Hi, I have some questions I would like to know about how large the game will be.

Both Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity feature a large and seamless open- world, providing over 100 hours of content.

Here is the key features according to Steam:

Divine Divinity:

"An RPG of Epic Proportions
Experience an adventure that will last you over 100 hours, filled with tons of non-linear quests and offering an enormous world to explore!"

Beyond Divinity:

“If you're looking for a lengthy (as in 100+ hours) RPG that blends quick and dirty gameplay with heaping plates of detail and sophisticated character development, no one else comes close to this series”
90/100 – GameSpy

Although, the Steam key features for Beyond Divinity states over 60 hours of gameplay.

Well anyway, my questions are -

1. Will Divinity Original Sin include a massive open world like its predecessors mentioned above?

2. Will Divinity Orginal Sin offer over 100 hours of gameplay content to experience (not including the editor)?

Please and Thank you! =)

From the topic Some questions to devs:


As far as length goes, a couple years ago the tentative plan at the time was to create a 20 hour RPG, with the possibility of adding 10 hour chunks (FWIW, D2:ED started off as a 25 hour RPG); see the old topic Next title Larian works on?. Official DLC hasn't been mentioned since, so it wouldn't be surprising if the current design is a single, longer game (not counting the user made DLC with the included editor).

I don't recall seeing more recent comments on the game size or length (other than a blog post saying the E3 presentations for Dragon Commander and Original Sin were refined to "..show 40 hrs of gameplay in 15 minutes..").


Welcome to the forum.

Even IF the world of Original Sin is NOT larger than DD or BD and the total playtime is also not that long I'm still very happy with it, even without the editor in mind !

As long as the gameplay is fun fun fun and humour is in the game with ton ton tons ...
I know Original Sin is Awesome & full of passion & love ... yeah of course, it's a Larian game !

So for me not the Quantity but the Quality is most important .

Yeah as of more recent years people have become obsessed with games that have to last seemingly forever. Better make a good 10 hour long game than a shitty 100 hour long game imo.

Thanks for the info, I still hope to get a more direct source of answer on how large the game is. I hope that 40 hours of gameplay you were quoting is of each game separately and not both games combined. Also, if that is true, then it leads me to believe that, that 40 hours of gameplay isn't of the entire game and we can hope to see an even longer amount of game length! =)



That may be true, but I could easily counter that with saying. It's even better to make a good game that lasts 100 hours than a good game that lasts 10 hours.
Look at Divine Divinity, and more recently, Skyrim as prime examples. =)

Well there were separate 15 minute time slots for each game, so that implies 40 hours per game.

FWIW, in the past Larian has tended to be conservative with their playtime estimates (D2:ED had an official estimate of 40 hours, but exploring everywhere and doing everything took me 75 hours in my first game; some others were faster, especially if playing on lower difficulty settings).


I'd also prefer quality over quantity, if there must be a trade-off. Within reason, longer is better, of course, if quality isn't sacrificed.

It also depends on your playstyle, how thoroughly you play the game :
only the main quest and a few side quests or searching every inch to make sure you find ALL that's in the game, secrets and maybe easter eggs too.

Plus:
the REPLAYability of the game is for me also important, but so far all Larian games I've played have a very good replayability. and are very addictive too

I'm 200% sure Original Sin will have a very good replay value !!
And the Editor in mind ... it's forever big fun !

How much GB ?

DD and BD were action-RPG games. DoS is a tactic one which definitely increases amount of time you spent in battle. I assume even if DoS isn't so long (gameplay/story/narrative wise) as first two games - it still will be close to the same playability length.

Plus it'll feature the tool to make your own levels/quests and whatnot by the community.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

Sounding very promising, thank you! =)

Could you please link me the source to where you saw that video and the comment you quoted saying that it was 40 hours cut down into 15 mins please?

I did post a link to the blog post containing the comment about the E3 presentations (see the picture caption), in my first reply above. As for the video itself, you can check out the Larian Studios YouTube Channel; E3 was awhile ago, though, so since that video there has been work done on the lighting and graphics in general. There are a couple more recent videos, and other blog posts about D:OS, as well.

