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Project Leader Swen Vincke Discusses the World of Beyond Divinity
“More than anything, we are challenging them mentally”
Divine Divinity was one of those delightful surprises when it was released in 2002. The name notwithstanding, the experience was a delight. The game itself had a few problems but there was certainly depth there, and the game was a lot of fun to play.
Even Larian Studios’ project leader Swen Vincke admits that Divine Divinity was not the experience the developers really wanted.
“We weren’t all that happy with Divine Divinity,” he said, in a phone interview from San Francisco, where he is staying while attending the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. “There were a lot of things we wanted to improve. In Beyond Divinity we added the things we wanted to have in the first place.”
The storyline of Beyond Divinity takes place 20 years after the original game. You are a servant of the divine one, a paladin who hates and hunts necromancers. It is during the battle with one particularly vile necromancer that you are grabbed by a demon and dragged into another universe where you are soul-forged to a death-knight, a creature of evil. Together the paladin and death-knight must venture forth together to find a way to break that forging. To succeed is to resume the path you have set for yourself. To fail is to spend eternity linked to that which you have despised.
Many aspects of this title have been redone. The skill system, for example, has been reworked to create an incredible array of possibilities for specialization for your character.
“You can really tweak the skills anyway you want,” Swen said. “For example, if you are a warrior you can go two-handed weapon fighting, so you can specialize in slashing. Literally millions of skills that can be customized.”
There are 300 base skills that can be paired and interwoven to create a truly unique avatar.
The graphics engine has also undergone a facelift, with much smoother animation and graphics.
“In Divine Divinity, the weapons the creatures were carrying were all the same,” Swen said. “In Beyond Divinity all the creatures are carrying different weapons. We added more fancy spell effects. And you can play in 1600x1200 (resolution), and zoom in and out.”
Swen was asked what fan-base Beyond Divinity was geared for. He described it as looking at two circles, which overlapped. One circle represents the traditional RPG fan, which might like their RPGs along the lines of a Baldur’s Gate. The other circle is the combat-oriented RPG, along the lines of a Diablo. That overlapping area is where Beyond Divinity rules. The game will allow players to customize their experience by either taking it toward the traditional or action sub-classes of the genre.
“If you play the game without doing any combat (visiting all the story elements), without cheats, it takes about 40 hours to get through it,” Swen stated. “If you play it with combat, it is about 62-100 hours.”
The combat aspect of the game has also undergone some changes. The combat of Beyond Divinity is much more tactically driven.
“Combat is, in my opinion, much more fun than in Divine Divinity,” Swen said. “Combat is cool because there is much more tactics in there.
“More than anything, we are challenging them (the players) mentally.”
The general story feel of the game is one aspect that has not changed that much. Beyond Divinity draws inspiration from a variety of sources and the astute player will find reference to a wide array of ideas, from Lord of the Rings to the Count of Monte Cristo.
”On the story front, we basically gave people more of the same, but we tried a few more things out,” he said.
The game is broken into four acts, with the first being a somewhat linear re-entry into the world of the game.
“Within Act 1, it’s relatively linear,” Swen said. “Act 2 and Act 3 are probably the most non-linear parts. You have to get a ranking to continue in Act 3, so you have to do a lot a little sub-quests.
“People want some direction, so we tried to give them some direction this time while still giving them the freedom to do what they want.”
Another intriguing aspect of the game world comes in the form of the Battlefields. This is an alternate universe, which doubles the size of the game, and also gives players a viable escape from pursuing the central storyline. Players can enter the Battlefields, get random quests and explore and involve themselves in a more action-oriented experience.
With approximately 300 quests, an upgrade to key elements of the game, and more tactical combat, Beyond Divinity promises to do what any good sequel will do – take the foundations laid by its predecessor, up the ante, and create its own place in the world.
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