Games

[Hanged Man]

http://www.lar.net/2015/08/12/returning-to-kickstarter/

Returning to Kickstarter

Hi Everybody!

I’m so glad I can finally talk to you about this! It was getting hard to talk about what we’re doing without actually saying what we were doing, so I’m really relieved that it’s finally in the open and that I can share my excitement for this.

In case you missed it, I’m of course referring to our recent announcement that we’ll be returning to Kickstarter with Divinity: Original Sin 2; our biggest and most ambitious RPG to date — one that will either sink us, or go on to be remembered as our best game ever!

We’re saving the announcement of all the features for when the Kickstarter campaign launches on August 26th, so I won’t discuss those just yet. Instead, I thought I’d talk a little bit about why we’re returning to crowdfunding, and what our hopes and aspirations are.

Divinity: Original Sin wouldn’t be the game it was without the input from our Kickstarter backers & Steam Early Access players. There were a lot of them and they pushed us forwards in directions we hadn’t anticipated when we started development. To this day, our entire team is incredibly grateful for this. Our community was a critical factor for the success of the game. Without having that same community on board, I think it’s going to be very hard for us to achieve the goals we have with Divinity: Original Sin 2, and so we’ll do our very best to convince them to back us once again. The result at the end will be so much better if they do.

I’m hopeful that our players will find Divinity: Original Sin 2 a worthy cause to back though; it really goes beyond what’s been done so far in turn-based RPGs and it’s going to be a lot of fun to play. Actually, it already is and we’ll be showing a prototype at Pax Prime where people will be able to get a taste of it.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 builds further on the foundations we’ve been laying with Divinity: Original Sin (D: OS), and Divinity: Original Sin – Enhanced Edition (D: OS EE). For us, this allows for an unprecedented focus on the gameplay. We won’t be “losing time” building the elementary systems that typically take up more than 60% of our development time. Instead, we can start building the world immediately and try out all kinds of things.

That also means we have much more room for fine-tuning. If we can convince our players to help us, then that should allow us to make a real diamond. When we made D: OS, we did a lot of experimentation with systems, constantly improving them and offering them to our players for feedback. I believe it was a shining example of the power of early access, which both provides a developer with feedback as well as the funding to integrate that feedback. It was also the best development process I’d ever seen.

Now that news about D:OS 2 is in the open, I can also talk a bit about the commercial reasoning behind making D:OS EE. By now, the investment we did in D:OS EE is beyond what most would consider reasonable, both financially and in terms of time we’ve been putting in. But, other than allowing us to perfect the game which I think always make commercial sense, the work that is being done on D:OS EE would in any case still have had to be done for D:OS 2. So it’s not as if we haven’t been moving forward. On the contrary, all the money we’re investing in D:OS EE is also investment in the tech that’s powering D:OS 2. And the tech can do a lot.

Put simply, if you were to compare what we’re doing to what Bioware did back in the day with Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2, D:OS 2 is to be our Baldur’s Gate 2 — building further on our equivalent of Baldur’s Gate; D:OS.

Of course, returning to Kickstarter isn’t without risk. There’s no guarantee that we’ll have any success. If we were to fail, I guess that will mean we’re on the wrong track, and that we would have to return to the drawing board. It would be a real pity if that happens, but there’s no certainties in life, and perhaps we’re completely wrong about this. But that too would still be valuable feedback.

I’m hopeful though — there’s a small scene in D:OS 2, right at the beginning of the demo that we’ll be showing to press and players at Pax Prime. It’s a small detail, but every time I see it, my heart starts beating faster because of the enormous implications it has for the entire game. It was when I saw this that I felt sure about taking it to Kickstarter. I think other RPG players will recognize what it means for the game and their hearts will start beating faster also.

And I think they’ll want us to put as much of it as we possibly can in the game. We have the budget to do cool stuff already, but what we’ll be doing is something we can really take very far. How far will depend on how our Kickstarter campaign fares. Perhaps we’ll even be able to do very cool stuff - all the money we’ll hopefully raise with Kickstarter will be put on top of what we’re investing already to make the game better. The same scenario essentially as with the original D:OS.

It know it’s all a bit cryptic for the moment, but you’ll see it soon enough — on August 26th to be precise. For now, let me just say that this is getting very close the RPG that will dwarf them all, and I can’t wait to show it to you!

Given that we’re returning to Kickstarter, I’m of course very eager to hear your thoughts about what we should and shouldn’t be doing. In the past, the comment section in this blog has been a goldmine of advice for me & Larian, so I’m very curious to read what you all think.

