Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General Well, that was that.

Obligatory disclaimer before the attack dogs pounce: the following are strictly personal opinions. Dur.

I've trudged through act I, gone through act II, III and have emerged in act IV. (There isn’t much else to play. Where I’m at now doesn’t have much in way of games. The other choice is Dungeon Siege.) Thus far, I must profess to being distinctly unimpressed, and while the "it gets better after act I" claims are somewhat true, it's mostly because surely it cannot get any worse. BD is an adequate offering in light of the less-than-good RPGs released recently, but overall, it still is average at its best moments, and downright mediocre at worst. It has some good points, but the flaws overshadow most of them. About all I can say is, hey, at least the music is lovely.

Where to start?

Redundant fluff -- nowhere does the adage "less is more" seem more true. The damage/resistance types are utterly insane, and the fact that skillpoints need to be invested to gain greater proficiency with each damage type -- rather than weapon type, as should be done in any reasonable ruleset -- is even more ridiculous. Poison, fire, earth, water and air, yes. Bone, ethereal, spiritual and shadow? What’s the point? What is next, cold iron for the fey, silver for the were, wooden stakes for the vampires? It’s even more ridiculous than, say, D&D 3E. Cluttering up the screen with random numbers and objects do not substance make.

Voiceacting – there’s not much to say about this, except… perhaps next time expenses and time could be saved by foregoing this altogether? Now, like music, art and writing, voiceacting isn’t going to please everybody. However, there’s a difference between professional voiceacting and… I don’t know what this is. It sounds like random people picked off the streets, forced to do the voices at a very low salary. (I tried to look up the voiceactors in the credits, and nothing relevant came up, either – no professional credits, no nothing. I dread to draw conclusions.) Incidentally, I’ve played a NWN mod (Elegia Eternum) and a BG2 mod (Kelsey) with better voiceacting, and those people are confirmed amateurs who aren’t even paid.

Battlefield -- good in conception, horrendous in execution. Bad level design, levels that go on and on and on repetitively. Oh, mustn't forget the plentiful bugs. The map that goes black for no reason, even though the area's already explored. Empty levels. Quest items/monsters that fail to appear. Monsters that get eternally stuck in the black space of limbo, unreachable by the player character. What, are these undocumented features? Not that there is much of a documentation to start with, which brings me to the next gripe.

Documentation -- more accurately, the lack thereof. The skill descriptions leave much to be desired, and that's being generous. The charms have no descriptions at all. Excuse me, but I don't want to take the trial-and-error approach and reloading over and over just to test items and skills. Even if these details are not in the manual, at least they should be in the game.

Things that make sod-all sense -- take, for instance, the quest General Bran gives you. I got the quest, and talked to the merchant (with dialogue options limited to "Let's trade" and "I want to rest"), then got back to General Bran and got the option to -- for some unfathomable reason -- tell him that the merchant has confessed to financial perfidy. I'm sorry, I fail to see how "Let's trade" and "I want to rest" constitute an interrogation. Oh, and the cute little animals in the wilderness? Click on one, and you'll have to commit genocide upon its species for the rest of the act. Wow, do all the animals share a hive mind or something? Hellooo, logic?

Polish -- polish? What polish? Some things still appear as "Object 04895" or such; some items don't even match their descriptions (such as rings being labeled "spears" or a club being labeled "scythe"). Typos and grammatical errors crop up here and there in the dialogue. Bugs (lockpicking, quests, etc). Bad pathfinding (which lessens any appeal the party system might have) that seems to be worse than that of BG1, and that game’s how many years old?

Repetition -- please, no more levers. Lever puzzles are neither clever nor fun. Surely there are other ways to secure doorways? Anything but levers, for the love of all that is holy and unholy!

Aesthetics -- this is more subjective than the rest. I think the characters’ animations are rather jerky, and their models often disproportionate. (My character’s feet are almost Hobbit-like. Hur hur. No hair, though. Shame.) The weapons appear oversized, and it’s a marvel my character can carry them at all, never mind wield them in combat. The result is interesting: absolutely cartoonish characters set against a gritty, dark gamescape. Not sure what effect the artists were going for. The writing overall is so-so, though some of the DK’s lines are cute. However, there are bits that approach being Engrish and there are bits that try too hard to be “high fantasy” and end up pretentious. The plot isn’t very compelling; I don’t feel any incentive to get from point A to point B. The storytelling plods along like a dying turtle through quicksand. But that’s okay, I guess; I didn’t expect much from this department, anyway. Good thing about low expectations is you don’t get disappointed easily.

Sadly i do agree with some points...
Redundant fluff - I must admit, i dont mind there being Bone, ethereal, spiritual and shadow. Please remember that the stage you are set on, is firstly not a earthly plane that we are stuck on.