Well, people are obsessed with long games because developers are so determined to keep making them shorter. Me, I'm thorough, don't like to leave areas unexplored or (assuming my character can handle them and what I'd have to do isn't thoroughly rotten) quests undone (secrets and easter eggs... depends, if they require doing weird things that don't quite make sense in the context or pixel hunting, I probably won't find them), so back in the day I generally played games for far longer than the listed duration. In recent years, however, I see listed durations that, while still shorter than what they were 10-15 years ago, are actually longer than even I take to finish, so have to wonder who comes up with those numbers and how these days.

Bottom line, if I'm paying for a game and don't get at least some 50h out of it (being thorough as I am, but straight playing, not counting reloads, so use save timer for those that have one, and strictly singleplayer and a single playthrough thank you very much), I'm not a happy camper. And if it can get towards 100 and still keep itself from getting tedious, even better. Just get a few games a year, after all, so they'd better last.

So the best thing is a great 100-hour game :p Past that, yeah, I'll go for a great 50-hour one over a modest 100-hour one, but as for the "better make a good 10-hour game" remark, nope, not unless it's freeware, that's waaay too short to warrant buying, no matter how good it is. (Though, of course, for those with the audacity to release such bite-sized games on a commericial basis, there are ways to play them as if they're freeware :p)

Ah sorry, I didn't see that you already posted it, my bad. Thanks again! =)

And again, since so much would have been done to the game since then, my hope is that the gameplay has increased dramatically! But I would still doubt it will reach 100 hours, but I can hope can't I? hehe




Exactly my thoughts mate!

I don't have a problem with short games, as long as they are priced accordingly. Point and click adventure games tend to be much shorter than RPGs, for example, so the odd one I buy is a while after release, on sale and/or in a bundle. A few years ago I was getting my brother and his wife a few adventure games each year for Christmas, and for myself if they were very good, but the last couple years I didn't start early enough to allow time for shipping (and I don't think there have been a lot of recent Syberia / Longest Journey class games released).

100 hour long playtime for a rpg game ?
That's really very long !
Don't forget a rpg has "replayability value and can be addictive" too !!
So counting all the replays ... like for Divine Divinity I've already 100 and 100 of hours of funny playtime !

Sometimes I even hope DD is not so long as it is now and forever

I see no issue and problem when the length is provided not by massive world (see TES for example - lost of script-generated space and caves,dungeons, lost of c&p quests that bore you after few hours) but rather the way it world packed with content (good examples: Gothic 1-2). Dragon Age was something in-beetwen TES and Gothic in this aspect.

So, we can't acquire a definite on how long the game will be at this point in time. All we know, is it will be roughly 40 hours or so long, which is pretty good, and I'm satisfied with that.

Now, what I would like to discuss, is how large will the world of Divinity Original Sin be? Is it going to be an expansive open world (if so, offering 100 hours of gameplay on its own)? Is it going to be split up into smaller instanced zones? Or is it going to be a more direct/linear map?

Frankly, I'm not really expecting a huge world map. It would be great if the game world was huge, on the scale of Divine Divinity, but we can't really expect an AAA-studio size world from Larian, they're just not that big a studio, so I'm going to keep my expectations low.

Rich content is better than raw size.

I'll compare three Elder Scrolls games: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.

Oblivion had a really large world, but a lot of it felt rather bland and samey - all the dungeons started to blur together after a while. Skyrim's world is the same size of smaller, but the dungeons have a lot of detail, each one is unique, which is really important because dungeon crawling is a big part of Elder Scrolls games.

Morrowind was bigger in raw size, and it had a lot of content, but a lot of the world was empty wastelands and a lot of the people were unimportant information kiosks.

The only thing I really hope is that the world is "open" and not in acts (like BD) and not like the Wastelands (in DD) with a point of no return !!

Open world and it's up to the player to experience if a area is surviveble (depends how strong enemies are, etc), old school rpg all the way !

That depends a lot on the kind of story Larian wants to tell, and how serious the consequences are.

Definitely not the only thing, see what I said earlier, but yes, that'd be very important. And no level scaling, so fully open but definitely not about equally challenging at any moment, dragons are dragons, hard to kill, hit like a ton of bricks, even if the player's level 5 and goblins are goblins, few HP and poke you with toothpicks, even if player's level 50.

Exactly what I would love! It would be awesome if the game features a massive open world for you to explore. However, I doubt that. It would be a nice surprise though! =)

Are we talking about "game size" in terms of hard disk space,
or are we talking about "game size" in terms of play time ?

