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Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

MicoSelva

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Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Divinity: Original Sin 2 Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Larian is looking to expand. Apply while you can.
http://larian.com/jobs.php

JOB OPPORTUNITIES
We are looking for writers, scripters, animators and artists. For more information about each opportunity, please have a look at the details below.

WRITERS GUILD

Since we're working on several new projects we want to expand our writing team and we have two specific kinds of writers in mind:

The Emotionalist

RPGs shouldn't only present the player with hero's journeys, but also emotional ones. Especially with multiplayer in mind, the social aspects of our games will become increasingly important as a wide variety of interaction will be made possible between the players and their companions. That is why we are looking for a writer who is an expert at creating emotionally and psychologically challenging dialogue. We want our games to be not only about the quest, but also the personal growth your characters go through as they are faced with a wide variety of dilemma's, tragedies and victories.

The Game Master

We believe a good quest isn't just about fetching items from challenging monsters: it is first and foremost about the story it tells within the bigger picture. Each quest is a nucleus unto itself that should leave the players wondering about the impact of their choices. And so we are looking for a writer who can design compelling stories as well as write the dialogues that do them justice.

Needless to say we expect all candidates to be either native speakers or perfectly fluent in English!

We also require you to have a played a great amount of RPGs, i.e. you are very well acquainted with the type of games we at Larian create.

SCRIPTERS GUILD

Gameplay Scripter


As gameplay scripter you become a core part of the design team. That means you don't just script: you add to the quest design of the game. You don't just lay out the basics, but adapt and improve as well.

Here are some of the things that will be required of a gameplay scripter:

You have an analytical mind that is able to approach quests from a player's perspective and you can assess whether a quest is fun to play and flows well. Good insight in the entire design process is very important.
You're able to independently come up with creative solutions for whatever quest design problems may arise and implement them.
You have great attention for detail. There are usually dozens of ways to break a freshly scripted quest. Let's see if you stay one step ahead of QA every time!
You have good communication skills.
You are more than familiar with the RPG genre and you have played many RPGs extensively and critically.
Programming experience is a must!

ANIMATORS GUILD

We are looking for several animators to join Larian Studios. As an animator, your responsibilities include:

Working in a creative environment in which you create in-game animations for creatures and assets.
Assisting level designers in their needs to create an emotionally engaging world.
Working with the lead animator to ensure timely completion of animations at a desired quality level.
Cooperating in a peer review method and maintain your own animations through polish and bug fixing.

Junior Animator

You're qualified in working with 3DSmax Biped/CAT or Maya custom rigs.
You have a solid understanding of basic animation principles.
You're motivated, you have good communication skills and you're able to work in a team.
You have a passion for video games and their animations.

Senior Animator

You have a minimum of 3 years' experience in game animations and the game industry.
You're qualified in working with 3DSmax Biped/CAT and Maya custom rigs.
You have a solid understanding of basic animation principles.
You possess the ability to coach and help level-up the junior members of the team.
You have strong problem-solving abilities.
You have a passion for video games and their animations.
Animator Pluses

Proficient in Max script, Mel script and/or Python.
Experienced in FX, particle, procedural animation and motion capture.
Knowledge of rigging in Maya.
Animator Submission Requirements

A cover letter is required that tells a bit about yourself and your motivations to join our team.
Portfolio, and/or reel demonstrating the required skills for the job.
Only online artwork submissions will be accepted (e.g. websites, blogs, or online showcase).
Must be willing to complete an art test if requested to do so.
Willing to relocate to Quebec (Canada) and work on location.

ARTISTS GUILD

Larian Studios is looking for skilled 3D artists to work on future RPG Projects. We are looking for Character Artists, Environment Artists and Level Designers to reinforce the Larian Quebec office. Depending on the specific job position, the perfect candidate has the following skills:

A minimum of 3 years in the industry is required.
Expertise in creating and Baking Highpoly models, created in 3DS max / Z-brush and texturing them in Photoshop (or equivalent 3D and 2D programs). Both organic and hard surface.
A strong interest in Medieval/fantasy/steampunk characters and environments.
Able to produce interesting looking assets within different styles, depending on the project, even when there is no concept art available. (Or create your own 2D concepts.)
Good communication skills, able to work in a team and take creative input from the Art Director.
Work together with the other departments to supply the designers' needs and streamline the tools and processes.
Excellent feeling for shape, colour, lighting and composition. Both at Object level as at Scene level.
Able to create interesting looking levels with the in-game assets: decorating houses, forests, wastelands, fantasy landscapes,...
Expertise in creating modular set pieces like walls, stairs, houses, etc.
Expertise in creating shaders to make interesting looking materials.
Excellent knowledge of human anatomy.
Able to setup and animate simple assets. (Doors opening, machines parts moving,...)
Expertise in creating Modular systems for clothes and armours for players and NPCs.
Strong 2D skills are a plus for a 3D artist.
Experience in architecture or design is also a plus.
In the end, whether you are a skilled Character Artist, Environment Artist or a generalist, the most important thing is that we like the things we see in your portfolio! Level Designers must have a thorough knowledge of RPGs and have played many of the games in the genre extensively.

