Two Worlds II - Community Interview, Preview

Inside Two Worlds writes that Ausir has the results of their community interview over at Two Worlds II Wiki. Here's a sample:

Two Worlds excelled at creating a beautiful game environment but fell short in creating an immersive experience. What is being done to improve immersion in Two Worlds 2?
A lot! First of all, we hired professional story writers who take care of the main quest as well as the side quests and the “feeling” of the world itself. That means that we implemented a lot of NPCs whom you meet several times during your adventures. This way you get some relationships which evolve according to your actions. Even some love stories are implemented.

…or Inside Two Worlds has a summary of the salient points.
Meanwhile, 2Worlds-game.de has a German preview that looks pretty interesting, and Two Worlds Vault has a summary of the important points in English. They've split it up into "good" and "bad" points and it's a worthwhile read for anyone following this game.
More information.

A good point they missed: It comes out a week before Gothic 4 and two weeks before Fallout 3: New Vegas. (At least here in the States.)

Originally Posted by Zloth
A good point they missed: It comes out a week before Gothic 4 and two weeks before Fallout 3: New Vegas. (At least here in the States.)

I wonder what their launch date strategy is. I'm not sure when the game was 100% finished development, but they probably would have been better off to have released it sooner than they will. With all that competition looming so close to launch date, Two Worlds 2 should have been released a month ago…

either way, I think its going to be a winner.

Well, even if two out of the three are released with horrible bugs, we'll have something to play while they get fixed up!

Joerg once more confirms that the area of the game is 60 square kilometers, but this time he actually puts a number on actual landmass: 25 square kilometers. It's not a big landmass at a glance, but the feeling of distance and exploration will definitely be there.

How big is the landmass in 2W1? I looked but couldn't find it. I think it was bigger than that though. I guess we'll get only as much of a world that will fit on one 360 DVD.

Originally Posted by Daroou

How big is the landmass in 2W1? I looked but couldn't find it. I think it was bigger than that though. I guess we'll get only as much of a world that will fit on one 360 DVD.

even if its just 25 square km, thats massive! It would take you a few hours to walk across!

Well it is not exactly massive ( Oblivion's was like 8 IIRC) , i was on a 22km2 island this summer , only 40' to travel around it with a bike

I've deliberately not followed this closely, so I can be pleasantly surprised - hopefully - but does it have mounts and does it have underwater areas?

Yes, it has mounts. Even boats you can use to explore the ocean. Not sure about underwater swimming.

Originally Posted by Maylander
Yes, it has mounts. Even boats you can use to explore the ocean. Not sure about underwater swimming.

Having mounts is definitely the most important of those features, and that's great. The boat thing also sounds fantastic.

Eagerly awaiting this game.

I tried Two Words for 10 minutes and hated it…then I ended up trying it again, and found it so-so…then started enjoying it, then got tired of it - just became so incredibly tedious! - and now I kind of hate it again ;-) Mounts were fun, although I never really mastered mounted combat, and I wasn't able to use polearm-type weapons from horseback (never understood that) While I enjoyed the starting area, I found the "cities" to be dull and way too empty and the combat quickly became tedious. There was also quite a bit of repetition, and that corny dialogue..prithee, kiss my arse! etc etc. Are the releasing a demo? I'd love to give it a whirl first.

Originally Posted by booboo
I tried Two Words for 10 minutes and hated it…then I ended up trying it again, and found it so-so…then started enjoying it, then got tired of it - just became so incredibly tedious! - and now I kind of hate it again ;-) Mounts were fun, although I never really mastered mounted combat, and I wasn't able to use polearm-type weapons from horseback (never understood that) While I enjoyed the starting area, I found the "cities" to be dull and way too empty and the combat quickly became tedious. There was also quite a bit of repetition, and that corny dialogue..prithee, kiss my arse! etc etc. Are the releasing a demo? I'd love to give it a whirl first.

Well, I had the same experience with Two Worlds - but I saw vast potential "underneath", and I suspect the first game was basically just to "get their foot" inside the market.

The second one seems much more like what they really intended - though I can't be certain until it's out.

But, there aren't enough open world CRPGs out there for me to be too picky, so I'll get anything like this, regardless

Originally Posted by booboo
I tried Two Words for 10 minutes and hated it

I stopped playing at this stage , the dvd lies idling in my case since then.

Can't sleep? That's disapointing, sometimes i prefer to do quests during the day sometimes in the night.

It's also disapointing that you cant dive, all new RPG's seems to have removed this option. I think underwater exploration is really nice, it makes open world games feel more like, well, truly open world. Diving for perls, sunken ships and treasurs etc.

I wonder if animals will attack each others? This is also something that seems to be removed from new RPG's. I have my doubts that either Arcania or TW2 will be as good as Gothic2 or be as "advanced" (in G2 animals attacks each others, you can sleep, dive, climb…)

Originally Posted by spiraling69
even if its just 25 square km, thats massive! It would take you a few hours to walk across!

Hmm, that's 5km squared. I can walk 5km in one hour in real life. I remember TW1 being nicely large, and I didn't play through the whole game to see it all either. There were some nice details, but TW1 isn't a high density world either I guess.

Of course, it's the quality that matters most, not size. Also they've said nothing about underground areas yet, have they? Gothic 4 has shown some underground/dungeon areas so we know that there's more than just the surface area in that game.

There's a GARGANTUAN difference between walking 1 hour across real terrain, and 1 hour across terrain in a game world.

Try walking around for an hour in any given CRPG - doing nothing else, and I guarentee that you'll be bored out of your skull, wishing only to die

Putting a heavy stone on the arrow key of your keyboard.

Besides, there do exist long, boring roads in the U.S. where you can drive into 1 direction almost for hours (or so I read).

It's 25 sq km spread over 5 islands, of which one is a micro-continent. Apart from that, there're also ca. 50 dungeons, some of which are multi-level, multi-layered labyrhinthine passages. It'll take you around 10 minutes real-time sailing mini-game to get from some islands to other - or you could uncover teleport locations spread around all of the islands.

Mounts are only of one type this time around - horses only. And only available on the biggest micro-contintent with a sufficiently large space to make use of them (savannah).

You cannot dive in TWII unfortunately.

Animals WILL fight each other, there's a whole intricate complexity to which species hate which or are indifferent to. E.g. a rhino might not attack a baboon (both may focus on you instead… with baboon actually flinging poo and rocks at you from a distance and running away if scared). A zombie may be slow and dumb, but you'll see how eager it is when you pit it against a giant vespine (wasp). Even the earliest screenshots shown raptors going at each other, or werebeasts jumping their unsuspecting prey (or other werebeasts hehe)…

http://twoworldsvault.ign.com/View.p…s.Detail&id=80 (screenie on your right)

http://twoworldsvault.ign.com/View.p…s.Detail&id=75 (check AP 15).

There's a GARGANTUAN difference between walking 1 hour across real terrain, and 1 hour across terrain in a game world.

True. In TWII walking for one hour soon turns into hastily running away from some monster. Unless where you live has zombies, giant insects, dragons etc. running around, 1hr in RL will be pretty uneventful…
http://twoworldsvault.ign.com/screen…res.php?ss=525