Tacticular Cancer: We'll have your balls

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Interview Divinity: Original Sin and Dragon Commander with Swen Vincke

Discussion in 'RPG Codex News & Content Comments' started by Zed, Jun 30, 2012.

  1. Zed only plays Dota2 Patron

    Zed
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    #1
    Click here and disable ads!
    Tags: Divinity: Original Sin; Dragon Commander; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

    E-famous Internet-person TotalBiscuit has an audio interview up with Swen Vincke from Larian Studios. They talk about both Divinity: Original Sin (first half) and Dragon Commander (second half). There's no video of the interview per se, but there is footage from both games. You might as well just open it in a tab and listen to the audio like a podcast or something. It runs for 28 minutes so crack open a cold one and relax.

    Hirato, Sul, SuicideBunny and 1 other person Brofist this.

  2. Monkeyfinger Scholar

    Monkeyfinger
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    #2
    Interesting how Swen hates the combat in divinity games so far, and how he's convinced fans of the series feel the same way. Of course he had to have a reason for switching to turn based for original sin, but I figured he would be reasonably happy with the real time systems he made for divine divinity and DKS. I figured that he likes some old turn based RPGs and wanted to do one of his own, but that he was also comfortable playing and making action RPGs.

    In this interview he outright says that divinity's action systems aren't good, and that Divinity has fans in spite of the real time combat. That caught me off guard.

  3. Tigranes Liturgist

    Tigranes
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    Brian Fargo
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    #3
    DKS combat was kind of meh - Divinity was also rather mediocre, but happened to be more fun in practice than it should be. I haven't seen the video but I'd fully agree that the series carries the combat, not the other way round, or at best, the combat shines in conjunction with other design decisions.

  4. SCO Arcane

    SCO
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    #4
    Oh god don't fuck this up and make the combat complex - take inspiration from 5 foot steps interrupts, pinning, tripping, coup-de-grace. Make spells hard to find and mage-cannons late game, make positioning mean defeat or victory (pinning, attacks, sneak attacks easier from behind). Make simultaneous attacks (defending against 2+ opponents) harder to defend.
    Make terrain have influence and AI taking advantage of it (including spells).

    Pity the stances of JA2 are kinda useless without projectile weapons, but they'd be useful for bows and crossbows probably. Make buildings climbable (have a climbing/jumping animation that can be used in combat).

  5. kaizoku Prophet

    kaizoku
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    #5
    Has anyone asked him about the combat system?
    Maybe a codex interview?
    Alternatively I would say to ask him in his blog (some months ago, on a different subject I got a reply from him), but the last blog update was in June, so he's probably not spending time around it and will likely miss the question.


    After watching the interview and the videos I got more interested in Dragon Commander than Original Sin.
    Yeah, one could say the dragon jetpacks and the romantic alliances can be a bit cheesy... but it looks like it can end up being a very interesting strategy game.

  6. mbpopolano24 Learned

    mbpopolano24
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    #6
    I like almost ALL what Swen is saying. I am looking forward to this one; who knows, Divinity and Wasteland 2 could finally bring back GOOD TB games ('good' is the key word here for me, I don't give a damn about TB combat if the game is shit). I'll preorder this one for sure.

    Good idea to invite Swen to talk to the Codex, although he should probably..... :decline:

  7. Severian Silk Prophet

    Severian Silk
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    #7
    This. Someone needs to clarify what is going on.

  8. Mikayel Augur

    Mikayel
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    #8
    Gameplay looks great. Larian's yet to disappoint, and judging from the actual footage it doesn't seem like it will.

  9. Dantus12 Educated

    Dantus12
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    #9

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