Hi Etoile,
That is weird! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Sadly, Beyond Divinity seems to be riddled with bugs and half finished stuff. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sad.gif" alt="" />
Fortunately, most of it is mildy irritating rather than game breaking. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Every few minutes playing BD (I'm now getting close to Act 4) I spot yet another rough edge. Things like quests that don't work properly, numerous spelling and grammatical errors (tripple for triple, loose for lose, he for a female, etc), mislabelled items (like two items I found described as 'bone spear' that had the weight and attributes of spear listed, yet look like rings and equip in a ring slot - I wonder what THEY did! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ), code lines that pop into the game (things like $NPC or Object40347, or whatever)and so on and so on...
There also seem to be skills or modifiers that just don't work properly; things that were put in the game but never given enough development time to actually get them to work as they should.
I've now abandoned the hopes and expectations that I had for Beyond Divinity after playing DD, and am just hacking my way through to the finish line. It's still fun. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />
Clearly the time and money were cut off well before the testing and developing was fully finished. Many of these errors should be quickly picked up by a competent play tester, but I guess we can't see the dozens of others they DID pick up and fix. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I'd be just a little frustrated and embarrassed to see my name on this if I worked for Larian. I bet the team would have liked more time to get it right. But if they deliver a good game with DD2, I'm sure all will be forgiven and forgotten. The rpg market isn't that overcrowded, so many of the fans will probably still buy the tittles that do make it on the shelves, unless they're complete junk. (I was about to correct "tittles" for "titles" there, but somehow it seemed like a rather BD kind of error, so I left it in!)
And BD isn't junk.... it's just a tad on the tatty side, and not as deep as we might have liked. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />