Hi chaps,

Just a quick note to let you know we've posted a video and some screenshots on Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis on CVG. Here's the link:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=192049

I took a look at the game in progress a couple of months back and have to say I was quite impressed. I'll admit that I haven't looked into the series before, so I can't tell how it is as a sequel. It certainly is a game I'll be picking up though.

I'll keep an eye on the forums and try to answer any questions anyone might have.

Cheers,

Chris

Looks flippin awesome Glad to see the game really shaping up!

Cool screen shots

A little bit small but nice to view.

I shall update my site really...

Quit making me ""

yay, yoy!

Wow! Great! Amazing!
You can recognize the Oblivion engine quite well .
I know the video from the german mag "PC Games" .

I cannot expect that!

Cheers
Kitiara

Looks great, though suspiciously like a first person game, which would not please me. If I'm gonna be a dragon, I wanna SEE myself as a dragon. Where's the point, else?

I definitely like what I'm reading about the quests, though. Anything that gives you lots of options gets my vote

It's third person, don't worry.

Cheers

Lar

Ah, excellent! Thanks, Lar

Also (And gosh, I'm making a nuisance of myself with all this posting today! ) I've gotta say I love the sound of all the consequences to actions. They sound logical and well thought out - very Witcher (A definite compliment, for those of you who have not played it, yet).

It sounds like the old 'individual reputation' system from DD1 has been upgraded rather a lot, which is great. That was a major selling point for the original game, to me.

Looking great, and sounding as cool as expected -- and for a follow-up, the expectations are very high indeed. But please, please, please take care with released screens showing dialogue: "Why are you doing here?" just won't do!

And do we really have to wait until Q2 2009? Oh, well... it'll give me time to get a new computer.

I'd rather have a long wait than a buggy game any time! That way I know when I get my hands on it, it'll be great

I'm itching to get my fansite back up, now there is stuff to blog about

anything I can steal to design the Divine Devotion with?

http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_201898.jpg

Made me laugh out loud just don't know why. Would make a good caption contest.

And a great tribute to the "all your base" with the why are you doing here.



PS: I hope some strange missions and some slapstick missions will be involved. (washing dishes, Apollo and Shrimpo mission, some talking skeletons). I only ask since the hero looks kind of "no joke" though. I hope we will see him riding a stick horsey or something.

Nice looking imps!

http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_201902.jpg

This announcement has renewed my interest in the game.

Hi Chris (and anyone reading this)!

I'd like to know if it's possible to fully customize your character's looks, if you can choose between different player characters or if there's only the blond guy depicted on several screenshots like this one http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_201890.jpg (I guess it's also him on the Div II banner in this forum).

If he's the only one available, is it at least possible to change his armour? I'm not particularly fond of those enormous shoulder parts/spikes (or whatever they are). Okay, it's a fantasy game, but on this screenshot http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_201891.jpg it looks like he can't even see where he's swinging his weapon at. And the weapon design also seems to ignore any practical considerations.

I'm getting the impression that his hair gets more blond the further in the game you go, some screens he has brown hair, and others more and more blond.

Don't worry - you can customize your character. The visuals of the character also change when you change equipment

Who cares about hair when you have blue eyes like that ? *faints*

I am happy to finally see what Larian was dooing all these years and I am looking forward to the day I can play it .

Greetings

Pol

Hi Pol Thanks for jumping in here again!

Hi Lynn, Lar and the rest of the team

I've got a question concerning the screenshots. There seems to be mostly mid-day (high-noon) lighting and the environment always looks like a withered place during a hot summer. Will there be different kind of landscape environments and different kinds of lighting in the game (e.g. early evening lighting which gives a great contrast) or will there be a dynamic day/night rythm?

Oh, its been a long while since I've seen you in here... welcome back

Yes, there will be different "lights". The current issue of the German PC Games has screenshots of that.

Even in beautiful Rivellon the sun doesn't always shine!

On TV ?

("Aha !")

Aha... erlebnis? We're doing free association, right?

No, no, no, back to topic! => II

*ahem* i, euh, ... seem to have missed the video ... yesterday *cough*
but don't tell anyone !
like some other individuals, i was a bit occupied by the screenshots

so ...

awesome video!
*tries to sneak away*

No, this was a refer to "The sun always shines on TV" by the music band called "A-Ha".

You might know them by their classic "Take on me". They also did the title song for the James Bond movie "The living daylights".

I got it, Alrik!

I knew, I knew, I was just horsing around!

Macbeth,

Did you steel that horse from Richard The Third?!

Yes, that's why he shouted "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"

OMFG!

Pictures! Articles! Lynn and Lar posting again!

Looks amazing guys, can't wait to get it on day 1.

Lews

Man these screenshots look amazing! The game looks amazing! I cannot wait to play it! Which leads me to my question. Can I assume that because there is english text in that one screenshot, that we here in North America will be getting it the same time as europe? Q2 2009? Or was that just something for the demo that the journalist played. Either way, keep up the good work guys. It certainly looks like it has payed off.

I just hope my PC will be able to handle this stuff.

Yeah I know Alrik. But I am buying a new computer soon for spore an gta 4. I am thinking a 280gtx or a 4870 X2 will tame that beast. Wonder if wine will be able to handle it. I also notices some European flowers in the game and the water is magnificent although I expect some murky water in the sewers :p .

I upgraded mine only last November. I hope this stays for a while ...

The screens are amazing, I hope this is gone be a great game. Can't wait to see more !

Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare - just one more, ok?


OT:


Beautiful Polgara is revisiting!
That´s even greater news than those about Divinity2!


Nice to have you back `round here again, Pol!


Ragon, The Mage

P.S.: Hope this didn´t hurt your feelings, Mac, one of the oh-so-many-fathers of Div2??!

Right, the video looks awesome.

Btw, in Divine Divinity, your character could sleep with both genders in the brothel. Will this game be pushing beyond that: allowing your character to choose his sexual identity? (Not just sex but social interaction)

(Edit: I'd love to see some system reqs being posted, somewhere in the future when you've got those down pat.)

P.S. I'm assuming that there's only a male main character, right?

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 ...

Hehe, no problem Ragon, you can't imagine how hard it was for us to keep our mouths shut, especially after more than 3 years of development ...

@Morbo: I studied Animation at St Lukas in Brussels. Guess you thought I was a different Koen?

@Alrik: This actually sounds funny, I'll check with the other guys at larian

i wanne test it!!!!!!

I'm beyond thrilled about Divinity 2. I stopped visiting the forums for about four or five months when it got very quiet new-wise. Came back and you have a new forum website, Divinity 2 website and official announcements! I am so looking forward to this game. The quality of the original was so good and the "feel" of it still sticks in my mind (voice acting, beautiful scenes, the incredible music, immersive story). The screenshots look like the kind of fantasy world I can get "lost" in for a long time!

I posted a thread about it on Bethesda Studios Community Forum - going to try to get the word out to those who enjoy this type of game (and I figured the Elder Scrolls crowd would be interested). Here's hoping for great success!

I can't wait for a demo! I'm gonna have a party when (if Larian decides to release one, hopefully for xbox 360 & PC) it comes out. I don't know what I'll do when the full game comes out... The music on the teaser site gives me goosebumps.

Ditto on those sentiments, Jeffredo. I'd check less and less often over the years, then lo and behold! Updates, screenshots, videos! I even reinstalled the original and am playing through it for the first time a while. After playing dozens of similar (and mostly disappointing) games, I found that many may have looked better but few were as immersive and none stayed with you the way that did. I remember the excitement on the forums when was being developed and discussed. Anyone else feel the electricity in the air?