Seriously, 'The Emotionalist'?

picard-facepalm2.jpg
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
They're moving to Canada, I suppose it was inevitable they took some cues from Bioware.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
It will take us some time to implement all these changes and features, but in the meantime a patch with a whole host of other fixes should be ready for you somewhere in January.
agggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh

It's starting to look like Wasteland 2 will be ready before D:OS.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
It's starting to look like Wasteland 2 will be ready before D:OS.

Nobody believes that.

Doesn't seem likely, but it's the timetable they gave.

Amongst other things, we intend to do a serious balance pass in the future that should tighten up some of the loose ends. This process will easily take a month to complete (have I mentioned this game is massive?) so we will need a solid window of time to complete it between updates.

They fail when it's February and I still don't have my disc.
 

Lios

Cipher
Joined
Jun 17, 2014
Messages
425
Damn this game is addicting and it's sucking time around it
I start playing at noon then after 5 minutes it's 2 in the morning, it's a serious destroyer.

Plus any game which I can play while at the same time I smoke at my leizure
is a game of the year.
 

Xenich

Cipher
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
2,104
Seriously, 'The Emotionalist'?

Depends on how they implement it. If they mean... story and interaction that creates moral dilemmas where a persons emotion is thrown into a blender (ie life/death/right/wrong, etc...), then it could be pretty cool (which is what the description seems to indicate), but if it turns out to be nothing more than a romance simulator direction to facilitate those who are romantically challenged (aka Bioware), well... yeah... /facepalm indeed.
 

SwiftCrack

Arcane
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
1,836
So I started D:OS the other day and played up till completing the murder mystery.

I really hate the camera but that is my only gripe so far.

Oh and is the Homestead your stronghold or something?
 
Last edited:

SwiftCrack

Arcane
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
1,836
I don't like how you can only rotate it 90 degrees to the left or to the right (the 2.5D over the shoulderish view).
 

SwiftCrack

Arcane
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
1,836
Really? I must've missed that because I was fiddling with the graphics options a lot (my card ran a little too hot with everything on so I was flipping options on and off to test performance). Good to know that it is an option (I swear I read somewhere that the camera angle was a design decision).

:updatedmytxt:
 

Xenich

Cipher
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
2,104
Really? I must've missed that because I was fiddling with the graphics options a lot (my card ran a little too hot with everything on so I was flipping options on and off to test performance). Good to know that it is an option (I swear I read somewhere that the camera angle was a design decision).

:updatedmytxt:

It was. They locked it because it reduced the amount of work load needed to fill out all of the scenes in each area. When you open it up, notice how in many areas there will be an "ideal" view while the rest is barren or lacks attention. I don't think it looks too bad. I mean, if you want the scenes to look as intended, keep it on.
 

JasonNH

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2009
Messages
277
Heh, I thought that might be the case, hence my question. Definitely full rotation FTW.
 

SwiftCrack

Arcane
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
1,836
I'm already playing with most effects off due to overheating so I'm sure it'll be fine graphics wise.
 

gunman

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jan 4, 2008
Messages
1,050
I grew sick of the game interface, and it's not the camera but the lack of responsiveness - there are a lot of effects and animations going on on the screen and I often click on buttons and nothing happens, like it's waiting for an animation to finish.

And why the hell did they make all the monsters dance when you target them? When you finally find the optimum camera rotation to expose most of the target mesh, when you click it moves from under the cursor and here you move again taking AoOs and wasting your turn.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Some of comments from Swen's blog:

My one let down at the end of the process is the absence of (IMO) an earnest effort to cultivate a modding community...

We know, but we're going to get better at it, promised.

Any chances of you guys coming up with a Dragon Commander 2?

We talk about it & it's often on the back of my mind. Maybe.

First of all: congrats. I'm so glad to see that passion, skill, honesty and transparency still pays off. Nobody deserved the overall recognition and the huge critical and commercial success more than Swen and the Larian team. You can ......

We're looking for extra writers and as I mentioned in the KS update, we're fixing some of the faults we made due to a few iterations too little. However, a lot of methods in the storytelling arsenal aren't available to us because of my insistence on doing it without in-game cutscenes, the latter being a consequence of my preference to focus on the systemics. We'll be trying out a few things with the new games but it for sure makes storytelling a lot harder.

I can't even overstate how much I liked Original Sin. That said, there were few issues that undermined its state from "timeless classic" to "barely pretty damn good", in my opinion ......

Your points are all valid issues & there's work to be done there.

The combat is a perfect example of what I meant with the impact of not having sufficient dev capacity. There just wasn't any time to iterate over the later parts like we did over the earlier parts and that's why for some players it became too easy (not all players though which is another problem).

