Divinity II: DKS - Interview @ RPG Codex

RPG Codex caught up with Swen Vincke to discussthe Dragon Knight Saga post-release.  A bit on the RPG-focus of the Flames of Vengeance part:

Having played ED and FoV I had a feeling that with FoV you were pouring more R into your ARPG, considering that the questing/combat ratio was shifted a bit in favor of questing, quests had some choices or multiple solutions, combat areas were intense but rather short and less tedious. Do you plan to continue down this path?

The formula of any Divinity has always been to mix various gameplay styles with one another, and in ED this was no different. You got RPG intensive parts mixed with action intensive parts mixed with the occasional puzzle or platform bit. We thought there was already sufficient action in ED, and that’s how we came to putting a very RPG intensive part in there, which is what we thought was missing there.

To be perfectly honest, we actually wanted to put in another area that featured more action, but during production figured out that it would take us too long, so we cancelled that. One of the things we also did in DKS was make the combat part in the middle shorter, at least for those who rushed through the game, because we felt that for them the action bit might be a bit too much without too much interesting things happening. But in the same breath I have to say that the middle part can be quite rewarding for those that really explore – there’s a lot to be discovered there and I think that the lesser focus on action there encourages that exploration.

As to what we want to do in the future – we have a nifty little plan that we’re putting to execution now, but it’s a bit too soon to talk about it. The team is quite excited about the design, and I hope all the ideas in there will work, but we’re taking some risks with certain things, so I hope they’ll pay off in the end.