Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General The Beyond Divinity Demo Thread.

korean??

Bingo!

ahh. thought so. have you ever said that anywere? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />

not really.

didn't think so. but the site hosting your avatar wont let me go there without installing the "korean" pack. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Can you talk to your companion in the game?
like can you talk to The Death Knight?
just wondering. I haven't played the demo that's why I am asking.
thanks

no. but everyonce in a while he says something to you. and he replies by his own to other NPC's and such.

it's Cool if he gives his own personality to the game that will be a very cool thing to the story, ahh that might just make up a lot of the story, I like it...thanks for letting me.

uh,... telling me...... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Hi there !

Really loved the demo but i've got one little question.

Anyone knows if the quality of the 2d backdrops will be better in the full version when zoomed in ? problem is that the 3D models stay nice and crisp but the backdrop become painfully ugly and pixelated when totaly zoomed upon, gives quite a contrast.

I think that would require Larian to make 2 whole, seperate background sets and make the game huge in size.

Going back to this... It doesn't work for me! I hold down Ctrl, the enemy's red ring lights up, I left-click (anywhere) once, and... either nothing happens or my character runs over to where I clicked. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

If it worked, I wouldn't be complaining about it. Ctrl-click was the first thing I tried in combat, expecting it to work the same as DD. Imagine my dismay (etc etc). <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

Just my .02 cents, after spending a couple of hours with the demo last night:

1) I have to agree with those complaining about the targeting -

a) it is VERY difficult to pick up and move garbage, decapitated heads, rotten food, etc. It is incredibly frustrating that it takes 7-10 tries before picking something up. Actual "drop" items (gold, weapons, potions, etc) are very easy to click on and pick up, but "interactive" items are much more difficult.

b) Targeting enemies is much too difficult. It seems that you have to click on their torso, not on the ring below their feet, and even then my character seems to move more often than attack. I have used the CTRL button, and that works for basic (left-click) attacks, but in my experience, it doesn't seem to work for right-click attacks (see next item).

2) I can't get right-click attacks to work when both characters are selected. It seems like I have to pause, select one character, target the enemy, right-click, then select second character, target enemy, right-click. I would like to hold down CTRL and right-click for "special" attack from both characters simultaneously - but can't get that to work. right-click only seems to work for me if only one of my characters is selected. Is this correct? For example, my main character has a spell in the right-click slot (fire arrow or something - learned from Edmond) and the DK has whirlwind. Right-clicking with both players selected does nothing, but selecting one at a time does work. Very tedious, though!

3) Pause does not work when you are holding down the CTRL key! Maybe this is a Windows limitation, but it is sure frustrating. Since targeting is so difficult, I tend to hold down CTRL during all battles, and in one case it was getting down to the wire - either my DK or the Skeleton was going to die very soon. When it became apparent that my DK was probably going to lose, I tried to pause to collect myself and drink a potion - but it didn't work! After clicking the space bar 3 times (thinking my keyboard was going wonky), my DK died, and it was only later that I realized it was because I was instinctively holding down the CTRL button during battle. (maybe re-mapping from CTRL to a different key would help?)

4) Other minor frustrations -

a) Edmond disappears(?) after the first encounter. Since I didn't have enough gold to learn both skills the first time, I bought one of them, ran around and killed some things to get more gold, and came back - only to find there was no Edmond and no tunnel...

b) On a related note, and to make it even MORE frustrating - it turns out I did have enough gold, but since each character holds onto their own gold, it told me I didn't have enough. Why isn't gold pooled for all characters? Is there actually a situation where it will be beneficial to have separate gold stashes for each character? It's going to get really frustrating if we have to keep swapping gold back and forth between characters to make purchases. I can understand if gold has weight, and therefore must be distributed between characters so that no character is "encumbered", but shouldn't the total amount of gold be available to all characters, regardless of who is carrying it? (Maybe I'm just too used to Baldur's Gate and similar games where gold is not an inventory item)

c) The screen scrolling takes a lot of getting used to, and tends to scroll WAY too fast for my liking. If I move the mouse toward the bottom of the screen to click on a door or other item, and move the mouse that extra cm too far, the screen starts scrolling like crazy. As others have mentioned, I would prefer a keyboard option to move the screen, or at least slow down the scrolling a little bit. Maybe I've just been playing BG II too much lately, so I'm used to the much slower, more controlled scrolling in that game?

d) Inventory is a bit frustrating. Having to drag items all the way across the screen to the portrait to transfer between characters is more work than it should be. I can see that I'll never be able to play this on my laptop, because I don't have the dexterity to drag items over long distances using the touchpad. Inevitably I would end up dropping half the items before they got to the character.