I can understand why you have a problem with bone, ethereal and shadow... but i can assure you that spiritual damage is used in sooo many games. The fact that you consider this to be a "unrealistic" type of damage, leads me to the conclusion that you like to stick to the typical "warrior" style fighting which consists of mainly the bigger the sword the bigger the damage. A major factor in playing the role of mages and spirits is the use of spiritual damage.

Ok and before you ask me which games incorporate that, i am not only referring to computer games. your various role playing realm settings also have it incorporated.

Voiceacting... Sadly i agree that it was not very well done. I did find a lot of comments extrememly funny though..

Battlefiels - I originally liked the idea. I made sure that i gained as much XP as possible... but as my character became stronger, i found myself avoiding the battlefields and only ended up there to buy and sell. It is handy to get rid of an overburdened inventory though.... but yes, sadly i also ran into the black map bug....

Documentation - Thank heavens most people see reading as a last resort... but i do agree that Larian should bring out a document that charts the skills and their damages as well as the resistances and their protection values.

And i do agree on the crystals too.... luckily i still remember the names from DD. But yes it would be nice to have that in a document too....

Things that make sod-all sense - I agree on the genocide thing.... It has been mentioned to Larian before aswell.... Maybe just change that coding so that only the critters in your immediate area attack you... i dont mind killing 5-20 rats or whatever, but when your whole minimap lights up with red dots that follow you around, just because you are too lazy to attack things thats too weak to do any damage to you in anycase... I hated that too... and i am sure most people had a small fit about that too...

I did not find any problems with the pathfinding.... and i must confess that i dont care one bit about object 7667... I have better things to do in a battle than frown at the object name....


Aesthetics -- Not that it made my game any worse... i do think the models can be adjusted somewhat.... but then again, i turned that to my advantage... I am playing an overweight female, so in my case i very often giggle at how a movement looks like when done by a big-breasted fat-lady (no offense to anyone) that tends to lift her legs past her ears when she runs.


AS for the game in general... i did enjoy it. I didnt find the plot boring.. i did find the missions in the battlefield boring though, hence the fact that they became a market place in my game.

I do think that they should have added more side quests... i like running around looking for the lost teddie style of quests.... especially if you need to go resque the cat that stole it, so that you can find out where he hid the treasure map, collect the half that the elf stole, and then fight through the dwarven dungeons to get to the cave, because the other entrance caved in, and on your way out a giant spider wont let you pass until you bring it the golden egg... You get the idea... i love those....

BUt yes i do agree that BD has its shorcommings... but i know that all these things will be ironed out in DD2. They tried something new, got the feedback, know about the good and bad points, so they can improve it and only have the good in DD2...

I am sorry that you did not enjoy the game, maybe you will love DD2....

I have hordes of 2E and 3E D&D sourcebooks, ranging from the core rulebooks to such esoteric, specific ones as Unreachable East, Magic of Faerun, Dreams of Red Wizards, Book of Vile Darkness, etc. You don't get any more crazily detailed than this (psionics, clerical magic, the Weave, the Shadow Weave, druidic magic -- more varieties than you can shake a stick at. Shall I go on and detail the diversity of spells to you?). I have played Planescape: Torment, the Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dale, etc. In all of those games, I've heavily employed magic-using characters, and trust me, both 2E and 3E are far more complicated than BD or DD will ever be. Except that there usually are reasons behind the complexities; there are backstories attached to various types of critters and species. If there are exlanations behind "bone" -- say, that necromantic rituals imbue the bones with special qualities that make it different from wood and metal -- I might accept it, but there are not. Ethereal, shadow and spiritual are utterly redundant; the three could have been grouped into one. For that matter, I think ethereal, shadow, spiritual and bone should have been grouped into one type, period.



The side-quests in BD are cute and numerous, but the majority of them are just the generic "fetch this, kill that" fare. I prefer fewer quests, but with more depth to each. Take, for instance, Sunry's trial in KotOR, where you actually have to talk to a number of people and have multiple conclusions to draw, multiple solutions to choose from. Or PS:T, where intelligence/charisma/wisdom affects dialogue choices. See, the problem with BD, I think, is that there's too much of everything; resources are spread thin over them all, and none of them ends up with any real substance.



I played DD and enjoyed it greatly for what it was -- a braincandy romp, traditional fantasy setting and all. Not much in ways of innovation or originality, but very fun, all the same. I think BD tried a leeeetle bit too hard, and I'll be much more wary when DD2 comes out.

Although I like BD , I do tend to agree with most points. It just comes down to how much those interfere with your ability to enjoy the game. Some of those things bothered me , yes. But I learned to live with them I suppose.
The fact that I am probably supporting this game more because it's one of the very few games to come out of my country.

