Divinity II: FoV - vs Dragon Knight Saga

Dhruin

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Swen Vincke explains the differences between Divinity II + Flames of Vengeance versus the Dark Knight Saga on the Larian forums. The addon will get you engine improvements in the original game but you'll still miss out on changes to enemies, loot and the flying fortress unless you get the combined DKS:
Flames of Vengeance retroactively applies many changes which are introduced in DKS also to Ego Draconis. Most engine changes for instance are immediately present in Ego Draconis. To maintain compatibility with existing savegames however, there are a number of things which aren't changed when you install FOV. These are:

Enemy placement and balancing (massive overhaul)
Loot and set-items (complete overhaul)
Story and scripting changes (e.g. in DKS flying fortress gameplay is very different to ED)
Art changes in Ego Draconis (though you do get the advantage of better lighting & shading)

In general, if you played or finished Ego Draconis and don't want to start over again, get FOV.

If you don't mind starting over again, get DKS, in which the total gameplay experience is in my opinion much more stream-lined.

There's no big differences between the FOV content in DKS and the FOV content applied to ED.
More information.
 
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It's the Dragon Knight Saga not Dark Knight.

And I'm still wondering if I should buy DKS or not (well, if I can find it somewhere).
 
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The subtle differences between DKS and FOV make my brains explode. I'll never be able to remember this a year from now.
 
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I'm hoping that's incorrect ...

The addon will get you engine improvements in the original game but you'll still miss out on changes to enemies, loot and the flying fortress unless you get the combined DKS

I posted on that thread asking for clarification, as I already have D2:ED and just want to pickup the expansion pack. They've mentioned in their FoV FAQ that they're going to be releasing a patch with the engine improvements, so hopefully the base game + patch + FoV expansion will = DKS.
 
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Dark...Dragon...thanks for the correction.

@deoren, the patch is for those only with D2:ED, to catch up with FoV. This is the reason I posted this: those that *don't* buy the full Dragon Knight Saga will miss some of the improvements. You don't buy FoV *and* patch it.
 
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If there's one thing that's never been clear for me, it's this whole thing about the differences. The "no big changes" worries me, as do the changes FoV doesn't apply.

So we buy the game and then the expansion, and we get a worse deal? Nice.
 
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This is confusing and annoying...

I wonder how much more the DKS release will cost, compared to just getting the FoV addon.
 
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I think I'll be geting it ("DKS", whih I simply call "Saga"), because I'm kind of a fan boy. :D ;)

No, seriously, I've never been too far into Divinity 2, and I know FOV only from testing so far, so I'll buy it all combined.

And I expect it (the combined "Saga" package) have a price range like the add on.
Like a "Gold" version, which it baically is to me.
It's also like "The Wicher Enhanced Edition" or "Platinum Edition" to me.

On the bottom line this kind of implies a hint towards the time line a development studio would need to polish a game so much ... But no publisher would ever give that much time.
 
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From the forum, by Lar :

Ok, let's me try again - it's pretty clear when you play it but somehow I find it very hard to write it down:

The Dragon Knight Saga has been approached as if it were an entire new game from the point of view of the core item-fever & hack and slash parts of the gameplay as well as getting rid of those areas that we considered to be "boring" in Ego Draconis. We've upgraded the engine, upgrade the graphics, upgraded the audio, changed the levels, changed the balancing, modified several features and where possible applied those changes to both Ego Draconis and Flames Of Vengeance. Additionally, on the 360, we changed almost the entire interface, modified the levels and gameplay to increase performance, changed the camera system/controls, and made sure the 360 has its a different balancing than the PC version as both platforms play differently. If on PC it plays more "streamlined", on 360 it's almost as if it's a different (and better) game.

Since its a pretty big redesign of several parts of Ego Draconis, it's impossible to convert Ego Draconis in The Dragon Knight Saga with just a patch - for that there are too many changes - but those areas of the game that we can change, without affecting the existing savegames, we've tried to change through the upcoming patch. For instance, if you install FOV, you get a better-looking Ego Draconis, and also the engine improvements. A patch which would bring ED to DKS would consist of replacing almost every single file, and it's guarnateed that you wouldn't be able to play any of your previous saves.

So D2:ED + FoV (which includes patch) does not equal DKS, but it's as close as we can get it without destroying the save-games.

For people who don't buy FOV, we'll provide a D2:ED patch, but I need to add that it's up to the various publishers to release it.

The intended audience of DKS consists primarily of people who didn't buy D2:ED, but in the same breath I have to say that I think that all the changes done make the entire experience more fun and I wished we could've launched DKS as ED.

I hope you can still follow and this makes sense to you ;)
 
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So, basically, to get the proper thing I need to get DKS?