---

Overall, I'm still excited about this game, and looking forward to its release. However, if the targeting is as poor in the full game, I can see myself getting very frustrated and quitting before the end. I play RPG's to "get away" for awhile and take a break from the frustrations of every day life - so any unnecessary aggravation within the game just defeats the whole purpose for me...

OK, so that was a little more than .02 cents - sorry!

Cheers,

John (aka Lord Bubba)

Good post. Edmond doesn't disappear, he's just insanely hard to find/see if he's running along one of the east walls. He could be closer to the ladder than where you first saw him, along one of the walls where you can't see him at all. Run your cursor around the walls and you'll find him eventually.

On a good note, I believe the developers are listening intently to these points being made about the game. I would expect a good number of the suggestions to be implimented.

Ok got the demo.

After reading a few forum posts, I thought the demo was incomplete, with horrible voice acting and awful combat.
With grim thoughts I downloaded and installed the demo. I ran it and came to the menu. First, I waited a bit and listened to the music. Not Kirill's best but acceptable. Then I started my character creation...
I was amazed by so many choices. Sure NWN allowed you to select fat, slim or normal but here the customization is excellent: Hair colour, Hair style, Body type, face, gender. Also I expected to have to chose from fighter/mage/thief but there's a fourth, custom option! Well, I didn't bother much with the skills and stats so I took Survivor, with survivol skills.
Then came the ability to customize your deathknight. Of course, his name and appearance is already defined and you cannot change it but you chose his stats and skills. Since I thought about playing a ranger, I made my DK a fighter for protection. As I started the game, I watched as the DK entered the cell and prepared for worst: from the forum posts I read, the actor who did the voice should be horribly mutilated with a watermelon. To my surprise, the DK spoke in exactly the SAME voice as I wanted him to. A bit monotonous, a little disdainful, with a slight european accent. I started speaking with him and in a while, we went exploring the cells.
Now about the graphics: they're good. Not excellent but I've seen much worse. The animations seemed abit ghostly at the beginning but as I progressed and added points into agility and speed, my characters became faster. At full zoom, as expected the background becomes blurry, but it's still a useful feature for combat. The spell effects are as well done as DD's.
The controls were better than I expected. As soon as I started, I decided to throw some junk arround. It worked just like in DD. I had no trouble clicking on the rotten food and throw it into lava. Later, for fun, I've beaten a guard to death with a couple of chairs. So, as you see, trowing works. I also checked the Party Menu (TAB), a useful feature to select all the characters but to select them individually, I'd rather use F1-F2. You can move the camera freely or if you senter it on your hero, it will follow you. Usually it's tricky business so it's better just to double click on the portrait or click twice the corresponding F# key.
The pathfinding was not perfect. Once my characters kept running arround a ranger as he shot them with his crossbow and nothing could make them attack the enemy, so I decided to use the chairs. Once my main character stood at the same place as the enemy (the circle under them was purple [blue+red]) and some other time, my DK stuck after the whirwill attack. I am certain, though, that Larian would fix that. I tried to make my characters run across the map. They sucessfully overran obstacles and entered rooms without hitting the walls (which happened often in BG: some characters like Jaheira were strangely attracted to walls and fences).
The dialogues were sometimes funny, often enterteining and well written. The characters were believable and some were interesting.
The DK kept commenting my actions. In general, the voice acting is perfectly alright, except for a guard and one imp (his voice was feeble and borred, in addition, he never said "flix" or "flax", which made me think he wasn't a real imp and gave me a reason to slay him <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />). Some guards had irony in their voice and the "helpful" DK never missed an opportunity to critisize everyone arround.

In whole, the demo is very entertaining, albeit short. The models exceeded expectations (especially the imps: I loved the "kitchen cleaning imp", as she jumped arround my character and the DK) and the dialogues are good enough for me. The puzzles and quests are trully great, I won't spoil it for you, but scouting and searching really helps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.
The skill system was very strange to me, I guess I'll get used to it but I never seen anything like that.

[color:"white"] Demo score: 4/5 [/color]

[color:"red"] Pros: [/color]
Another great game by Larian with excellent quests and innovative ideas.
Good graphics and puzzles.

[color:"red"] Cons: [/color]
Mysterious pathfinding.
Some voices are wierd (the prisoner who gives you the Traps book has a robot voice).
Short (not really a con since it's a demo)

its TAB.

Right click works exactly like Divine Divinity... At least on my computer.

same here. even when i had both guys selected. DK kept on hammering with his sword from the begiing. young lews fired up the instant fire again.

Both characters will crouch if either sneaks, but otherwise, if both characters are selected, only the active one performs their secondary skill on a right click. Try getting both the hero and DK to do a spin attack at the same time, or spin attack / spell.