shots
| Beyond Divinity PC preview | |
| developer | Larian Studios |
| publisher | Digital Jesters |
| author | Chris O'Regan |
| date | Feb. 9, 2004 |
Chromehounds
NA Review by Marcin
Oblivion-The First 3 Hours
PC Quicktake by walTer
Comic Quick Takes January 25, 2006
Feature by Mike
Belgian developers Larian Studios brought us Divine Divinity towards the end of 2002. Generally regarded as one of the more entertaining and innovative crop of RPG's it received a great deal of acclaim.
Building from the original game Beyond Divinity attempts to address the concerns players had on the original whilst enhancing what was great about it and adding new features to a genre that has become quite crowded of late. New features include:
It all sounds great and we've managed to get hold of some preview code of the game and have been playing around with it to see what all the fuss is about.
Pause-attack-pause-heal-pause-attack
One of the first things we looked into was the combat, since how an RPG handles combat can make or break an RPG. BD follows the same kind of semi real-time system Baldur's Gate follows. Briefly, this consists of enemies attacking your player characters; you pausing the game, issue orders for attack and spell casting; then unpausing the game to initiate the battle. It works well and adds a nice dollop of strategy to the game just to keep those RTS fans happy.
DING!
Level advancement is also a key component of any self respecting RPG. BD handles this by using the standard experience points system. The more creatures you kill the more experience points you get. The more experience points you gather the more levels you gain. As you gain a level you can increase certain attributes such as strength and intelligence. All standard stuff I hear you say, and indeed you'd be correct. But what's different about BD is the skill system.
Gizza job! I can do that!
BD has a rather interesting way of imbuing special abilities to characters. These skills must first be learnt before they can be used. This can be done by either getting hold of teaching books or being taught by an NPC. Once the skill is acquired skill points can be attributed to it which are gained every time a level is achieved. Fans of the original game will remember this system. Thankfully BD has expanded its use to create differing level effects allowing the player to create a hybrid character that can both clobber creatures with a sword and blast them into kingdom come with a fire ball.
A problem shared...
Thanks to the ability to have full control over all of the characters in the party, the puzzles in the game have been reworked for co-operative solving. For example in one of the earlier dungeons the player is confronted with a lever and two interconnecting doorways. By pulling one lever the outer door opens but the inner one remains closed, much like an air lock. By allowing one player to pull the lever in the inner doorway whilst the other remains outside it becomes possible to pass through them to the next area.
Balancing, the bane of all RPGs
The traditional model of RPGs is that the player starts off with little or nothing at all. They eventually grow, and become far more powerful over a reasonable amount of time. As they do, they encounter more and more powerful creatures that are just that bit more challenging than the last lot of beasties they've been bashing away at. Occasionally a rather nasty 'boss creature' will be encountered which will require some quick thinking and strategic combat plans to overcome. From the game play we experienced, this model seemed to hold true apart from a few odd extremely strong creatures that stomped on our characters in a matter of seconds. We can but hope that such unbalanced issues will be addressed in the final release of the game [Famous last words...- Ed.]
Which way are we going again?
The AI we encountered seemed to be lacking in path-finding skills. Many was the time when we sent our party off down a corridor only for one of the members to wander off and find themselves in a skeleton infested room and promptly die soon afterwards. This we also hope will be addressed in the final build. Also, player characters would not defend themselves when being attacked which forces the player to direct their every move.[This issue is amazingly common; even the award-winning KotOR had it! - Ed.] Some players prefer this kind of complete control so it may not be too much of an issue, and to be fair the combat system lends itself to require such control.
Time will tell
We're going to have to wait and see how BD pans out. Right now, visually and sonically things are looking to be going down the right path. If they can sort out the issues detailed above Larian could have another winner on their hands. Projected release date (in Europe at least) is late February. Stick around WT to see the full review!