Ugh. Fiiiiiine. I will. Divinity 2 was amazing in my opinion, and if it supports Larian than I'm sure it'll be worth it. Divinity 2 really needed an overhaul.
 
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Sounds like Larian's way of saying "Don't buy the add-on, wait for DKS to go budget".
 
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Sounds like Larian's way of saying "Don't buy the add-on, wait for DKS to go budget".

Unfortunately that's probably true for all but the most hardcore of fans. That or those who didn't pickup the original. I wish them the best, but this is very disappointing.
 
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Whereas the Add-On isn't available for the xbox at all - only DKS is.
 
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I'm still a bit torn, to be honest. It'd be nice if Larian offered something for those with D2:ED, such as a voucher for a cheaper Dragon Knight Saga or perhaps some bonus content on the FoV disc (such as a gear set or two), although I understand it's not likely to happen.

I can understand where Larian have come from with this and it's hard to be that mad at them, but after the problems I had with D2 towards the end (I had to save&restart every hour or so as I got towards final places), FoV and the updates to the game will really have to blow me away.
 
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I can understand you. I wouldn't buy it, at east it was very much price-reduced, when I had FOV already. But I haven't ... and like with Dragon Age, I'm rather waiting for the full package, which contains everything (in the case of Dragon Age with all DLCs).
 
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I'm not sure if there's any truth to this or not but FoV, to me, seems more of an afterthought rather than a planned expansion. I've heard a lot about it being a reaction to people not liking the end of D2, but admittedly the game really does need the optimisation they've spoken about. D2 is a beautiful game, but another round of polishing wouldn't go amiss.

I think I'm just going to wait for DKS to be released and see what price it'll be. There's not a lot coming out that I'm truly excited for (King's Bounty: Crossworlds and that's about it. I can't get excited about Drakensang: TRoT at the moment) so perhaps I can fit the purchase in somewhere.
 
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Another explaining update by Lar :

Hi all,

I can understand the frustrations, and it wasn't the easiest decision to make, but then again, we didn't choose the easiest path for this either - Let me give you some more background and then offer a potential solution for those of you who want to play the DKS content and already own ED:

The obvious thing to do would've been to ship FOV, and then just bundle that with ED together with those patches that never got released. When we initially informed publishing partners that we actually wanted to do more than that, make some kind of Divinity 2.5 and actually invest quite a lot into it, they had a very hard time understanding why we'd even contemplate doing something like that. Nobody we talked to at the time wanted to fund it, and in general it was considered a strange thing to want to do. Our ratio however was pretty simple - got a wide range of ratings, going from very good to not enough - in most cases the not enough ones isolated specific issues which given the means we could fix, whereas the good ones didn't mind those issues and focussed on the good parts.

That left us with the feeling that the job was incomplete and often heard statement was "if only". So, we figured rather than saying "if only" we should just do it, and we spent the year between the original release of in Germany and now on upgrading/fixing/cutting/polishing as much as possible.

At some point we'd gone as far as we could without starting to change the content, and there were some parts in there which we really wanted to tackle - especially the entire hack & slash & item fever part as well as those flying fortresses which didn't materialize as originally envisioned. The biggest stumbling block was save-game compatibility where no realy good decision could be taken. Either we ditched it, either we didn't do the changes. We opted for doing the changes, and aim DKS at players who didn't buy ED, which would be in any case the same target audience as a bundle pack of ED and FOV.

Leaves us of course with all of you who already bought ED. FOV includes all engine optimizations and also upgrades the artwork and of course includes every fix that we've made ever since the last patch was released. It also modifies the gameplay as much as can be done by changing the engine and installing additional content, but what it can't do is replace content on which the existing savegames are dependent, which is something unique to DKS, because one of the features of FOV is that you can continue playing with your existing character from ED.

FOV really is for those who want to continue the story without having to restart from scratch. If we'd remove the feature that you can continue to play, then we could include the DKS content within FOV, but when we had to decide what to do, it was felt that that that would've been a big problem for a lot of people.

So, what we could do is the following - we can provide a FOVTODKS patch which will transform ED+FOV into DKS, though if you apply it, you will not be able to load any of your old savegames. If that's what you'd like to have, knowing that your ED savegames will not work anymore, we can try to figure something out to make that a reality. It's also going to be a pretty big patch because really a lot of assets change.

Source : http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=421196#Post421196
 
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This makes me glad that I haven't played Divinity II yet. :)

Does anyone know if a North American release of DKS has been confirmed?
 
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Thanks for that, Alrik. I can see it being not a lot of work but also a lot of work for them to bring that patch to fruition. If they can say (before DKS is released) that the patch will occur, then I'll happily get FoV.

I don't think too many people would be bothered about save games. Even though I loved D2, I don't think it really "allowed" you to get as attached to your character, plus some of the events in-game are utterly hilarious and well worth a second viewing.
 
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