Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Are there more then 2 companions?

It seems Janah and Madora are the only ones i found (Not counting the homestead ones that you can pick between) are there any others out and about?

ohh its ok, i am not upset just was making SURE i didnt miss any =) totally replaying it again on HARD! was just wondering if i should try different companion

This is one of the few things that disappointed me upon release of the game. I was sure they would add more companions.

They wanted but they just ran out of time. Postponing the release even further wasn't an option either due to contracts with distributors. But Larian still work on the stuff and they want to give us more companions for free. I think many AAA developers would have just cut the content (you know: not ready for relase = cut) or they would sell it as DLC for $10 each...

I really doubt this.

I feel pretty sure that any AAA developer that knew what was in their own interest and had a "Henchmen becomes companions. Companions have a background, their own story to tell, their own goals, and their own personality" stretch goal as a Kickstarter goal, which was achieved, but failed to deliver on that promise upon release by having a mere two companions (with very little personality and extremely limited interaction with anything but the main character) and a large number of henchmen, would do their best to add more and better fleshed out companions post release if they could find any way to afford it. Not only out of professional pride, but also out of sound business logic.

Probably not turning all henchmen into fully fledged companions, but at least two or three to show that they were a) competent in that regard (something that the two current companions does little to demonstrate), and b) tried to honour their promises to their backers.

After all, the alternative would be to try keeping a straight face while saying that Jahan and Madora were definitely worth the 100,000$ investment and what they really meant when they made the stretch goal, should they ever try to start another kickstarter project and be called on their record from previous projects.

EDIT: Or even worse, just consider the stink that would arise in such a situation if the company tried to sell extra companions as DLC shortly after release as you suggest other companies would do? That would pretty much guarantee negative press.

No. Larian isn't doing this because they are a bunch of good and worthy souls, though for all I know they may well be that - I am confident that they are doing it because they are professionals.

they should be adding some soon

I think some of you haven't understood that "stretch goals" on kickstarter are not really mandatory...

But I also think that we can agree that Larian are good guys.

for the companions they said aug but could be a little late

Has already been said in the 2nd post here...

I think you haven't understood that when you start adding stretch goals, people will expect you to adhere to the promises you make when you state the goals should they be funded, just as they do the goals you announce in the project kickoff, and it is your performance in this regard that you'll be measured on when considering whether you are honouring your promises or not.

Stretch goals aren't "optionals" if funded - they are goals that explicitly expand the scope of the original project proposal in order to achieve one or more of achieving greater funding, providing a better product, or rewarding backers more (which is why a project creator needs to be damn careful about what which stretch goals he makes, if any).

When a company says "if we get X money, we will do Y", then everybody but the most blinkered will consider that as a promise by them to do Y should they get X, not as a statement that they might consider doing Y under such circumstances if the stars align correctly.

If they want to make an optional goal that they'll do their best to fulfill but might not depending on circumstances, then they need to make that explicit.

Kickstarter is based on trust, and honouring promises is the foundation of trust.



Not I. I do not know them personally to say whether they are good guys or not.

What they do appear to me to be are professional, and that's about as high a praise as I am willing to extend to any team of developers I do not know personally.

Well, I guess your problem is that you know very little about game development. All you say is theoretical stuff. But you're kind of right. There shouldn't be such things like firm stretch goals in the first place. Game development is about tought choices and constant iteration in a highly unsecure environment. Fixed goals you "have to fulfil" are pure poison and Larian did the right thing not sticking to them. You know why? Because the game itself benefitted from that decision. What's better? A game with a huge list of predefined features that sucks or a game that cuts a few features (but maybe adds other features which emerged during development) that is pure fun?

The one reason why you should pledge for a game on kickstarter is indeed trust. But not trust in a list of fixed features. Trust in the capability of a developter to actually deliver an enjoyable game with a certain vision they presented to you. If you actually pledged for a certain single feature you made a big mistake and I feel with you. But then again you probably didn't understand how video game development works...

Indeed. For example, I backed a game on KS (a highly anticipated sequel to a game from 2006) that was explicitly promoted as a single game. However, as development progressed, they decided very recently to move to an episodic format. Now, I - for one - do not like episodic games. I still haven't finished TWD Season 1, in spite of buying them all at once. It's immersion breaking, to me. Nevertheless, I understand the business reasons behind it, and it actually makes sense - given the format of the game - to divide it up in this manner.

