Larian Saturdays
The big news for Larian Studios this week is, of course, the successful completion of the Divinity: Original Sin Kickstarter campaign. In total, between Kickstarter, PayPal, and the RPG Watch/RPG Codex standalone campaigns, Larian Studios managed to raise a bit over $1,000,000 to bolster development and completion of the game…which means that it will in fact feature not only full NPC companions, but also NPC schedules.
In other words: Sven Vincke’s dream of crafting a proper spiritual successor to Ultima 7 is…much, much closer to being realized. Obviously, the proof will be in the final product, but as it stands right now, there is room and reason for optimism.
A lot of previews of the game (and Dragon Commander, too) were published and/or released in the last week; I’d encourage you to check any (or all) of them out.
It’s in the pudding, but I’m superlatively happy games like these are being attempted…and made. Experimental thrusts into the all-enveloping (or enshrouding, even) world of Ultima!!! I’m super stoked to see these independently-funded RPGs come to fruition, even if they only result in a better way to do things for our own projects.
Soon the New School will learn the ways of the Old School and outmaneuver them by their physical agility and minimal wage requirements. A few will then perform “deep learning” by studying their elders and try to evolve the mechanism. The old will fail to adapt and the young will fill the resulting power vacuum, slowly turning forward the wheel.
Aren’t they like 56k from getting the npc schedules in? So I guess we’re screwed for schedules.
Nah, they said they came close enough and will do them anyway. Plus, I think they actually did reach about a million, or very close.
When they counted Kickstarter funds, PayPal funds, and fundraisers held on other sites (such as RPG Codex) then all together they went over $1 million.