Two Worlds: The Temptation - GC Preview @ IGN

IGN has a preview of Two Worlds: The Temptation from the Leipzig Games Convention, offering a broad overview of the product:

Once on your quest, you'll find a 10-12 hour main quest that can stretch up to around 50 if you choose to do all of the side quests. Once you complete the game, you'll be able to go back and replay old sections to round out those side quests if you like, something that was missing from the first title. The story this time is one of searching for the truth regarding the events of the first game. Your sister is still involved, but a new enemy emerges to face off against you.

More information.

a small gameplay video of "Two Worlds - The Temptation" -

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7WFRCs2EU

Originally Posted by Glorian
a small gameplay video of "Two Worlds - The Temptation" -

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7WFRCs2EU

The environments look incredible. This might be the first crpg I've seen to actually have better visuals than Gothic 3.

Two Worlds… The basic engine did everything right. Huge free-roaming world, scattered wildlife, some hunting, great cities, abandoned places etc. Exploration was fun and the game suceeded on that unlike Oblivion.

My first great issue was balance. I quickly earned the 15 skillpoints neded to master fire magic and I could actually have beaten the game like that. I had like 99.75% combat efficiency at the end of the game, relying almost exclusively on 3 spells from the firemagic school. (All my deaths happened in the first hours of the game while learning the controls). Close to the end I exchanged my fire damage booster to an air damage booster with the same effect but doing so gave me a microscopic improvement which I doubt had any greater effect since i one-shot killed most opponents anyway. The balance between the monsters simply wasn't there. Either monsters was a one-shot kill, or they had lots of HP and could kill you in a blow, but since they moved so slow they were never any danger. I sometimes ran around in circles, gathering 20-30 monsters after me, then I picked them off by using areaspells, still not taking any damage. Due to alchemy I had a ridicilous amount of hitpoints as a mage. Even in the end boss battles I took zero damage. In fact, I just messed around with some spells that I hadn't used before just to try them out, so I nailed them to the ground with ivys and poisoned them to death.

All in all it seems they wasted their energy on warriors, while they forgot to flesh out the mages. I barely had any use at all for equipment and I had my staff on my back throughout the entire game. I used a robe because it looked good. If I just wanted more defense I could have used the strongest heavy plate in the game without penalty.

The second problem was the quests and the annoying dialogue that tried to sound like shakespeare. Sure, the quests had some variation and some surprises but they failed in sounding important. Just like the main quest. Writing good dialogue and making a story feel interesting and important takes skill. It's actually possible to take the most over-used elements and still make a grasping story out of it.

I was also annoyed at my lack of options. Sure, there were more than average among the "modern" RPG's, but sometimes I still felt that my character played me instead of the other way around.

I think they are going to need someone who understand balance and can design roleplaying mechanics. They also need a good storyteller, who knows how to make a story interesting.

The Temptation already has great improvements in terms of all the points listed above.

There will be AI even for the birds in the game ;-)
When the hero appears for instance, the birds fly away and circle overhead. Later on, when it's safe they land again.

They cheated a bit in the creation of the huge world - unlike in say morrowind or even daggerfall doesnt the game totally lack the interiors of the buildings? The characters just stand outside the houses. Also the "dungeons" all looked a bit same. I only played the 1.5 demo.

Originally Posted by zakhal
They cheated a bit in the creation of the huge world - unlike in say morrowind or even daggerfall doesnt the game totally lack the interiors of the buildings? The characters just stand outside the houses. Also the "dungeons" all looked a bit same. I only played the 1.5 demo.

I thought that the dungeons had more variety than Oblivion but surely there have been more varied dungeons in other RPG's. There was interiors in Two Worlds, but most huts and houses were small.

I enjoyed Two Worlds quite a lot actually - somewhere between Oblivion and Gothic. The game had three big drawbacks from my point of view:
- The story was way too short.
- The factions should've been fleshed out a lot more, as they showed a lot of promise.
- The balance was hopeless before the game was patched up a lot (needed several patches to get a decent balance).

If they can fix that, The Temptation might turn out to be an excellent game.

Originally Posted by Maylander
- The story was way too short.

I suspect that this is a clear sign to where the talents of the dev team lies : In technical development, not in story-telling.

Too many games nowadays have this bias.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I suspect that this is a clear sign to where the talents of the dev team lies : In technical development, not in story-telling.

Too many games nowadays have this bias.

That´s no excuse. Missing competencies can be brought in by hiring freelancers. So it´s more a matter of focus. They think they know the majority of the players, and of course the press, doesn´t give a shit about the story while being hyped up about technical gimmicks.

I still don't get what people see in you 2W.

-Flawed storyline.
-Horrible voice acting. I don't usually pay much attention to voice acting, but 2w hurted my ears.
- undynamic gameworld and locations. Most of the npcs were just standing around doing nothing and gameworld as a whole felt like someone had pushed the stopped button.
-bugged day&nighy cycle
-overpowered magic.
-stacking items made looting totally meaningless. First i thought that this was a good feauture, but in the long run it destroyed the game balance
- Game's a.i was dumb like a rock.
-cardboard npcs. Npcs had no personality what so ever. I don't even remeber a single npc by name, it tells a lot how memorable they were.
- no real factions. I could do few missions for them, but not really join them.

Originally Posted by Gorath
and of course the press, doesn´t give a shit about the story while being hyped up about technical gimmicks.

Yeah, right, very well put.

So - is the press full of people who don't understand a thing about narrative mechanics, but a whole lot of technics ?

THAT would explain quite a lot !

Exactly Dez, but that goes for Oblivion as well:
-Flawed storyline (check)
-Horrible voice acting. I don't usually pay much attention to voice acting, but 2w hurted my ears (indeed, in Oblivion quite a few NPCs actually changed voices during conversation. This was just plain horrible)
- undynamic gameworld and locations. Most of the npcs were just standing around doing nothing and gameworld as a whole felt like someone had pushed the stopped button (check)
-bugged day&nighy cycle (can't say I recall that in either Oblivion or Two Worlds)
-overpowered magic (everything was overpowered untill it was patched, due to the nature of stacking. They changed that, however).
-stacking items made looting totally meaningless. First i thought that this was a good feauture, but in the long run it destroyed the game balance (again, they changed that, making stacking much more balanced, and not as crazy overpowered)
- Game's a.i was dumb like a rock (check)
-cardboard npcs. Npcs had no personality what so ever. I don't even remeber a single npc by name, it tells a lot how memorable they were (check once more)
- no real factions. I could do few missions for them, but not really join them (factions in Oblivion had a bit more quests, but they were still quite redicilous. At least in Two Worlds they let me side with certain factions over others, which is a big bonus).

I never said Two Worlds was a new Gothic, but I still rate it above Oblivion.

I enjoyed the two worlds demo I played as an action-rpg. I didnt except a deep&rich storyline etc. I played the demo on hard setting btw - the normal difficulty level is way too easy.

With all due respect. you can't compare the voice acting to oblivion. I know that oblivion npcs werent' exactly academy caliber, but they did their job. It sounded a bit too repetative at times yes, but it wasn't a big problem. Furthermore these same npcs were actually doing something. They had a purpose and life much like in Gothic. I could follow a random npc and watch them going to bed and living his life during the day. I don't remeber similar stuff from 2w. It felt like 2W devs had just thrown them there without a second though. The capital city for example is the saddest excuse of a city i've seen ever. The smaller settlements were nice and belivable, but more bigger they got, more random and boring they felt.

I liked that you couldn't side with each faction in 2W, but factions in oblivion felt more detailed somehow and had rich backround stories. The guest lines were also quite intresting and you really felt that you were a part of your guild instead of just running errands for them.

I need to check out this lastest patch and see if balance related things have been fixed and maybe give the game an other spin.

I'm looking forward the next chapter in 2 worlds though. After all this is my favourite game type and there are not too many candidates really. And for their first game this wasn't all bad. It had it's moments, but hopelly the next game is more rpg than action.

btw the day-night cycle was bugged last time i played. the night turned to day in 2 minutes or so. Maybe its pc related and has been fixed.

Originally Posted by Dez
btw the day-night cycle was bugged last time i played. the night turned to day in 2 minutes or so. Maybe its pc related and has been fixed.

I think that is WASD. They intended nights to be much shorter than days for gameplay reasons.

I'm not talking about NPCs repeating themselves in Oblivion - I'm talking about NPCs actually having diffierent voices in the same conversation. Example:
NPC (high pitched voice): Hello my name is Bob.
PC: Hello Bob.
NPC (now in a much deeper, completely different voice): I have a quest for you.
PC: What in the name of the Nine Hells just happened to your voice?! Puberty hit you in an instant??

Drove me mad. And regarding to the AI - certainly not comparable to the cycles of Gothic, where the NPCs move around with a purpose. Most of the NPCs in Oblivion were bumping into each other, walking around without any purpose whatsover, and then stopping to "have a chat" with other NPCs, where the conversation would end up being something like:
- "Yeah, the king of thieves is a dangerous man."
- "I saw a bear the other day."
- "Nice weather we're having."
- "Hello"
- "Nice weather we're having."

It's like trying to pay attention to a bunch of very old, very senile people that have no idea who - or what - they're talking to/about. The fact that demonic gates are popping up all over the place without a single NPC even mentioning it was just plain horrible - at least the NPCs in Two Worlds were talking about things that mattered.

I certainly wouldn't rate NPCs, their AI or their conversations above Two Worlds. It's pretty much of the same, fairly low quality, especially after playing Gothic for years.

I wanted to like Two Worlds but just couldn't get much out of it. The random banter in Oblivion was pretty suspect but I found the quest writing orders of magnitude better than TW.

I really like messing with alchemy and I thought TW handled alchemy in a fun way. You could really amp up a character if you took the time to collect all the ingredients and mix them up.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I wanted to like Two Worlds but just couldn't get much out of it. The random banter in Oblivion was pretty suspect but I found the quest writing orders of magnitude better than TW.

There is no way Oblivion's quest writing was better then Two Worlds. The faction quests in Two worlds where you can actually eliminate the rebels and they're hideout from the game, period- a choice where the consequence is real in the game, as well as choosing to take the protective gem from that asian inspired city thus letting the orcs raid and eliminate the populace, again a choice affecting the game world beats anything in Oblivion quest & C&C-wise period. The only quest tha had any spark of interest was the Dark Brotherhood quests as I believe C. Avellone worked on them.