RPGWatch Feature: Divinity 2 Interview

The second part of our Divinity 2 coverage from the Leipzig Games Convention is this Q&A we did at the end of the demo session with Swen Vincke. Here's an exerpt:

RPGWatch: How many quests are there?

Swen Vincke: We haven’t counted them. It is a lot. The interesting part is the amount of solutions to a quest. There are quests with something like 30 solutions. Even though there are sometimes only small differences between the choices, in many cases the difference is quite big. If you count all of those it is a huge number.

RPGWatch: So you can’t do all quests in one play through?

Swen Vincke: No, it’s actually quite cool in that way. In Divine Divinity it took a long time before you see the results of your actions, but here it is very instant and you immediately see the effects in your quest chain.
Read it all here.
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I have to admit, I'm not actually a big fan of the whole Divinity franchise, but this is sounding better and better. Great interview, I will certainly follow this closely from now on, to see if it is something I should buy as soon as it hits the shelves.

I like that they chose to kill multiplayer instead of butchering the story just to support it. Too often, game designers do the opposite, so it's nice to see someone unwilling to compromise the single player experience.

The variety of ways to solve quests is also quite interesting, if it ends up as good as it sounds. Must be hell to QA, though. I suspect there will be quite a few ways to break some of the quests when the game will be initally released. Still, better that than the usual railroad quests we get usually.

The withdrawal of MP is a major drawback for the community which wanted MP since Divinity.

"We" had hoped for so long it would happen. I'm just disappointed, and I bet most of the other community members are, too. Or at least a part of it.

I would suggest you play WoW then. It should satisfy all your MP needs.
Just let us SP fans have one of our too seldom created games.

Perhaps I will buy this one, if not only to support a Belgian dev

Originally Posted by vidder
Just let us SP fans have one of our too seldom created games.

I agree. There are imho too many MP-based games out there.

It's just that this feature was the one most wished for.

The community also wanted to shift the combat in DD more towards Baldur's Gate and the end result was BD. I'm glad they didn't get this.

SP good, this is why Divinity 2 is 1st place on my wish list?
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MERCURY TURNPIKE CRUISER SPECIFICATIONS

This looks very promising. I loved playing Divine Divinity and it really sounds like they paid attention to what was good and not so good in both DD and BD.

Why would you have to screw the story up to add multiplayer? Did the story change in BG, BG2, IWD/2, NWN, NWN2 if someone else played too? No. Simply, one was the protagonist.

The story would remain the same. Take a lesson from diablo and just up the monsters HPs!!

Very disappointed there will be no multiplayer.


I'm playing Divdiv1 again on Hard in anticipation for Ego Draconis. I just need 1 more map piece and i have armor of larian at level 24

i've also edited the config.div file to run the game in 1680x1050 which makes using a bow a lot more fun

As a female survivor, heres my tips to get started on Hard.

-turn the dragons, get the pyramid. Use it, collect the other one (using pause to avoid taking too many hits)
- leave one pyramid at town
- take the path south (collecting tranporter scroll via scripted event)
- head east over the bridge and then head north up the path then east again going past the cursed abby collecting a rope
- you should be close to the market. check your automap, i believe the transporter is marked
- below the market teleporter theres a wizards shop….
- talk to the bard, when the wizard comes out run in, steal all his pots, his idrank5 dagger and the book of "hide from sight"
- now recall back to the starting town, activate the healer village teleporter and start your dungeon.

Thats the very start of my 5th play through. I'm really just getting too good at this game. (not using scorpion traps / command at all)

Originally Posted by SirJames
Why would you have to screw the story up to add multiplayer? Did the story change in BG, BG2, IWD/2, NWN, NWN2 if someone else played too? No. Simply, one was the protagonist. The story would remain the same. Take a lesson from diablo and just up the monsters HPs!! Very disappointed there will be no multiplayer.

Diablo? Thanks Divine Divinity isn't Diablo and "…get back devil don't attempt make DD2 a Diablo clone!"

What CRPG but MMORPG have a strong base of multiplayers? I don't see any, Diablo isn't a CRPG. Your "just up the monsters HP" is quite basic and simplistic. Even in a game like Diablo where you can only fight I doubt multiplayer is only that, so in a true CRPG…

RPG in Blizzard's games entirely consists of fighting.

There are no social skills at all.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
The community also wanted to shift the combat in DD more towards Baldur's Gate and the end result was BD. I'm glad they didn't get this.

I don't remember BD failure was in its fight system. You was alone in DD and not in BD it's weird if they came back to DD instead of improving BD approach. I don't mean that BD fights was better than in DD but I feel a party system is a better choice.

A good point of BD was dungeons design improved in comparison to most of those of DD but still an area to improve more.

A great feature of BD was the sneaking system, original and very fun.

For me BD failure was its world build, well more exactly the DD great feature was its world build during more than half of the game (exploration, quests, area design). For me the best would be DD world like + improved BD fight teaming + BD sneaking system + improved BD dungeon design + Improved item interaction.

I disagree about the combat and there's nothing weird about it. The core DivDiv system is action-based and controlling two characters destroyed the pace and rhythm. I like party-based CRPGs but you can't just stick it on an existing hack'n'slash mechanic - it needs to be designed from the ground up.

Perhaps but I don't think it's a static rule that should never be changed. Party and hack&slash seems to me a good idea even if BD didn't succeed that well. I don't remember BD fights was so bad but I don't remember well. Also pure Hack&Slash with a high action intensity will have hard time to setup a good RPG with diversified elements.

Sure - but then it wouldn't be Divinity, would it? High intensity H&S is a core part of the original game.

I definitely don't see DD or BD like that. In fact when action take the lead like in most too big dungeons of DD, the gameplay quality drop down. In fact the Hack&Slash of this series doesn't match quality of games like Dungeon Master or Diablo 2. Even Dungeon Lord has a much better H&S action. This series has great moment thanks to other features, great puzzles/riddles/mysteries to solve and tricks to find, well setup quests, and other features.