Playability/area of playability/level design wise.

Aha, okay.
With "size" I only can imagine disc space.

I really like the way Divinity 2 did it. It's actually a relatively small game space, but they filled it up with alot of content. There is pretty much no wasted space, it's all used for something. Lots of hidden doors, hidden keys, people in secluded places. To me, it's more fun to explore a world like that, compared to something like Skyrim which has way more content but doesn't use it as wisely.

Spot on there!

I feel that Skyrim was perfect with the amount of content to space ratio. I like having some room to get immersed into without constantly having to be in action. Skyrim gave you that little breathing room between points of interest, but just enough that it didn't feel like a wasted space. You would literally move for a few minutes from one point on interest to another, it was really good and allowed you to slow down and take in some of that great view. This is how I would like the content in the world to be like.

Divinity 2: Eco Draconis was a masterpiece of a game, providing amazing freedom of movement and constant fun. However, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the world of Skyrim more so than Divinity 2. Divinity 2 felt kind of restrictive in size, while Skyrim really made me feel like I was in a world, albeit, a small one.

I'm currently happily playing SWTOR and especilly Taris feels as being HUGE ! (I'm not much further than that, though.)

I haven't played any of the Elder Scrolls games yet, so I can't judge.

I believe, however, that for some people a smallr world is sufficient, whereas other people want rather a bigger world.

And then : Let's not forget the aspect of Detail ! : A richly detailed environment where there are always new things to discover are - at least in my personl opinion - alw<ys a great thing !
The bad side of this is, that the bigger an environment is, the mire difficult it is to place all of these little, neat detals into this world ...

Rod Lightning

>preferring manually crafted (with love and care) gameworld to script-generated, monotonous waste of space
>in 2012 2013



Step up, all cool kids love TES.

While it is true that a very good 10 hour game is better than a shitty 100 hour game; I much rather have a very good 100 hour game than a very good 10 hour game
-
Anyways while past is not an indication of future; I have very high hopes that this game will excell. I hope they release it soon

The last release estimate we got was possibly Q2, probably by Q3.

I'm guestmating it'll be out around May/June. I'm not sure if they're aiming to release both Dragon Commander and Original Sin around the same time but ehh...Since they did a pretty big overhaul on Dragon Commander gameplay, (going from purely air to land, air and naval combat) we might see that one a few months later? Gives us time to discovere as many easter eggs as possible in OS I guess

No need for rushing in time ... I want Divnity: Original Sin full of Tons of Humour !!

But I know it's an enormous work to put all that "weight of funny things" into the game world with only a Spoon !! Signed,
Hermit

Good luck L(ibr)arians making D:OS !!

I seriously can't imagine that Original Sin will come out before late fall 2013. The reason I think that is because of all the requests for feedback they've put up in the past two months:

Does money have weight
Limited Inventory Space
Walking Tank vs Armoured Bikini
Auto-assigning stat points
Primary Stats
Weapon Types?
Open World or Linear?

These are not questions you ask when you have a nearly-finished game - ESPECIALLY the "open world" one. If the game were really coming out in May/June, all this would have to be set in stone by now. They wouldn't still be adding extra attributes, there's no time to change things.

At least with the open world question they must be past the design stage. There may be changes or tweaks they may be able to make in response to feedback, though, or they may just want to get an idea of what people want or expect for the game.

The May/June estimate was for Dragon Commander.

Same here, Pretty sure it will be fall-late fall/late q3.

Yes, I think the same as Stabbey and Kein : around Q3 .

As long as the game is not as big as the Sacred games but still quite long im happy . The Ancaria universe from Sacred 1 and 2 was so huge it should have been a mmo.

Marius,

It would be best for you to play Divine Divinity to get an idea what to expect. This game will be very similar. It is also really cheap to buy now and last year it was 'regraded' by a video game magazine that got an ~80% in comparison to the latest gaming technology. Not bad for for an old game.

The game will be big, but will be full. Every area will give you the feeling there is a purpose for this. Expect no wasted space or 'sloppy filler'!

I did play Divine Divinity LightnightLocky and Beyond, And Ego Dragonis, and trust me the world of Ancaria is huge in comparison to Rivelon, but i did enjoy Rivelon so i cant wait to see what secrets they will have for us in this one

is the divinity 2 map is in thet