Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis how long has D2 been in production?

As subject has been stated. Exact date of ground breaking (talking script draft and first code(s) written).

And if you can compare it with Divinity: Sword of Lies and Beyond Divinity.

We started on the technology in 2004 with a very small team. In 2005,2006 we added a few more people and in the middle of 2007 we expanded the team heavily.

Divine Divinity started in 1999 to be released in 2002 and Beyond Divinity started beginning of 2003 to be released in the middle of 2004 (if memory serves me right)

Wow, 4 years in the making and still counting. That's awesome!

it is amazing how long it taken.
but it has a good side and bad side.

the good side is- the game is probebly heavily invested. i wonder if we will be able to pick up any item we find (rocks, trash, and any thing pickable like DD1)
thats enough to say about it :P

the bad side is- what was good at 2004, might be old at 2009. wonder if the 3d and the art could be compared to other games that coming at 2009, like diablo 3 (which comes at 3D) and other's.
also.. in such a heavily invested game, you will find many bugs. and i do hope the staff will fix the most MAJOR bugs of the game.
(do mind that in D1, some glitches could ruin up the game for the user, like entering the dark forest can couse the game to crash.. which blocks the forest, and ruin the game)

I am sure they didn't start developing Diablo 3 last year either

Sure, and has anyone seen the videos/screens from D3? It looks pretty much the same, just a better looking D2. Yeah it's 3D, but nothing to write home about. As far as graphics of upcoming '09 releases, Sacred 2 has more of the same look, but I guarantee it won't have half the depth of ED.

Agreed about the bugs, thirion. More time spent developing the game could mean more wrinkles ironed out, but with more features being added, it means more things that could go wrong.

But! With development for the Xbox going simultaneously, I don't think it will be an issue. Developers for titles that are exclusively for PC might rely on patches to fix game problems, but console owners don't have that option, so I would think the game will necessarily need to be 99.9% glitch free before release.

@lynn~ not sure when they started making d3, because of all the secrety..
but if you check out the gameplay of it, the last boss is, how to put it, "intense fear".
hope divine will have boss's like that :o

@flixerflax~ how about age of conan? lovely graphic :P and the charecter design is in the top (you can actualy choose which Nose (!) you want..).. thogh i dont recomand playing it.. lame game.
(ok so its not 2009, but its still count)

the good side of bugs- the more bugs added, the better the "secret bug killing level" gona be :P (and if you wonder where that is.. it's under lynn's studio room.

i assume the xbox version wont go out the same date as the pc one comes out.
there's alpha test, beta test, and the world wide test.. once it goes to the market, people could test thos bugs out and report :P then the xbox will have less bugs on it the same as the patches start going out..

Well, I've seen an Alpha version of the Div2 engine, and from what I've seen now, the engine has been improved a lot. But using Gamebryo I guess, its easely upgradable.

won't look like Crysis, but hell considering the theme/artwork it doesn't need to, in order to impress.

The more complicated a game is, the longer it takes to develop. But all that time is not spent just on programming the game - which is actually pretty much the last thing you do, IIRC. Creating the story, characters & setting has to come first, then all the design work for concepts of locations, items, people etc. Only when all THAT is done does the programming part actually start.

So 'X years in development' does not equate tp 'X years of building the game engine' at all...

actually those run alongside, the art department does its job while programmers work on alpha versions of the engine, work out gameplay mechanics etc etc....

Sword of Lies was in development 3 years before release. I still think it is graphically impressive with today's standards.

Graphics, though they help, is not everything that makes a game great. Chrono Trigger is a perfect example of a game with a great story that still won't die. Square-Enix is re-re-re-re-leasing it on the Nintendo DS. Add about 2-3 more (re's) if you count Japan releases since initial launch. It is also one of the most downloaded and emulated games on the net.

If a game has a great story, music and controls. It shall not die, the fans won't let it.

Have faith, I have since Sword of Lies and that is not a lie!

I think I've read they were developing it since 2005 or so ... I'm not sure, though ... I could be wrong and mix things up with Larian ...

I was one of the very 2 first artists to work on it. As far as I can remember it could have been in March-April 2005 or something but after all that time, it gets so blurry in my memory...

So, lots of drug experiments involved in the creative process of the game, I take it?

Übereil

Well, I think that, with all this time and effort being invested in the game, a finely made product will ultimately come out. I honestly wouldn't mind about the graphics being 2004-like if the storyline, side quests and game map are deep enough, which I know they will since both Divinity I and Beyond Divinity did pretty damn well in this regards. Plus, as far as I can tell from the screenshots I have seen the graphics are not coming out bad at all, so I don't think that's one aspect we (fans) have to worry about.

Oh geez... let's see... tons of mushrooms + LSD + Ecstasy.

You can also bet the Larian team must've been doped on tons of brownies.