Larian Studios surprised the whole gaming world in 2002 with the release of Divine Divinity, a tremendous singleplayer-only RPG. A nice detail for us Belgians (or Dutch although that’s a little further away), is the fact that Larian is a Belgian games company, located in Oudenaarde, near Ghent.
At this time they’re putting the final touches on Beyond Divinity which is almost complete. Fragland had the honor to jump into their offices, ask a couple of questions and have a try with the v0.95 demo. The interview can be found in the Interview section, the hands-on preview and first impressions on the game can be read below !



While entering the studio we are greeted and lead to an open room in the back where some pc’s are running the Beyond Divinity demo. Time to sit down and play ! Since 3 out of the 4 headphones mysteriously vanished the night before our visit I’ll have to do without sound so I won’t be able to say much about that, but what I did hear (I played very briefly with headphones) was very positive and created a nice ambiance.


It all starts with creating your character. You choose a name, gender (man, woman or even child), appearance, class and your basic skills. Hereafter you need to choose the class of your soulmate - e.g. the Death Knight ! This is actually the biggest new feature compared with Divine Divinity when it comes to gameplay, you have a small party of 2 people and because of a mysterious curse these two are “stuck” on each other. The advantage is that you’re always with two to fight (f.i. wizard and melee fighter) while the disadvantage is that when one dies, the other one dies as well because as you all know, “the body can’t live without the soul”, to quote a known movie trilogy.


Another new thing is the addition of Battlefields. This is a parallel world where you can escape to when things get a bit too hot under your feet. You can, for instance when you’re about to lose, go to these Battleground to get new experience (levelling and learn new skills). Here you can also trade with villagers, buy potions and weapons, and take on simpel quests. This world is also completely random generated so that an endless amount of quests and enemies are present.

There are less opponents than in Divine Divinity but they sure have become a lot more fun ! This is mostly because they’ve grown more clever and seem to 'think' a lot more tactical. There is, for instance, a Black Bishop who first paralyses you, then puts a circle filled with traps around you and when you wake up he’ll unleash an acid drain on you. A real arsehole (to say it with the words of the Project Leader) and there are more like him running around. With the party-element you can take on guys like these, whilst if alone, you certainly couldn’t. Larian’s site doesn’t say “tactical combat” for nothing !


Also the dialogues have improved greatly (from what I briefly heard): in total 10 actors were hired (men, women and children) who add even more quality and in a way atmosphere to the game. There’s also some humor present and more than once you’ll hear links to stuff from the real world.


The game world has been made more interactive. An example, you ask? You’ll get one !

Take Act 1, level 1 (demo-level) at the very ending. There, an arena with 2 closed fences and a pit in the middle awaits you. When you jump in the pit the level is over and you go to the next one. Between the 2 fences there’s a wheel which makes it possible to open them (again an example of the huge amount of detail). Now, in front of one of the fences is a good sword while the other fence has some armor.
When taking one of these away, the balance will disappear and the fence will open after which a giant spider will appear and you’ll have a tough job defeating it. What you can do is pick up a bar which lays right in front of the arena on a table and put this in the wheel which will block the fence. Then you’ll be able to take the sword and armor without having to fight enormous spiders. And there are more situations like these present in the game, believe me !


There’s no levelcap and you can learn over 300 skills so it pays off to continue playing in the Battlefields after having finished the game. That way, you can create an almost perfect character. These skills go from spells with enormous damage values, repairskills and sneakskills to many many many others. They are also, whether or not in parts, upgradeable. With a level 2 repair skill you’ll be able to repair more hitpoints at once and by enlarging the critical hit value of your bow, you’ll have more chance at deadly wounding someone with one shot.


Now something about the graphics. Since the Divinity engine has remained, the backgrounds are still in 2D and blurr a lot when zooming in. The 3D characters however, remain sharp at all time and here again a lot of detail has been put in. Despite the blurring, the engine succeeds in bringing some nifty effects onto the screen.


I’ve never been a true RPG lover, but after this visit to Larian I must say I’ve altered my perception of the genre. I’ve had a great time with the demo we got to play and I’m really looking forward to the release in March this year. The somewhat dated graphics are not problem at all due to the well-balanced, original and addictive gameplay ! The RPG lover can start counting down to the day this game becomes available in stores !