Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Larian lied about super dungeon!

they said they cut a few levels on the lair beneath phantom forest but the dungeon does not exist in the game at all. Even people who used the editor cannot find a trace of it. It does not exist in the game at all....

what is the deal larian?

if that is so (i don't know to be honest. i am not that far in the game) i trust that Larian will deliver it later on.

YES, i am aware of the implications!

nonetheless, Larian has proven that they support their games thoroughly for a long period of time. Also, Swen said repeatedly that there will be a huge support explicitly for D:OS.
So, i trust them and i don't think we will be let down.

edit:
would i bear a grudge b/c of it? not really. there is enough content even without the super dungeon. and if they deliver i really dont care. just another reason for another playthrough

Yea, it was rather dissapointing. I'm not sure what happened to it, but maybe it will be added later.

Yes, the 10 or 11 levels "Lair Beneath Phantom Forest" doesn't exist and the "Henchmen becomes Companions" goals is rather a joke, as there are only two companions upon release and they have very limited personality and interaction. They are much more like the extremely limited one-dimensional NPCs from Baldur's Gate I and other CRPGs from the 80's and 90's that had NPCs with a few lines of dialogue and perhaps an optional quest than the Baldur's Gate II/Planescape:Torment NPCs that set the industry standard by making the standard RPG party feel like a party of bickering individualists with depth to their personalities.

Larian, faced with having underestimated the work involved in getting everything they'd promised done to their desired level of quality, being a sensible company chose to allocate their resources differently from what they'd promised in the kickstarter rather than trying to achieve everything on the same budget and ending up with an inferior product.

It is a hard call to make, but that's what game development is all about. If you don't know how to triage, you have no business leading a game development project.

Some of it will probably come later, some not at all.

They'll hopefully keep the experience in mind should they start another kickstarter and be a bit more careful about what they announce as stretch goals. While it is common to underestimate budgets and perfectly understandable that they triage, those whose particular bits of interest gets the cut at the cost of something else are understandably annoyed.

So my suggestion is that you look at the finished product and ask yourself if it is worth the money you threw into the kickstarter rather than worrying too much about what might have been - after all, projects on kickstarter isn't a preorder business of buying a feature-list - it is much more like dealing with a lobbying/political organization:

You are interested in some of what they promise; They are interested in your money and in delivering as much of what they promise as they can manage, in the hope that you'll throw money at them again once you see what they accomplish. Both sides know that there are no guarantees.

If you don't feel it is worth it, or feel that kickstarter promises should be honoured regardless of costs, don't throw money at any future development project they might kickstart.

Problem is not that it's missing. But that the only communication we got about it was "they cut a few levels on the lair beneath phantom forest".
So maybe they just forget to add it in final release ?

Maybe they weren't happy with the overall quality of the lair? Who knows, if so, they'll probably update and bring it in in a patch later

If not I won't be upset about it either.

I'm disappointed in this, I understood it was to be shorter, NOT missing entirely.

I hope Larian understand that they still have a fair amount of work to do to this game.

Their communication sucks to the point of deception, or at the least, obfuscation, it's not the first time they've neglected to mention vital information.

I heard that they actually prepare a bigger patch with some late content. ^^
Who knows maybe this will be in as well..

Clearly Larian had to call it a day and get the game out. It's easy to see in sidekick personalities, where there aren't any really, and in the bunch of henchmen that have been thrown in to alleviate there being only 2 companions. The rock paper scissors game is probably also an addon or placeholder of sorts.

I don't mind these things (bar rock paper scissors), as you get on with the game.

But maybe it was a DLC idea, to make DLC for modders. I don't know what voiceovers cost, but lets say they make 5 chars who are vioced with a certain number of phrases. Maybe 500-1000 lines of different sorts I don't know how long that would take and cost.

So there's a female wizard for example. A modder can now put her in his mod and chose from her lines what she should say in a given circumstance. Of course the modder would have to be creative, but he could take the voice and put it on a different Pixel or character for example.

If Larian could sell such voiced chars in stacks of 3-5 or so, they could make DLC that modders would love, as voices are something where modders fall short.

