Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis PC and 360 screen layout. Why is it different?

I was wondering why the screen layout on the 360 version is so much different than the PC version. I look at some screen shots of the PC version and it's so much more attractive. I understand there are certain limitations to the 360 controller, like only having eight buttons to assign skills and items to, but the PC version only has eight slots. So why the change? Why not just keep the same layout?

I made another post like this about Dragon Age and how the 360's interface is so bad. It seems developers contract out the development of the 360 version of the game to a third party instead of doing it themselves. This is understandable but why are the 360 versions of role playing games so consistently crap? Why don't the developers keep more control over what the third party contractor is doing with their precious game? I wondered if they simply believe their game shouldn't be played on a console, but they have contractual or financial obligations or whatever, and so they simply wash their hands of it.

I wondered if anyone is involved in the industry somehow, could you shed some light on this.

Or am I the only one who thinks this? What do you think?

Both work well for the system they're on. I'm glad Larian just didn't try to copy and paste everything, then screw it up in the process. You have to design the interface for each system differently. The console needs something more streamlined and simple.

Also, didn't Larian do the 360 version? I didn't see any mention of an outsource developer...

And it's not "crap" on 360, just not as good as the PC version.

Companies either contract another company to do a port or have another team in house work on it. In Divinity 2's case I couldn't tell you wihch this is though my assumption is it's done by a seperate team in house.

I find it unlikely to be contractual obligatary. I'm not aware of Larian doing anything else on the Xbox 360 before, or being bought out by Microsoft. I think they just ported it to Xbox 360 because they wanted to.

I agree the Xbox 360 version isn't as well optimised as it could be.

Really? Strange I found the pc interface sort of ugly and its resolutions to be a bit low, while on videos at least the 360 interface looked really nice and attractive...

I find the 360 very good, just because of the reason the 360 is more "simply" than the pc for me!


The simplicity of the 360 is a good thing: by many games I must first doing a whole study of "how to use all things in the game" before I can handle it and learn fast to use all possibilities!

I love the simplicity of the control to jump and so on ... only the 4 left hotkey slots aren't so good in use, but that's MY problem I have with it.

I have not played the PC version but I guess you get used to the tools you have to work with and for me I only see the game the way it has been presented to me on a 360.

The PAUSE menu can make up for the lack of HOT KEY related stuff. As long as you pick your binds wisely for essential real time related items your good.

They could of gone that extra mile and supported the 360 CHAT PAD, now that would of been AWESOME!! Maybe next time...

I often used the pause-menu to select a spell or a potion etc ...

Very good suggestion: "supported the 360 CHAT PAD!"

Both PC and XBox interface, camera and control schemes were made by the same people. There was NO XBox team and/or PC team.

Just clearing that up.

So why did they have to make the PC interface so generic and kinda ugly unlike the 360 polished one

I don't have any issues with the UI itself, but the controls on the 360 are a little strange though. I agree with the OP - being able to use right trigger to "shift" and toggle a separate set of hotkeys would have been grand. That and RB to open containers instead of LB (or at least an option to toggle).

Camera options would have been nice too. I like the over-the-shoulder view when holding LT, I would have liked to set this as a permanent view.

A few other little things like being able to read a book without picking it up, or once you read a book, it would put you back in the inventory ON the same book you read so you can destroy it.

These are relatively minor things, other than that, I'm enjoying the game on the 360 and the interface, although a little different, works well enough for the game.

RB would have sufficed seems it was unsed.

True!

If I had my choice of config, these are the changes I'd make:

LB = Jump
RB = Pick up stuff / activate (instead of LB)
Right Trigger = Shift to allow 8 more skills on face buttons / dpad
Select = change camera (currently not implemented but wouldn't be difficult to do)
HOLD Start for 1 sec (a la borderlands) = Map view (and when exit, it exits back to game)
HIT Start = Inventory / skills / status menu etc.

That's my dream config for this game