Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Do you agree with gamespot's review of Ego Draconi

For the most part I agree entirely with the Gamespot review.

Coming from a country where Triple A games are expected [Australia], Divinity 2 is poor quality in comparison to games from Bioware, Bethesda, 2K Games and all the other AAA developers.

However, I love european fantasy RPG's [Risen, The Witcher, Drakensang, Gothic Series] and I have to say, Divinity 2, from what I have played so far is a great game.

Howver, I have one issue with it, which is, the animation quality. Let's face it, they are horrible. I am an Indy developer working on a game with the Unreal Development Kit [Unreal Engine 3] and even though I have absolutely no animating experience, I can make much better animations than the ones in Divinity 2.

When I first played the game I thought my frame rate was really low, turned out it was around 40-50fps, so it wasnt video lag. I then read on the internet and discovered that it was just a pathetic job by the animation team at Larian. To be honest, I am not going to play the game again until they release a patch with animation updates, because they are abolutely horrible and I can't play a game where it looks like my character is having a seisure when he is walking.

Don't get me wrong, from the two hours I have played (with painful animations that make me cringe), I think it has a LOT of potential to be an awesome game. The storyline, while generic, still seems intriguing and the overall feel of the game [atmosphere and setting] seem great. But I just can't bring myself to play a game that is so poorly animated.

How on earth did Larian think that having a walking/running animation that consists of only 7 or 8 frames (being generous there) could be quality? That is certianly the biggest let down for me.

Sure, Larian are a small independent dev, but look at the The Witcher and Risen. The animations in both those games are decent [at worst] and the stories are excellent and both are developed by relatively small indy developers.

I just don't see why larian released the game with such poor animations. Especially when trying to break into the Western market [USA, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ] which have much higher expectations and standards than what Larian have delivered.

NOTE: I am not saying European gamers have lower expectations but the difference in polish between a western developed game and an Eastern European developed game is like night and day. Western games have more polish and feel like they are better quality and when trying to break into the western market, the developer needs to meet the expectations in presentation, which, in this case, Larian have not. Which is sad because Divinity 2 has lots of potential, just need to wait for a few patches to fix those animations and fix a few minor bugs.