Larian Saturdays
I’ve actually not paid much heed to Larian Studios before; the Belgian developers have not yet managed to put a game on my radar.
That, however, may change in the near future. Larian would appear to be putting their lengthy Divinity series aside in pursuit of a new IP, and their temporarily-titled “Project E”.
Why? Here’s why:
Ever since I started making RPG’s, I’ve been looking to recreate for other people the same experience I had with Ultima VII — it really is my drive. Now, in my mind I never succeeded in this but if I can believe the reviews and the fanmails, apparently Divine Divinity somehow struck the same chord for a lot of people. Which was quite motivating of course. The knowledge that even a subset of the original ambitions managed to satisfy players implied that if ever we succeeded in realizing the vision behind those ambitions, we might very well have a very big hit on our hands.
But as it happened, after the first Divinity, I lost track a bit – Beyond Divinity definitely wasn’t as good as Divine Divinity, and I always regretted making that one, even if it got ok reviews…
When I’ll be playing the final version of project E, I hope that I’m going to get my Ultima VII vibe back, the method being recreating all of the values present in these masterpieces, and then taking it one step further.
Exactly how we intend to this you’ll discover soon enough, that means latest within a couple of weeks though I expect the news will break sooner. I’m quite nervous about how you all will react, because you’ll see we’re taking some risks, but you’ll also notice that we’ll be on very familiar ground. And you’ll also discover that project E really was a misnomer, it should be project D, but we had that one already
So, since there’s one day left in the week, Larian Studios now occupies the Saturday slot in Aiera’s battery of more-or-less regularly scheduled posts. And with good reason; they have Ultima on the brain, and their next project sounds like it might just be worth paying some attention to!
Oh, and: If someone has a better (that is: higher-resolution) version of the Larian Studios logo available, and if it happens to be at least 630 pixels wide…can you send it to me, or drop a link in the comments or something?
Couldn’t find a decent resolution image of their logo, but here’s some gameplay from Divine Divinity:
http://youtu.be/jzcgdFj9_cs
Seems like a cross between Diablo and Ultima VII, which is about where the mindset of Ultima VIII was.
A cross betweeb UVII and Dialbo seems about right as far as Divine Divinity goes. I never played much of the game, but it feel it was a wrong formula. It appears to have some sort of Ultima vibe, but feels really like a hack’n slash.
So basically fans of the Ultima formula tends to get bored by how hack’n slashy it is, and hack’n salsh fans don’t really care about the Ultima ish aspects.
My understanding is that Beyond Divinity was even more hack’n slashy
Well…what if you’re an Ultima fan that just wants to blow off some steam? If the game is “Ultima VIII Done Right” then it might be worth a play.
True. As I said I barely played Divine Dinivity so I can’t really comment, but that’s the feeling the friends I have who played it came up with (and well they’re not really into hack’n slash games)
That being said I’m certainly curious about their next projects, if they can create some sort of spiritual successor to Ultima VII, taht would be awesome.
To be honest, Ultima VII was kind of hack ‘n slash too… with less interaction during the battles. Most of the fun was in the other stuff and so it was with DD as well.
Err what ? No it wasn’t. Ultima VII’s combat was basically an auto combat that required little to no interaction from the player. That’s like the polar opposite of what a hack’n slash is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_and_slash
Hack and slash or hack and slay, abbreviated H&S or HnS, refers to a type of gameplay that emphasizes combat. “Hack and slash” was originally used to describe a play style in tabletop role-playing games, carrying over from there to MUDs, MMORPGs, and video games in general. In video games, the usage specifically implies a focus on combat with hand-to-hand weapons. In other contexts it is more general, and an archer or unarmed martial artist may participate as fully in a hack and slash game, or be as hack-and-slash oriented as an individual, as an armed melee fighter. In modern video games, the term “hack and slash” is either used to describe a sub-set of action RPGs which emphasize melee combat as a core element of the gameplay experience, or a beat ’em up action game that emphasizes weapons-based combat. Both variations of the term are often written in hyphenated form and with the conjunction contracted, e.g. hack-and-slash, hack ‘n’ slay.
Much like most games these days.
I think “hack ‘n’ slash” is equally applicable to clicking a mouse button as it is to pushing a gamepad button. All games are hack ‘n’ slash if they have combat. The “A” key in Ultima games didn’t really offer a lot of diversity in how and where you wished to attack an opponent. Maybe the idea is more of a feeling you get from the game in response to attacking things? Like if someone said, “Please, m’Lord, I have a family” when you attacked them and you stopped, it wouldn’t be hack ‘n’ slash?
Here’s a hack ‘n’ slash for modern times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iILgNQzwoC0