Original Sin - Review Roundup #3

No, a lot of them actually don't - a person (or more than one) creates a game, doesn't pay himself a salary, and then sells it (or even gives it away) once he's done.

Not that I'm saying that's a requirement to call something "indie".

But I also don't think a 15-year-old company of 40 people creating games qualifies as "indie" by most people's understanding of the term.
 
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They weren't an indie when they did Divinity 2, or the games prior to that. They had publishers who provided the funding.

After Divinity 2 they became self publishing and had too look for funding themselves. They secured funds for the development of Dragon Commander and Original Sin, but these funds were insufficient to complete both games, hence the Kickstarter and the Early Access. The success of those and I guess the sales of Dragon Commander made sure they were able to finish the game to the level it was released at.

So yes, for the development of their last two games I consider Larian to be an indie in the sense that they were independent from a publisher. In the same context I consider Wasteland 2 to be an indie title.
That said, they are a different type of indie developer when compared with the Rampant Coyote for example.
 
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The fact that Wasteland 2 could qualify as indie, but Pillars of Eternity most definitely doesn't (they signed a publishing deal with Paradox) sort of demonstrates how meaningless the term is now I guess.
 
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I consider Larian to be something in-between ... some kind of middle tier between "commercial" and "Indie" for which no word exists yet ...
 
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Stingray said:
The fact that Wasteland 2 could qualify as indie, but Pillars of Eternity most definitely doesn't (they signed a publishing deal with Paradox) sort of demonstrates how meaningless the term is now I guess.
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There is three type of publishing deals.

Type 1 is a distribution only deal for market translation and retails. Larian have it for both Dragon Commander and Original Sin and I believe the deal for Pillar of Eternity is of this type. This is basically the development studio who pay a publisher to release their game somewhere specific.

Type 2 is a funding deal. A mix of two and three in a way, depends how the deal is signed. This is a development studio who shop a publisher to receive funding and a distribution deal to make their games but still retain their IP in the end. Extremely rare these days too, because big gaming publishers want to own all the IPs and because development studios have kickstarter/steam/etc to get funding without dealing with them.

Type 3 contractual work. That's what the big gaming publisher do. They sign a gaming development studio to make a game where they receive a specific amount of $$ and not a penny more for it. IP belong to the publisher in the end.
 
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Several thoughts pertaining to D:OS from all the reviews so far and the commenters of this thread:

Text Dialog
One thing I've been particularly looking for in reviews are more in-depth analysis of the non-voice acted dialog. Some reviewers have touched on this subject but not too deeply. I haven't read every single review yet, so perhaps I'll stumble across something. What I'm getting at is how much I am enjoying the variety of dialog options since each option does not need voice acting behind it. You have to read a lot more, but the variety of choices and consequence is so much better. Substantially better in fact.

Gamespot
I don't read Gamespot reviews these days myself. However, I do think Gamespot has a decent news feed. I'm also noticing (and appreciating) that Gamespot hasn't rushed a review out right away. I'm happy that Larian is getting all these positive reviews. But with a long CRPG like D:OS, I'm skeptical of the reviews I've read because in the past I've read so many day 1ish CRPG reviews that completely mis-inform people or are lacking in one way or another. I remember reading somewhere that Larian wasn't able to get review copies out for reviewers either… so that raises my eyebrow too. It's not a huge issue though, but I am appreciating the fact that Gamespot's review is not out and I may just take a look at it when it does come out just because it wasn't rushed out right away.

User Interface
I am so happy to have a proper PC UI that I bite my tongue whenever I have something to say that could make it better. There are some cumbersome aspects to the UI. With any luck they might improve the UI with patches. But I just can't bring myself to complain about the UI in public because we haven't had a proper PC UI whatsoever in a long time. So all I want to say publically and officially is:
"Thank you Larian for making a proper PC UI."

Will D:OS Break The American Media Bashing Streak of Euro Devs?
Seems like for the last 14 years (maybe longer) the American gaming press has had a knee jerk reaction of utterly slamming Euro CRPGs over every little thing while giving out 9s and 10s to FPS 1,894,431 with shallow gameplay and pretty graphics. Finally, the American press is opening its mind a bit. Time will tell, but the positive reviews by the American press is a breath of some much needed fresh air.
 
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joxer said:
This is the most important thing:


Those who play it (not on low RAM) can only agree.
Those who played so many recent games and ports totally unoptimized on PC will definetly give 8 or 9 to D:OS even if they don't like something in the game.
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For something to do, I switched to the Intel 4000 card on my wife's laptop instead of the dedicated 630M. I was running everything at max except for shadows on low and AA turned off. It ran as good as, if not better than Torchlight. Which is saying something since, the Ogre engine they (Runic) were using has been optimized for years.
 
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And now we have the first official patch introducing AI personalities and a truckload of fixes :)
 
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1.0.72 doesn't seem to be on GOG yet…

Are there still only 2 companions? Haven't found it in the changelog.
 
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Steam is usually the first version to be updated with most games. GOG is usually at least half a day behind them.
 
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Stingray said:
The fact that Wasteland 2 could qualify as indie, but Pillars of Eternity most definitely doesn't (they signed a publishing deal with Paradox) sort of demonstrates how meaningless the term is now I guess.
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What Azarhal said, paradox is distributing the game and not publishing it.
 
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I'm so happy to see a game like this get such great reviews from pretty much everyone. I hope companies take notice of this and make more hardcore RPGs.
 
By an incredible bit of irony, Gamespot recently posted an article on how the term 'indie' has changed - thus combining both off topic tangents into one!

Bundyo said:
And now we have the first official patch introducing AI personalities and a truckload of fixes :)
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The seller of secrets now only has 1 ability book and 1 stat book instead of regenerating those
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Rats, I should have stocked up!
 
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Well, I've started playing it now - and I'm already having a great time.

My only real issue is the abysmally stupid way of handling two separate inventories. There's absolutely no excuse for not having a combined inventory in singleplayer mode - and the way there's two separate ways of switching characters AND inventories makes the process VERY annoying.

I know this is about how they're doing cooperative gameplay - but they should have taken that extra step for sure.

But, since that's my biggest complaint after my first few hours - it bodes well indeed.
 
You can open all inventories for each character at the same time and drag and drop things from one inventory to another - pretty easy and ergonomic.
Together with the filter functions this works pretty well.

You get a "main"-inventory later in the game.
 
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HiddenX said:
You can open all inventories for each character at the same time and drag and drop things from one inventory to another - pretty easy and ergonomic.
Together with the filter functions this works pretty well.

You get a "main"-inventory later in the game.
Click to expand...

Is there a single button for all inventories? I've been unable to find that.

Having to click twice for separate inventories given the amount of time you need to access it, is extremely annoying.
 
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