Am I disappointed? Yes. However, I pledged to support them because I wanted them to make a game I desired to play. I trust them to make that game, in spite of changing the "promise" made during the KS. Game development requires flexibility, and we - the backers - have to understand and accept that.

Honestly, I don't care. I'm a CUSTOMER. I don't need to care about the realities of the producer. The PRODUCER's job is to handle those realities. I don't care WHY Larian didn't deliver on all those stretch goal promises. I only care that they didn't and that at their next Kickstarter I'm a lot warier of whatever it is they are promising.

Obviously it's not completely black-and-white. I understand the Kirill business for example. But just coming out and saying "we don't do that after all because our project management is bad" is not a good reason to me.

EDIT: Yes I understand, Kickstarter blaablaa, I'm not in a customer relationship blaablaa. But I disagree with that as well, since the Kickstarter was basically a glorified preorder.

please dont fight

What I'm not happy about is that Larian failed in properly communicating the "missing" features before the release. They did so for the missing day/night cycles but not for the other stuff (AI personalities, more companions, mega dungeon).

And though KS strech goals can never be actual promises, it's quite clear that the community expected the features to be in the final release. Larian was strong in communication during the KS campaign, but they struggled at the end. As it was already said, I'm a customer, not a game developer, so I want to hear an explanation.

Well the companions seem to be on track to be placed in the game soon. The character traits are in the AI personalities have been patched in a couple days ago and I'm keeping faith the lair will be added as well sooner rather than later....unless I'm missing something about them saying it's been scrapped. At the moment I don't mind these delays, they have been busy furiously patching things really fast, which is great.

Sad about the day and night cycles but all is good. The game is great, waiting for a few more weeks for touch-ups will be alright, you and your extreme capitalistic attitude of entitlement and "customer is boss" and all that will live.

I'm aware of this, but again it should have been communicated earlier. As for the lair (if you speak of the mega-dungeon?) afaik it won't be added at all as it had been split up and is already placed in the game world.

Unless Larian have specifically said it's been scrapped I wouldn't assume it. They HAVE said they intend this to be a living project that they constantly add to and expand. You could shoot them an PM on the KS website or an email and see if they reply.

I don't rightfully know. Does my industry experience as a game developer 2000-2009 count for having at least some minimal understanding of the industry?

I've been on the sharp end of making such decisions with the rest of the team, implementing the consequences, and explaining to the guys commissioning games from us that things were not going to happen the way we originally agreed to because under the circumstances we now thought something else would work better or that the original promise turned out not to be feasible to implement. I would have thought that this gave me at least some insight, despite being away from the industry for a few years.

As you correctly note, explicit promises are damn dangerous to game developers due to the vagaries of development, but as far as I am concerned, you draw the wrong conclusion.

Game development is about making the hard choices, and given that this is the case, you should be damn careful about making explicit promises in the first place, because you will be called upon them, no matter how reasonable from your own game development perspective it is not to honour them, and this goes double when you are making promises to financial backers, because what you think are the most important things out of those in the original agreement and what your backers think are the most important things are not necessarily the same things.

And when you do choose not to honour your explicit promises for what seems good reasons to you, which will occasionally happen, the important thing to do is to communicate your positive version of this story to your backers as quickly as possible, explaining why things are not going to happen the way they expected based on your promises when they decided to fund you, in an attempt at getting their buy-in of the changed development narrative.

This is the area in which Larian has been lax by not sending out a kickstarter update or making a sticky forum post focused on the original promises and how and why they decided to make changes or omit some of them, but instead leaving it for people to discover post release, with the understandable result that even weeks after release we still have people starting new threads about where the missing features are.

It is popular to state that a game is more than a feature-list, and this is entirely correct --- which is why you should be damn careful when you seek funding based on a feature list.


As for kickstarter, stretch goals are a known danger because they fracture the expectations of your financial backers.

I'd prefer if they were less common, but if you are making them in the first place, for the love of God make them something that you can reasonably expect to make for considerably less money than the money you are asking for, such that it is almost certain that you won't end up being overwhelmed when your budget turns out to have been optimistic, as is often the case. It is even worse from my perspective when people make a promise of the "if we get X likes on Facebook, do Y" or other promises to add stuff that isn't funded, but these are popular as a way of attracting more backers - backers whose pledges will likely go towards meeting the funding of some of your stretch goals.