and have unique, multi-branched conversations with hundreds of different NPCs? Divine Divinity might not have screamed Baldur's Gate, but it sure as hell screamed "There's a lot more at work here than just Diablo-y combat with more quests."
-Vede
I thought the Ultima 7 influence was *much* more prevalent in DivDiv than Baldur's Gate. Sometimes it seems like BG gets mentioned just because the collective CRPG memory for a lot of people seems to begin with BG.
The only thing BG about Divine Divinity were the conversation trees. Combat was like Diablo, and the environment was straight out of Ultima 7.
I had my hopes up that tactical combat = turn based combat, but it appears when Larian uses that term it means pausable real-time combat, like the first one. Hm. I'm still looking forward to playing it but I'm not quite sure why they consider that tactical combat...
Most of the interaction was meaningless or unnecessary though. How many times is it fun to mouseover a fork? What is the point even? A lot of times I found all of the useless clutter objects to be more annoying than anything else.Really? That's all you got - even though you could interact with almost every little object in that world and have unique, multi-branched conversations with hundreds of different NPCs? Divine Divinity might not have screamed Baldur's Gate, but it sure as hell screamed "There's a lot more at work here than just Diablo-y combat with more quests."
Almost all of my time in that game was spent killing stuff Diablo-style, or traveling to a different spot so I could proceed to kill stuff Diablo-style. There were some quests, but aside from them, the game was all combat for me. Or, thats how I remember it anyway.
olaf
Well, with the right skills, you could combine those objects and make things (like beds) out of them. I didn't do much of that, but I liked the option. Personally, DD was one of the best experiences I had that year (was it just last year? or the one before?). I thought it was much more thoughtful than Diablo, though Diablo was more polished (goes without saying though, doesn't it?). I am VERY excited about a sequel, though I could care less about voicework or giving people an action gameplay option. Whatever. I just hope they use the extra time to squash bugs and polish up the gameplay a bit.
Really, though, what the hell do you do with a bed?
"Well, the previous owner was a dragon, but I've converted this offshoot from the main cavern into my bedroom!"
Actually, I think you could actually place beds in your inventory (ridiculous though that was) and then take them out and sleep on them to recover your health and mana. There was also a bedroll which made more sense to carry with you, but there was only a weight limit not any kind of encumbrance in the inventory, hence the queen size in the middle of the forest trick.
I agree with the Ultima 5-7 world + Diablo combat feel. I also agree about the clutter, but then again, I thought that about the Ultimas too.
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