Dragon Commander - Status Update

Dhruin

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Lar has penned a new Status Update on the Larian forums. It's far too long to post in entirety, so here's a chunk of the opening:
Hi all,

I’m getting impatient.

We’re in that phase of the project where a lot is being created but where there is very little to show. That’s quite normal, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

This goes not only for Dragon Commander but also for Project E, so sometimes I have the impression we’re not producing anything. But then I do a quick round of the office and I see tons of assets and features being prepared, and I’m momentarily relieved again that stuff is happening – I just can’t see all of it together.

After which impatience strikes again, and I do another tour
wink.gif


While the previous incarnation of Dragon Commander, the thing we showed at Gamescom, was a proof of concept, the next big step in Dragon Commander’s development is going to be nothing short of the completely playable game less a whole bunch of features. The difference versus the proof of concept is that whatever is within this version is what’s going to ship (plus obviosly a whole bunch of refinements).

By now, we have a pretty good idea of how things are going to work in both games (which took us some time), and in my head they’re both great, (well, what else would you expect me to say
wink.gif
).

My desk is riddled with notes, flowcharts and designs for both DC & project E, but since we’re not talking about E yet, I’ll give you a rundown on where we stand with DC. Here’s a picture of the desk
Dragon Commander on facebook

Internally we look at DC as a game being split in two phases – phase 1 is the strategy/rpg part, phase 2 is the action/rts part. Since we want to be able to make the claim that you’ll make more decisions in DC than in any RPG we’ve ever produced, we made sure that for every character you encounter in the game, there are complex decision trees, and that the impact of reaching a certain point in each decision tree has an impact on the overall gameplay.
More information.
 
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I really like this studio and thought DKS was the most under-rated game last year and wished it had done better commercially (though the ending was a tad weak). Oh well I wish them luck.
 
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The thing that perturbs me about this is that the dragon flying sections were by far the least interesting parts of their last games :|

The lightweight jumpy/spinny/arcade combat didn't match well to the movement I expect from a great heavy dragon. It was more like flying a hummingbird, even apart from the fact that those 'levels' didn't present very interesting things to do.
 
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I have written already to the staff via the "submit news" function. I thought that both newsbits could be combined.
 
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