Same thing goes for the loot - we can do better with the randomised loot system than we did in the current version. I do think random loot can co-exist with predefined loot.

As for XP, we introduced exploration XP which shows we're thinking in similar directions, but I wouldn't remove combat XP. One thing we wanted to add was encounter XP but again, we didn't have the time anymore.

1. Will you try to implement more choice&consequence in dialogues/interaction with NPCs? I loved D:OS but I feel it was quite linear on the social part of "role-playing".
2. Related to the "social" part: will you ever develop an RPG where a non-lethal playthrough is a completely viable solution?

1. I actually think we have more choice than most RPGs - we just don't present it in 3 dialog options but rather in the range of possible actions. But I know what you mean, and yes, we'll try to put more of that in there.
2. I hope so.

For the Inventory and looting, I would invite you guys to look at Wasteland 2's looting button. One of them allow the game to automatically send items to the characters with the relevant skills. A character with shotgun skills for instance would be automatically sent all the shells and shotguns, and spread between multiple characters if they both have the skill. This feature saved so much inventory time, it would be great if you guys would implement a similar one as well.

We've thought about it but thought it took away from the item fever. Maybe we should try it out and make it optional.

1. I think the lack of quality/polish in later-game DOS was inevitable, because you're going to get an overwhelming majority of beta-feedback on the early parts of the game, even all the content in the game is in the alpha or beta to begin with. It's the nature of the beast. There are some ways to combat this, but I'm not sure how viable any of them would be. I imagine the whole process is very similar to revising text, albeit on a much grander scale: energy and focus can only ever decrease.

5. In terms of narrative delivery, I would strongly suggest you look at some of the things Obsidian has been doing with Pillars of Eternity. Specifically, the short "skits" that are basically illustrated interactive dialogs--they're a very immersive, low-budget way to invest players more into the characters, story and world.

1. One big issue here is that when you start a review session on monday, only on the friday of the following week you finish your play through. That and the fact that the further you get, the bigger the difference between player characters is, makes it very hard to polish the last part of the game to the level of the first part. You can do it in chunks, but that doesn't give you the full meta-view that you actually need to do it well.

5. Yes, I liked those a lot.

What i'd love to see:
- better controls - fixed enemy highlighting, fast camera dragging (i love the use of inertia in Civilization: BE)
- party rest, hunger
- unarmed skill
- less corridorish outdoors
- C&C that is not tied only to particular quest/chapter, also - ending alternation
- improved multicore CPU performance, no spikes on single core

Those are all on my list too except for party rest, hunger. I once put it on there but removed it again because I was afraid it'd be too tedious for players. Maybe it should make it back if we automate most of the process. To be tried at some point, for sure.

=>I want Day/Night cycles this time please with npc schedules.

I'm very hesitant on the schedules thing right now - I think there's still a thousand other things we should improve first before we get into that development hellhole.

Having different character model builds would be nice as well, didn't like we were stuck with one body build.

We won't do it like that again, rest assured.

Please fix/rebalance the tenebrium skill/system ASAP. Having a skill that superceeds all of you normal weapon skills part way through the game is really frustrating.

Really looking forward to your next games though. Would be great to see a fallout or even a sci-fi type game on this engine and with Larian's level of detail and polish.

Yes, in hindsight that was counterproductive. It feeds into the discussion about the problems of character development at intermediate levels. We're still trying to figure out what the best approach is there. Pretty much every system we've looked at has negatives and so we'll most likely end up experimenting for quite some time on this.

The only problem I had with the game is that as an RPG, I found myself often disconnected from the game world due to the sheer amount of silliness and childish humor. I think the humor in the game could have been more sophisticated. And maybe the Art style could have been slightly more mature. The Original Divinity's art leaned itself more toward realism even though it was pixel art. This is just personal taste however.

We get this type of criticism a lot and are trying to walk on the right side of the very fine line that is humor in games. However, we won't remove it as it's something that the majority of our players actually like. People actually do like to have fun from time to time and there's sufficient other RPGs out there that take themselves very seriously. That said, we know there's a lot of room for improvement and it's being worked on.

Are you going to make a detailed tutorial for creating own content with the editor anytime soon? Many modders have refrained from using it and attempting to create their own content due to the complexity and sparse information about it.

The next patch *should* include the exporters so you can create your own content. We needed to negotiate something with the middleware vendors first, but that's sorted out now.

I hope your two new games have co-op just like original sin. Me and my brother fucking loved playing that co-op!

I'm really happy to hear that. We made it for brothers/sisters, close friends and couples. A lot more is going to be coming in that department.

By the way, are you satisfied with the Rock Paper Scissors game as dialogue conflict resolution, or are you going to improve it?

We want to improve it - it provides for fun moments but it has quite a few issues too.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The hit bounding box of the game shouldn't have a relationship with the mesh animation of the characters. In fact it probably should be a invisible cylinder centered on the origin of said mesh, assuming they are not barbarian enough to actually make that move too.
 

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