Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Gamescom 2012

I have to agree with Kein I like the colour palette and the art style, it looks better than the earlier garish colours.

Most of the screenshots come from the video presentation, but they show the good artistic work of Larian Studio, I am looking forward to test the conception toolset^^

Stunning screens, everything looks handcrafted.

Just look at this mysterious cave Im sure it's full of powerful loot

Keep up the good work LARIAN!

"I loot, therefore I play a role" ? Is this the credo of the new, Blizzard-infused gaming generation ?

For some reason this image reminds me of Curse of Monkey Island!

But I agree that the scenes and art-style look stunning, I haven't been this excited about an upcoming game for so long.

Home decoration [with loot] is the new form of roleplaying, you didn't know?

Loot is still an important part in any RPG.

I always hate how in some games you get to these epic enchanted items right of the bat...Where they barely let you work for such equipment.

Yes, but "loot" wasn't called "loot" in the RPGs before Blizzard - or at least not with the meaning Blizzard kind of invented : Collecting loot was just not there. Blizzard invented it. Before that, loot was just a means to survival - and for getting money for buying better things.
Blizzard changed "loot" into an collectible.

Arguing over pure semantics is captious and infantile.

It's not just semantics. Loot was (before) the means to an end (survival). Starting with WoW, loot has become the end.

I don't quite understand why you keep bringing up "blizzard games" and "WoW". I don't play massive multiplayer games due to their brittle nature and time deficiency, but for me loot means exactly the same as it did 10 or 15 years ago ["pro-customization" & "anti-unification" factor]. So please don't project your "modern gaming" phobias on me, because I have nothing to do with blizzard's perception of itemization. If I would know that those four letters will cause such unbelievable nerd-rage, then I would use the word "treasure" instead.

Starting with WoW doesn't mean its only Blizzard....

It's pretty much every single MMORPG out (you raid to stuff for the next raid in which you stuff for the next raid) and many single RPGs too now.


Every game has higher quality equipment, but before getting the best equipment wasn't the point of the game (or wasn't necesserally needed to finish the game).

Estrogen
You sound bitter. Are you okay?

You do. Implicitely. Becaue Blizzard influenced the whole RPG genre to a great deal.

Don't you think that others would like to copy the success Blizzard ? - That would lead to RPGs trying to copy at least parts of what Blizzard's success has constituted of. Which would be

- fast-paced killing of monsters
- item collecting
- item crafting
- item upgrading
- different tiers of "rarity" of items. Programmed in, not just "random" anymore
- items having not only 1 , but quite a lot of stats influiencing the item's use and the stats/abilities o the item-bearing character him- or herself.

Another element is the reduction of social interaction. But there was never much, anyway. OS:T is the only notable exception there.

nother point is that at one point gaming magazines began to compare ANY role-playing game for the PC with either Blizzard's offline or online role-playing games. Comparisons are made in sentences like "this is like in ..." "this is unlike in ..." . This is further cementing Blizzard's games as some kinds of "industry standards".

And the term of "industry standard" implies - as far as I understand it - both the acceptance and the implementation of something developers of things regard as "a success" or as "a good mechanic", or both. And this further leads into influence.

In my opinion, Blizzard chnged the whole RPG genre in an irretrievable way. Developers of now just cannot develop games anymore without being influenced by something that ince Blizzard (re-)invented and since then have influenced myriads of similar games. Before Blizzard, the fast-paced mass combat against SO many monsters was unknown - at that scale. BG didn't have such a large scale of monsters to bttle against, and it was either RTWP or real-time anyway. But it was never that fast.
Since then, this fast-paced "metzeln", as it is called with German-language gamers, has spread into so many games that actual slow-paced combat just isn't favourable anymore. Even in Dragon Age the combat was not slow, and not at ll turn-based.
Turn-based combat lies imho totally diametral to the fast-paced combat mechanics Blizzard invented. And guess how many turn-based RPGs exist nowadays ? Because no-one blieves the would sell nowadays, of course. Everyone is expecting fast-paced combat, or there would be many more RPGs with turn-based combat nowadays. Especially by the "big names". The bigger publishers usually shed away from failure; they want financial success; and success has been kin of "defined" by Blizzard's way of implementing combat into RPGs. almost every turn-based RPG released since then didn't have a success like Blizzard had.

And success is likel tried to be copied.
And copying something i like influnce . Allowing it to influence the own work.

What? Estrogen just sees an image of a cave, and wonders, hmm, there must be some chests having some nice equipment and/or other valuables.
Then some people comments how blizzard destroyed RPG gaming.

And then Estrogen is the one that is bitter? Don't get it.

Indeed Merendrious !

Who is who ?

We're all friendly people giving our opinion or speaking out our hope looking at the many beautiful screenshots that are already on the Original Sin site !

I even can't resist to use one of the nice screenshots as a wallpaper for my pc so I can't forget this rpg is coming ...
If I ever can't forget any game of Larian Studios ...

They're marked in my mind ...
To the end I see the light !

My only hope is that I can have big big fun playing Original Sin !
But in some way
I can only play,
In Divine's Name,
A Larian Game !

(and for you the same ?)

I thought it was preety natural.

Mysterious sea-cave used by the pirates [and ghosts] to hide their stolen treasures.

Yes, it's vastly overplayed and maybe even infantile concept, but very characteristic to many fantasy IP's.


And then the BLIZZARD DESTROYED EVERYTHING started


So I thought I'll let this one go , I'm not nerdy enough, I'll let them perorate.


And I was right, Alrik delivered

I honestly don't care about the subject of discussion, because it is hardly applies to DOS since Larian always had their own vision on many thing and that's why they earned my infinite respect and support so far.

Point is that I find Arik's position and arguments more reasonable and sane, with some basis behind them, while Estrogen seems to be on some kind of rant with subtle insults and his own entitled opinions. Not sure this will end well.

Well he insulted Alrik but that was it. I don't why he did that, perhaps the two have some feud going on between each other that I have missed from another topic. TBH I don't really care.

I think the only thing Diablo made popular was loot-collecting, killing monsters and fast-paced action combat. It didn't heavily influence the RPG genre. Ultima did that (Alrik, you're supposed to be a master RPG geek, I thought you would have known this?) with it's top-down perceptive, dialogue choices and freedom of choice.

Loot-RPG's are said to be influenced by Diablo and some of these games are often referred to as "Diablo clones" but games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Icewind Dale, Fallout and Neverwinter Nights were influenced by table-top RPG's and Ultima (along with other classic RPG's). First Person RPG's such as TES and Arx Fatalis were influenced by Ultima Underworld (with Arx actually being intended as a spiritual successor). It is said that First Person Shooter RPG's were influenced by Deus Ex which in turn was influenced by System Shock which in turn has influenced games such as Bioshock and Dishonored (Deus Ex also influenced the later one).

So I wouldn't say Blizzard have really been that influential in the RPG genre. In the RPG-loot genre, yes (they popularized it) but everywhere else, no. Most RPG's nowadays cite Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Fallout or Planescape as inspiration whereas shooter RPG's cite Deus Ex or System Shock as inspirations.