If players needed the DLC to play such a mod, perhaps, as Larian of course needs to sell enough DLC to make money, and as such keep the DLC price down.

Just a thought, as it is difficult to envision extra gameplay DLC, when modders will be making alot of extra gameplay.

Maybe there are other ideas, that provide tools and addons you can purchase.

Lie, forgetful omission or bugged build, either way - it would be nice to hear Larian's side of things

Larian is hard at work right now making patches to fix post-launch bugs and add in content they didn't manage to finalize before launch.

So, they underestimated the amount of time and effort to get certain parts finished in time for launch day. At least they are working to fix that by actually finishing the cut content and have it released via future patches (as they promised).

They will only consider actual DLC after all the content is in.

At the end of the day, even if you look at how shiny the game is, you shouldn't forget that their whole team is only around 40 people and their budget just a few million.

I was wondering why I heard nothing about it. I asked a couple that finished the game and not much in reply. This was a major content feature and as mentioned they stated late it was cut short by a couple levels, which still left it around 8 or 9 and from the vid this thing was ginormus. So I figured it ate up a good # of hours. It would be cool to get an update on this.

I'm envisioning 4 scenarios.

1) Was a noisy day at the office when Swen said "We need to cut a few levels of lair beneath phantom forest" and person who cut said content only heard "Cut lair beneath phantom forest"

2) It was a busy day at the office to get everything complete and content locked down when person in charge of cutting the content pressed the wrong button and deleted everything without noticing.

3) They really decided on purpose to cut the whole thing for whatever reason instead of just the few levels.

4) The dog ate it.

5) It's actually a metaphor. You find the dungeon when you find yourself only to discover, you are the dungeon.

We are the dungeon we've been waiting for.

So if we co-op, are we then 2 dungeons? Or only two levels of dungeons...

And it's as creepy and twisted and other similar descriptors as we expected it to be!

I like your option 4, as some dogs will eat anything, but regardless of which of them are the case, if any, it would have been reasonable to make a short kickstarter update stating which content was cut for the release and the plans for it. No need for a video, just a few lines that would be easily searchable since many kickstarter backers just skim the text of updates for major headlines.

After all, lacking clear communication on such a point, the risk is that some gaming website takes up the "What happened to X, which was promised in the kickstarter? They took your money and being independent they controlled their own release, and yet didn't deliver" story, and pretty soon you are talking damage control rather than raves for a game where the core game is pretty awesome, and the major gripes apart from lair/companions seem to be the UI issues of poor inventory management, a few missing hotkeys for action bards, and an annoying way of doing crafting.

Pretty sure that larian has had to deal with it's fair share of damage control with the lack of initial localization options.

Well... Let's be honest- whatever devs say, comparision between promises and reality look... Not too good. Let's see (all stretch goals from Kickstarter were supposed to be in game actually):
(from "cheapest" to most expensive)

1. Bigger, better, etc. (basic goal): well, we don't really know what would it look like without KS, so let's say it's in

2. Homestead at the end of time: in (but for me it looks rather boring- I mean it looks amazing, but there's nothing interesting to do, with trader showing after gathering half star stones...)

3. Personality and talents which influence various interactions: only talent that actually seem to influence anything other than combat is pet pal. Anyone seen personalities?

4. Kirill gets his own orchestra- in, but half of music in game is either from Divine Diviniy or Divinity 2 (it's best in-game music I've ever heard, but it's still nothing new...).

5. Henchmen become companions: I've only Jahan with me (plus generic thief) as companion, but he's hardly most immersive companion. Hell- he doesn't even seem to be bothered by fact I'm striking a deal with Moloch, even though he's happy with imp slaughter...

6. Day and Night, Npc schedules, weather system: no, no, weather is static or changes unnaturaly fluently from storm to firestorm (Cyseal).

Plus:

Lair beneath Phantom Forest, 11 levels: apparently not in-game

Bellegar encounters, 5: I've met him only once, but I hadn't finished game yet.

All-in- all, only two stretch goals are fully implemented ("bigger, better", homestead) three are entirely not in-game, one is partially in (old music- while great- is played as often as new one).