Larian Studios - Status Update

Dhruin

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Looks like Larian is about to show Project D to the media, which hopefully means a reveal is close:
I'm pretty nervous - tomorrow we're showing project D to a journalist for the very first time, and I have absolutely no idea how it will go. If this were E, I wouldn't be stressed, because that one hits all the right notes (I think), but D, well, it's different. At this point, I'm full of doubts, and constantly need remind myself that ever since I saw the first prototype, my thoughts about D have been "you think it's fun - someone else will also think it's fun - you just need to be able to communicate clearly about it." But at this point, I'm already going to be happy if he tells me "looks interesting". What I don't have any doubts about is that he'll say it's ambitious
wink.gif


Anyway, it said small status update, so that means really short
wink.gif


Events of interest -

-We're getting our first distribution deals in place
-We're having a big steam number one party this week at an undisclosed location
-We know what our booth at GC is going to look like and what we'll be showing
-Working with David Freeman is a blessing and a curse because it caused a lot of extra work (but for a good cause)
-Farhang, our lead designer, is going to give an excellent presentation tomorrow
wink.gif
Go Farhang !
-We're all going on a holiday (well almost all) real soon

Cheers
More information.
 
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I don't think we've been told anything about D, other than it being really big. I've been having fun plugging any game that comes to mind into that slot. Railroad Tycoon 4, Freespace 3, a game based on Rolemaster where you get to pick from all the optional rules when the game starts....

'Ambitious' makes me think MMO, though.
 
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I doubt its a MMO. The company has never made one and I dont see them making one now. We shall see. Looks like project E is the next Divine Divinity game.
 
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What an excitable sounding chap! All the best to those at Larian Studios, we hope to see more rpg-goodness from you in the future.

This news actually serves to remind me that I'm still yet to pick up Divinity II/Ego Draconis in some way shape or form. Must do that soon to support these guys, as I quite liked Divine Divinity (only played it with the one character though)

The soundtrack is especially wonderful... (thank you, Mr Pokrovsky!)
 
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You could have done so during the Steam sale.
 
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It all sounds really exiting - I just hope they didn't bite off more than they can chew with all these projects. At this point I really don't want to lose any more RPG developers.
 
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The post was updated,

So I think it went well. He didn't run out screaming out of the office yelling "madmen, I'm surrounded by madmen !!!!", and actually asked quite some intelligent questions - I guess we got lucky

There was some surprise, he was not expecting something that deviated, at least at first sight, so much from what we usually do, but when he got the complete picture, I think he liked it. We'll only know when the article runs of course, but I think we should be ok.

It was in any case an excellent trial run for GC, as we could see what parts of our presentation communicated the ideas clearly, and what parts didn't work at all, the latter evidenced by the fact that those were the parts he had the most questions about, just trying to exactly understand how it works. Those were of course the parts we already take for granted given our previous work, but clearly, we need to make sure that when we announce the game, we don't forget to mention them.

<grin>

Reading the above paragraph again I realize that it must read like complete nonsense given that you have no idea what I'm talking about. I'd really like to tell you what the game is, as well as what project E is, but I need to give the scoop to the press so that hopefully they'll be willing to write about us. They should btw. It's a cool game.

At least I can tell you what it's not, at the risk of ruining some expectations. In case I hadn't mentioned it before, Project D is not Divinity 3 - I've been reading some posts from people who think it is, but it's not. it's even a different style of game, though for sure you'll recognize many things that we put in our previous games.

It's not some casual game either, on the contrary, some would say it's pretty hard-core. It features several things I've always wanted to do, and I'm glad that given our past success (yes, there are a quite a lot of Divinities out there) we now finally have the chance to do them, because it's not something I could ever have convinced a publisher of funding.

Heck, probably the best thing about it, from a geeky developer point of view, was that our journalist couldn't figure out what genre it was

The origin of Project D is a simple mechanic, stumbled upon almost by accident, but one that works so well and has so much depth that it deserved a full-blown game to be built around it. It could become our biggest success ever or our biggest failure, but each day I'm getting more convinced that if we don't ruin it, I'll have tremendous fun with this one once it's done. Time will tell and am extremely curious as to what the reactions here will be. If you'll all hate it, at least I know most of you'll still like E
 
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I know I will love project E as its the next Divinity game.
 
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I suspect Project D isn't a RPG or a FPS game.

I really wonder what it is though and really nice to know there is still one studio out there who can make what they want and not only what publisher want to publish.
 
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