Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition

Without insider knowledge it's impossible to know whether they are being completely honest about their financial state. Tuco's position is glass half empty; Superhiro's position is glass half full. This is far from their first published game so I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Superhiro_sl said:

Fair enough, it could be BS. However, I like this industry model of asking for a little more money to finish the game through KS, than releasing a buggy, unfinished game and then patching it over the subsequent weeks/months after release to what it could/should have been just because the producers says you've hit budget and its good enough to release.

Click to expand...

Yeah, in an ideal world I really like kickstarters. The big fear is that it'll be ruined by publishers who want to cash in on their or their IP's good reputation.

I dunno yet but Divinity the RTS got about 1 hour of playtime before I deleted it. I doubt Divinity the Turn Based RPG will get much more.

The premise of Dragon Commander looks interesting. I watched the trailer for it, and it looked like it was worth picking up. I guess I'll abstain since the general opinion is they didn't exactly hit the mark. A complex game like that seems like it would be very difficult to execute properly.

Sulrn_sl said:

I think the issue with Dragon Commander was that it was initially supposed to be tacked on to Divinity 2, but never got implemented due to the failure to secure a quality budget. They stretched an idea out and made it it's own game. :/

Click to expand...

I can see how a situation like that might impact a game's quality.

Logged into the alpha just to get a feel for the game (they actually recommend that you DON'T play the alpha unless you really enjoy testing games), and aside from obvious issues with graphics, dead characters still trying to take a turn, and other clearly alpha problems, I like it. It is very Baldur's Gate-ish, with a little bit of a twist, but not anything you haven't seen before either. It shows initiative using portraits of your characters and the enemy characters, so you know who is attacking in which order. When it is your turn, you have a certain number of action points to spend and then you end your turn. Obvious stuff like moving a few spaces and then attacking is possible, and I made my hot as fuck redhead chick (no character customization yet, you take what they give you) an archer and she was able to fire 3 times per round, unless she was using a special ability which tells you how many action points it uses.

The camera was a little glitchy but I liked it better than many; you could move it manually and then click a spot for your characters to walk to, and the camera would stay where you had it instead of following your characters once they started moving, like many games do. Combat camera was a little annoying because often ranged enemies are too far away so when the camera centers on them and they shoot you, you can't see what happened to your character. But that kind of stuff will probably be remedied, I'd hope.

I liked the dynamic of two characters (I believe the intent is being able to play one and have your buddy play another, or you just play two yourself), and the "philosophy" system (I'm using the wrong term, but not going to log back in and see what they call it) where every so often a "dilemma" for lack of a better term would come up. Like, you pick up an item and someone says, "Hey, that's not yours, put it back!" You then have a little dialogue between your characters where you decide if you want to put it back or tell them to fuck off, you're the mighty hero, you'll take what you want. Each character gets a choice of how they react, and which response you choose pushes you towards one trait or another. With the item example above, if you put it back you were more "spiritual" and you gained some magic resistance. If you kept it, you were "materialistic" and gained a bonus to pickpocket. It shows you both of them on your character, and highlights which side you are leaning toward, so I would imagine (although I have no proof yet) that you will be confronted with multiple spiritual vs. materialistic dilemmas, and whichever you choose most is what advantage you get. Maybe I'm wrong and you could get +2, +3, etc. as you pick more, or split between the two, but it *seems* like an either/or bonus right now.

There are also traits you get every level that are cool, which you pick once and that's it, now you have it. One I picked, just for the fuck of it, was being able to talk to animals. Others are more traditional like damage with particular weapons, more action points, higher initiative, etc. but there are several like the animal one where they aren't necessarily your power-gamer choice, but probably give you some benefit at various points in the game.

The only shitty part is that you only get two characters (I believe), and there are 3 character archetypes. Now, you can take any skills and abilities you want, and even create a hybrid class if you choose, so even though they list fighter/ranger/mage, you aren't playing the same fighter as someone else, for example. You could even give the fighter some spellcasting ability if you want, or some rangery/roguery stuff like backstabs. But there are clearly more than enough abilities for 3 characters, so you're going to have to choose.

It is hard to say with just playing for an hour (and most of that time just wandering around and picking up items or talking to npcs), but it seems like exactly the kind of game I am hoping to play. Plenty of skill flexibility, customizing traits, tons of items and crafting (I believe this is the game where you could take a stick and put a knife on the end and make a spear, but I could be confusing it with another one, and I saw no obvious way to do that before I stopped playing, but I didn't try real hard either), etc. I probably won't play any more of it until release because I want the game to be new and fresh, and complete, but I am really looking forward to it now, much more than when I just backed it in the hopes that it was good.