Do you really think that you would support a bad game coming from your country ? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Post deleted by Foetsy

I've seen worse games, so, yes, I believe that this game is "good enough" (so to say) to be supported.

On the other hand, yes, I DO support the game called "Gothic", because it was one of the *very few* internatiolal know and ALSO well done *German* games.

I was kind of excited baxck then, as I realized that this game would be good enough to get an american (still today the U.S. is the country with the highest amount of produced software and games - generally) drooling. And to know that it wasn't available outside the German-speaking countries for quite a time, so that people had to import it and had to learn German words if they wanted to play it in the U.S. , for example. It was like what *normally* happens, only vice versa.

From THAT point of view, I would support a fairly good game - like <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> - simply because it's one of the few Belgian games, ever.


Apart from that, I just guess that "spiritual damage" would be in the esoteric area reak. I don't underestimate it, simply because I don't know what it is. ( I mean - not knowing a thing doesn't mean it can't be dangerous ! Like radiation, for example, or rare but poisenous animals ... )

Barta was joking. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

First : My question is not aggressive. I don't know why i will get an agressive answer to this question.
I don't know Yannos personnaly but he has never been aggressive with anybody in the forum, why would he be aggressive with me ?

Second : I will never support a game or something else which is bad just because it is french.

Third : Supporting a game does not mean that you think it is completely perfect.
Beyond Divinity has some defaults. But it has some good qualities which are more important than its defaults.
And the most important i had a lot of fun playing it.
Maybe i am wrong it's just my opinion.

Barta

Edit @ Lews
No i was not joking.

If that was trrue, I wouldn't be surprised. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> I've had my problems in the past to detect "joking" in Barta's speech, so to say. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" /> Darn it, I always get confused weather your joking or not too!

Stop using the <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> for everything! You use it mostly for jokes, but for serious to!

EEEEEK.


<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />


Yeah, I've never said its perfect. I personally HATE party. I loved the single player. That doesn't mean I don't like the game! I don't really like the switch from skill system, but I'll use it. I LOVE the copy protection. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

Oh don't worry, I would never be aggressive to you Barta. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

Well you see, Belgium is a small and therefore unimportant country.
Ask any (average) American to pinpoint Belgium on the map, i'll guarantee he won't know where it is. One of the most common response is; "Belgium? Isn't that the capital of Brussels?

I think that people living in small (underdog?) countries are usualy quite patriotic (or chauvunistic) about their country so I was really proud when Larian released Divinity. I liked it and I would praise the game to other people, something I wouldn't do for any other game. However I would never engage in a flame war to protect it ofcourse.




Yes, probably because there are , I think, a several large French developers and publishers. (such as Ubisoft and cyro before it shut down <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> )

I know where Belgium is! I just can't spell it...

lol ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

I can understand Yannos' point of view, and I would support it, the smaller the country, the more I would support it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

I am really sorry and i will stop to use the rolleyes.
[color:"yellow"]It's my favourite smilie <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" /> [/color]

Not joking - Not joking - Not joking - Not joking -
I like the party with the Deathknight.
I like singleplayer (I don't like multiplayer).
I hate the copy protection but i think it is necessary.
I hate the DeathKnight's voice.
I like the story and the dialogs.
I really like Act 4 and i was very surprised by the end of the game.
I think that there are not enough subquests like the dragon armor or the quests with Dr Elrath in Divine Divinity.
I was disappointed to not find great armor sets.
To be continued.....

Barta

Nah, just kidding. About a lot. Except the spelling thing.

A lot of American people don't know where is France. (Except Lews).
I understand your feeling that Belgium is an unimportant country.
I think it is unimportant about international politic but it not unimportant about creating things.
If i was from Belgium i would be proud that Larian is a Belgium company.
But i am french and i am proud that Larian is a European company.


Yes there are great games companies in France but i never supported one of their games.

Barta

Tsktsk, considering Bruxelles has the EU parliament there ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

About national emotions and games in my case =>
nope, I still don't like Gothic, even though I gave it a 2nd try in Gothic 2. Alrik, am I going to be chased out of Germany now? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> And if Gothic 2 is German, why does their EULA mumble something about agreeing to the Austrian laws? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />
Kiya

Kiya, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" /> if you require a country that will be willing to have you as a refugee, please call Canada home. !!Eh!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />

it would certainly be Canada <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> - what my relatives (emigrated) told me about this country made me very envious <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> - what Jurak showed to me about West Canada (environment) is simply beautiful <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

I can't understand my aunt coming back to Germany every 2 yrs for a vacation. I'd stay there if I was in her place!
Kiya

Thanks, Stridar - now I can walk German streets again, with my head held high <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> (if Gothic fans decide to build up stakes)