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I also want to know if you can create female playable character..

Don't worry about it! Plus, "one of the fathers of Divinity II"? I never thought of my job that way, pretty cool description.

Definitely. You can choose between male and female player characters and customize their appearance. Additionally, a lot of effort was spent on creating cool and very detailed equipment sets for both male and female player characters.

Lar

Regarding social identity - it's something we'd have loved to do, but the amount of dialog trees is already so large that that would've made things explode, so the differences between male/female are limited. I wouldn't worry too much about that though, the options for character development are quite extended. We'll be announcing a couple of them in the coming months.

Regarding system specs - the screenshots you are seeing come from Geforce 8800 dual-core systems running in full HD (1080p). Our target is to have it run on 7800 cards. Because the game also runs on an Xbox360, it's more optimized than if it'd only have been a PC game. A 360 game has to be able to run from DVD using only 512Mb, so the benifits for the PC version are clear.

Ah brilliant, just my specs... \o/

It's really funny how it all comes together now. It used to be awfully quite, and the only screen I could find was the one in the swamp (which is my desktop background :p)
Now we get tons of screenshots, and some gorgeous movies.
I have to say that it looks really, really nice; BUT in all honesty, I see a bit too many Asian influences.. why the huge swords, with the strange shapes?
It could give a superb result though, so I guess I'll just have faith in Larian, after all.. they are the developers

Yes I'd like to know what kind of pc you need to play the game properly.

Low, mid or high range...?

since it's the (modified?) oblivion engine.. I'd say mid to high range..more to the high range, I think.

I've just read the GameStar article, but I didn't want to open another thread for it.

Looks like we won't get dynamic day/night cycles, and without that I guess there won't be NPC 24/7 schedules aswell

Looking again at the screens I've got a problem with it...

Well problem a remark tho, cut down on the bloom. Subtle bloom works out better imo, there's no reason why metal swords should look like lightsabres once the sun touches it.

Have you ever seen a sword in the sun ?

Using the right angle, I could imagine a similar "flashing" look.

I agree, using the right angle, but nearly all games I've played overuse bloom so much it looks like the sword is made of extremely hot plasma if it just faces in the general direction of the sun or whatever lightsource.

Believe me, this issue sparkled many debates in the art department...

Yaw, well, it´s fine that you mention
- but what has been the outcome?
We´re eager to hear about the outcome - towards further fueling our fears (=overuse of bloom) or settling our nerves?

Flowers on a sword ???

And I have a funny feeling the debate is still on-going

About the bloom. We are well aware of the issues we still have on that side. It's not really a problem of bloom intensity, but more a problem of textures which need to be tweaked to fit the bloom settings (which are actually HDR settings, but I'm not going to bore you guys to death with this technical mumbo-jumbo).

Let's take the sword for example. As Alrik pointed out, under the right angle you would expect to see this kind of "over-brightness". That's what specularity (in the best case reflection) is supposed to do.
But as Draghermosran (man that's a hard name to type :P) said, most swords appear too bright no matter what direction they are in. This usually is caused by the actual color map which is too bright. add the specularity on top + fancy bloom settings and every sword looks like a light saber.

But enough ranting, all I really wanted to say is that we are still tweaking settings/textures

I see it with great satisfaction and appreciation at the same time, that now the coming of Divinity 2 is offical (after years of absolute silence and almost unbearable secrecy as far as we are concerned ), you´re now finally "coming out of the closet", one-by-one!


Thanks for this little insight on the common hot topic of "Bloom in the modern engines", Koen!


Ragon, the very interested Mage

Koen, did you study in Ghent (KAHO?)

Anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering for more information

I don't mind the bloom that much but more the fact that the in tire sword blooms. I think only a part should bloom/flare depending on where the sun hits it. But still, I like the shiny things.

On the 5th screenshot, did I see a mana potion on the table there? ^^

Why not make an easteregg out of it ?

A sword which has colourful blooms painted on it ...