Editorial Sven Vincke Discusses Dragon Commander Design Issues

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Tags: Divinity: Dragon Commander; Larian Studios; Sven Vincke

Sven Vincke is back with another long blog post. This time he's discussing various design issues Larian Studios have encountered while developing their "I want to be a dragon!"-sim: Divinity: Dragon Commander.

Here's a cut:

Then we decided that we should open up our horizons, and we started looking at completely different routes to take. And when I mean completely different, I mean really completely different. At some point, we even contemplated making the game a Master of Magic style game. Imagine that.

And then, really only then, did we go back to the original concept, and started wondering, why the hell isn’t this working? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the original idea? Were we that blinded? Or are we just inept at executing it?

And as we looked at the original concept, it dawned on us that there was nothing wrong with it. We had just refused to do one thing because it made our jobs harder, and we didn’t want to take more production risks than we were already taking.

Our mistake was that the entire game was taking place in the air.

One can hope they return to the Master of Magic idea some time in the future...

Thanks Marquess Cornwallis!

I stopped reading right there and started to weep uncontrollably.

i kno' rite.
let's hug.

If Dragon Commander did actually end up like this, I would've had complete interest in this game. Guess I'll have to day dream.

Itz *totally* like this thing DraQ was talking about.

Lar should definitely spend some/more time hanging around the 'Dex.

Lar should make more isometric games that made him what it is now, not some papamole flying shit i wanna be a dragon simulator.

I don't really get why he is making this game. It's so unclear what genre the game is or what fundamental playing style it has. He's mentioned many times now that he's working on these games so that he can gather the funds for the "Ultimate RPG" and yet what the hell is Dragon Commander exactly? I assume they have no marketing department over there because it seems this game would be very difficult to market and have no proven audience, meaning a terrible game to make if you want to be reliably building your funds. Not a bad thing for the potential of the game itself and it sounds quite interesting but if they don't start working to proven formulas then the Ultimate RPG is probably going to end up getting further and further away, not closer.

he will go KS for the ultimate RPG





and fail

I wish him the best of luck, but I think at best it will be an unpolished gem that will go largely unnoticed by the mainstream. I think they need to dig their feet in and build a reputation on a well established genre and just stick with it until they have that financial freedom. He had/has those isometric games going on but they probably aren't the best if building funds is the primary goal

This game seems pretty awesome actually, just depends if they can execute all those different elements well.