There isn’t much news related to Larian Studios this week, although there is a fairly lengthy interview at Gaming Bolt with Divinity: Original Sin producer David Walgrave.

Original Sin, you’ll all hopefully recall, is Larian Studios’ attempt at making a homage to Ultima 7; they are striving to achieve similar levels of sandboxiness and world interactivity as said classic Origin Systems game. And based, at least, on Walgrave’s description of magic and crafting in the game, it sounds like they are on the right track:

At the moment, we are planning lots of different weapon types, but I don’t want to give a list, because that can still change in the course of production. Let’s just say we’re not stopping at swords, bows and axes.

Magic has six “schools” at the moment: earth, wind, fire, water, warrior and survivor. The four first schools are elemental magic schools, and those spells interact with each other and the world as you would expect. For instance, water puts out fire. So there’s a bit of a rock-paper-scissors game going on between the different spells, and you’ll be able to use that against enemies that have similar powers, and against and in combination with things in the world that are susceptible to the elements.

Item combinations, there’s dozens and dozens of different ones, and we still come up with new ones every day. It’s simple stuff such as creating your own potions (empty jar + the right ingredient), enhancing potions (healing potion + apple = detox potion), storing bottles of poison (empty jar + poisonous ingredient), enhancing weapons (weapon + poison). But also more complex and more intricate creations such as voodoo dolls, which is not just a two step process.