Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General Translation of the Spanish preview

As portuguese is a lot similar to spanish, i could translate the Beyond Divinity Preview from the game site DeJuegos. Took longer than i thought, as i´m not that good in english. Probably there are many errors and not so clear sentences, so let me know if you find anything ununderstandable. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />




At the beginning of its development this game was known as RiftRunner ; nevertheless, with the purpose of emphasizing the idea of the Divinity Universe, it ended up being titled Beyond Divinity . Although at first sight it might seem that it is just the same graphical system over which a new history was created, with new enemies and others, you soon realize that it isn´t all. The game engine has been improved in several aspects, and its hybrid nature (combination of 2D elements -- sprites -- and 3D) gains much more emphasis. This time you are a servent of the Divine One, and your goal is to destroy all evil; but it happens that there´s a necromancer who decides to complicate your life a bit by soul-forging you to a Death Knight, the maximum representative of everything you seeked out to destroy. Immediately afterwards, you´ll have to find a way to break this maleficent spell, with the inseparable company of this servent of darkness.

First things first; Beyond Divinity is not a sequel of Divine Divinity, but a super independent expansion -- with 300 missions, 600 NPCs, 4 Acts and 140 creatures. The demo is short, but it doesn´t prevent us to know some of the several new qualities of the engine, the changes to the interface and all the improvements of the skill system, which is enough to leave us wanting more. After downloading and installing it, the demo offers us about three to four hours of entertainment, considering only one type of character. Although there is the possibility of returning to play with a new character of another class, the re-playability is not assured because we´ll face the same set of enemies, situations and maps. Anyway, it fulfills its assignment of demo and it offers much more time of gameplay than others.

The process of creating a hero is direct, fast and without return. You will only be able to define the visual characteristics of your hero character (gender, constitution, appearance, color of hair, type of hair, portrait), not of the Death Knight . But for both it is possible to choose class and inicial attributes. The Death Knight has its attractiveness, and probably we´ll know him more as we advance into the complete game. After we create the characters, a dialog sequence starts -- using the own graphical system -- where we find out more or less what is going on. Obviously we are in a cell, and as it seens, after freeing itself our forced companion has no choice other than releasing you.

It is in this point that we find out that the voice acting isn´t really of a great level. The DK voice tries to have a demoniac and powerful tone, after all we are speaking to one of the most evil and machiavelic beings, but the result is a little forced and absolutely not really well acted. The enemies who speak, instead of groaning or making noises, usually have lines of conversation of debatable quality. Here we also noticed that the interesting and sometimes black humor of the team of Larian Studios is present and hasn´t changed at all, which is good. After the first conversation, it is only a matter of starting the march to find a way to leave the jails and to find a form to break the spell that unites them. Everything classic and normal, up to this point.

The graphics of Beyond Divinity are a good example of what can be obtained combining excellent 2D isometric scenes and environments, with characters and other details (like spells) in 3D, that means, in real time. As characters and creatures are three-dimensional, we are going to be able to find interesting visual effects in its appearance; for example the gloves appear or not, according to if you are wearing them or not. With the little we could see in the demo, the spells maintain their usual pyrotechnics; we can hope much more in the full game. The hybrid nature of the graphical system allows a zoom function that serves, at least, to take a closer look at the creatures, since the background acquires a distorted appearance as it is prerendered. Some corners covered by walls and others still are difficult to perceive, although it is just a minor issue.

Accompanying the new 3D characters, a redesigned less intrusive interface was implemented; much of the control has been relegated to the use of fast access keys. Some windows also have been redesigned, like the one of the inventory or the one of the skills. This last one no longer has all the options available from a beginning, now it will be necessary to open the skill paths by finding magical books with the suitable information. The class you chose in the beginning determines a set of initial abilities that are listed by effect. In order to obtain a more rational use of the addicional skill points, now there is only ten spaces to establish the different skills you wish your avatar to learn, and these can be passive or active. The active ones normally refer to special attacks or spells that can be put in the buttons of fast action. The passive ones are bonuses that usually are always active.

When you level up you can chose the desired skill, including its icon; also we can increase the level of any existing one. Moreover, it is possible to forget a skill -- for a certain ammount of gold that varies according to your level -- thus releasing space for more powerful, useful or interesting ones. When you level up you can also improve your main attributes: strenght, agility, constitution, intelligence, survival and speed, which affect a series of dependent or secondary attributes like life points, mana and stamina, or initiative, luck, regeneration, accuracy and capacity of evasion. All as a whole affect characteristics such as the damage that your character inflicts, its armor and resistance, and the weight that can be carried. The reputation is a value that depends on how you interact with the very dynamic and alive game world.