And to be honest, also a bit nervous about it all ;)

Have a great day! (And don’t forget to send us suggestions for the campaign here)

[Hanged Man]

Kickstarter's up, looks fantastic: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/la ... inal-sin-2

The $90 pledge gives you four digital copies of the game, so that's something to consider for our groups.

[shubn]

Co-op footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1gAHRZlOik

Co-op footage HQ Download: https://mega.nz/#!D0wGFJaC!MYJDtRF_CenW ... PgpypzVPQo

[jeffrobot494]

Running A Campaign In Divinity: Original Sin 2's D&D Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJyXQxgNVhU

[icycalm]

Update #37: Release Date! New Patch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiWM2nuCTSQ

Release date is September 14, though I would recommend starting a couple months later to give them time to patch any issues.

The video is a must-see. It shows lots of scenes and mechanics from the game and gives a great idea on what an improvement it is to the first one. Basically as much of an improvement from DOS1 as BG2 was from BG1. Maybe even more. You get a ship to sail with that is your mobile home (and it can also fly). Character models are incredible, animations are incredible, graphics and art in general are incredible. They are making a Tactician mode from the get-go that will have "AI 2.0".

I also really like their offices a lot. Best developer offices I have ever seen.

[icycalm]

It's out and it's doing extremely well from reports. More here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1434148

[icycalm]

Feature Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL7_U7oWJzk

Such a rich trailer.

[icycalm]

Patch 3 is live! And it’s a huge one!
http://steamcommunity.com/games/435150/ ... 7677711328

By the time we are ready to play this in a few months, it should be all patched-up and waiting for us.

[icycalm]

Review: http://culture.vg/reviews/in-depth/divi ... 17-pc.html

And some criticisms: https://boards.fireden.net/v/thread/406555071/

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a bad game

Yes, yes, call me a contrarian, but this game is legitimately shit.
I'm not even gonna get into the cringe-worthy writing, because that's never been Larian's focus and I wasn't expecting it to be good even with all the hype (Muh 10 writers, muh Avellone)
Why the fuck did they ruin the combat from the first game? That was the one thing the game had going for it.
First off, it's ridiculous how random loot is. It makes it so that you being undergeared or overgeared is left up to chance.
Secondly, the gear blot is out of this world. Level 5 gear and level 6 gear feel like they're different universes apart. Why would anyone ever spend any time upgrading armor when you know you're just gonna find something that is objectively better in every metric 30 minutes from now?
Who the fuck thought that a good RPG consists of constantly changing gear around of 4 party members every level up? And this is exacerbated by the TERRIBLE inventory management.
The Player -> Enemy -> Player initiative system is indefensible. This shit is giving me Banner Saga flashbacks.
Separating physical and magic armor means that you're gimping yourself by trying to have diverse damage types. Want to have both physical and magic attacks? Cool, just make sure you destroy both the enemies physical and magical armor first. Specializing is superior in every way. Plus, armor being a surefire block of CC rather than having a chance associated with it means that every combat plays out the same way. It's a simple DPS race every single time. Everything is safe and sterile. Add in cooldowns and capped AP and there's no chance of anything interesting happening. You already know how everything is gonna play out three turns in advance. This has been dumbed down for the casuals who are afraid of RNG fucking them over.
Wake me up from this nightmare. When is Pillars of Eternity 2 coming out, again?

[icycalm]

RPG Codex review: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10848

Painful read.

Because his appraisal of the first game is correct, I fear the same must be true of his appraisal of the second.

[icycalm]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/43515 ... id=6528969

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the award-winning RPG. Gather your party. Master deep, tactical combat. Join up to 3 other players - but know that only one of you will have the chance to become a God.

I just noticed this last line!

When watching the trailers, I'd thought that the competition and double-crossing between players they were touting would be gimmicky, since it makes no sense to hinder, let alone kill your party members. But this changes everything. It reminds me of the M.U.L.E. review saying that the players are competing for who wins, but at the same time must co-operate or no one will.

[icycalm]

From Discord:

I just finished reading this review that icy posted in the Original Sin 2 thread http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10848
and it's pretty much spot-on, outside of a few minor inaccuracies that don't really matter
almost every single fight in OS2 (at least so far) comes down to dumping all your damage spells up front and then cycling through debuff attacks until the enemy is dead.
it's really disappointing, after all the wacky stuff that can happen in an OS1 fight
we got group-wiped the other night in OS2 -- when that happened in OS1, people wanted to immediately jump back into it and try out a new party build -- in OS2 we just groaned and decided to postpone another attempt until much later. Anecdotal, of course, but a p good example of how watered-down OS2 feels
I guess what I'm saying is wait for it to go on sale if you really want to play it.