Those who played Divine Divinity and manage to remember some details will realise that some skills have been converted into attributes. So is the case of survival, on which values like regeneration and luck are dependant. In Divine Divinity regeneration was a skill to be learned. That almost surely has the objective to simplify certain characteristics of the game and to allow the creation of more capable characters, with no need to invest the few skill points that we obtain every time we level up. The full game will have a whole new skill branch (way), the Summoning Dolls , which unfortunately was not included in the demo.

It is difficult to know if there is less or more skills in demo, because the new system isn´t so intuitive and direct as the previous one (or perhaps we didn´t have enought time to get used to it). It can be that for most people it is better not to offer too many immediate possibilities to decide upon. The inventory wasn´t changed much, with the exception that now it is possible to have three types of arrows ready for use. As the DK must maintain it´s status it isn´t possible to change his armor, only weapons and jewels. Luckily, our hero can change his/her armor (including helmet, boots and gloves), jewelry and weapons; apparently we can expect some surprises concerning unique equipment thanks to the real time generation of the characters and their equipment.

The world of Beyond Divinity continues being very interactive, even if it hardly ever makes sense to manipulate chairs or tables. In order to see if there are itens of interest in your surroundings you only have to press the ALT key, as it highlights them, or move the mouse all over the place. This time the camera no longer follows inevitably the chosen character, so that now you can scroll your view around, although its rarely useful because of the fog that covers zones where there isn´t direct sight from the presence of our adventurers. It is possible to know if chests, barrels or furniture have something of interest in their interior without opening them, as long as they aren´t locked. By the way, it is worth the say that now the used keys disappear from our inventory (hurra!).

Everything in the game has a weight, and a great part of things have a value of material resistance; reaching zero (0) in this one will result in itens no longer being useable, because they have been consumed completely and it is necessary to repair them, through a blacksmith or the repair skill. For that reason it always comes a moment in which you have to decide what to take and what to leave, although now with two characters you´ll have to do that with less frequency. Interchanging things is simple, you only have to hold and drag the object you wish to transfer. It is even possible to conduct the operation by means of a menu if the other way does not present/display sufficient simplicity for you. A change that doesn´t sound too good for me is that the food only serves to recover health when sleeping, as eating it during combat isn´t possible anymore. Those who played the predecessor remember that it was possible to eat many things to recover life, even though now life regenerates so that maybe it is sufficient to move away from the battle once in a while to replenish forces.

The demo unfortunately doesn´t offer a great variety of enemies or things in general; the good thing is that we could take a look of first hand in the new gameplay and appearance of the game. Because most enemies are of low level, with the exception of a couple harder ones, the possibility to quick save/load isn´t so important, but it´s always good to know it´s there just in case. One never knows what good or evil could show up when you are exploring and looking around. The combats are fast and agile. Each character uses his/her main weapon until there is no ammunition left or the enemy falls. Using the secondary attack helps when you need to use powerful spells or movements. It can be a litlle confusing having to control two characters, until you get used to it, what makes the option to stop the action for a moment much handier.

In summary. Small negative details aside, this game promises a lot. About the demo it is possible say that it is short, but even so it offers enough to give us an idea of the new things and to leave us hooked to it. Now we can only wait.

Wow ! Big Text ! Thank you ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

Thank you very much, Werner! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

@ Werner

Thnx so much for the translation <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Nice work <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

good to have such nice person like u around, werner. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

@ Werner

Congratulations for this translation. It is a very great work.

@Werner

Ican do nothing but agree with everyone else, great job <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

@Werner
Muitos Agradecimentos <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> Your English is quite good actually.

Basically, the only thing that has drawn negative criticism in the demo review is the DK's voice.

Thanks everyone for your nice comments! I just felt it was my duty to do it, as so many times i´ve seen nice people in this forum translate articles, previews and others into english, so that everyone (including me) wanting every bit of info/news/curiosities could understand them. I always felt very grateful for that. You can always count on me if someday more articles in any latin language are written. It would really be a pleasure to translate an article made in Brasil (even though i don´t think it will happen so soon, as absolutely no one knows <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> here, except me and half a dozen incredibly fortunate people...).

Oh, another thing... translating is a very good way to practice english! And you know... practice leads to perfection! (I wished...) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />