Divinity: The Sword of Lies Preview

The Belgian programming house Larian Studios has a good chance of standing alongside the greatest world FRP developers. We discussed their latest project Divinity: THE SWORD OF LIES with their lead programmer Swen Vincke, so I'll let him introduce this great project.

Hmmm, do I need to kill all of you?

And where am I?

"Divinity, The Sword of Lies is a new isometric fantasy role playing title featuring a host of new features. The game focuses on the adventures of your hero as you guide him through a vast interactive world on an epic journey. During your journey you will be meeting many characters with whom you can interact, as well as hordes of monsters and other vermin. Meanwhile you will be involved in a dramatic storyline that contains many turns and twists. "

The work on the game started in the beginning of 1999, and a lot of work has been done and there are a lot of interesting results. The developers think that this project will bring something really new to the genre.

The authors created a 7000 screenshot world. Most will be unique and hand-painted and some will be tile-mixed. However various, all the terrains will be one whole with no separate levels or loading screens in between. The players will need at least forty hours to finish the game.

The plot doesn't seem as complex as a classical Russian novel, but there is a lot of room for the story to be developed during gameplay. The main seven races develop hostile behavior and civil war seems imminent. You, being the assistant of the grand wizard Zandalor, gets the quest of going to a castle whose lord has been slain. What that has to do with The Sword Of Lies is not yet known, and that is a well-kept secret.

Initially you have to choose one of the four characters (two of each sex). During the tutorial you'll get to use some EXPs and form your character. A Death knight will lead you through the introduction and teach you the basics of movement and combat, and your performance in the first part will influence your character's characteristics.

The engine is new and specifically developed for the game, and it will be used for making sequels, add-ons and new games. The graphics are in 2D with the support for 3D accelerator light effects support. Very detailed scenes, big characters and breath-taking special effects, will compensate this.

Apart from the technical details the game will be abundant in elements that have been ignored in FRPs up till now. Swen explains his ideas of absolute interactivity:

"One thing which is important to mention is that Divinity has been specifically designed to cater the tastes of a mainstream audience while still remaining very attractive to hardcore players. When you play the game, you will notice that there are really a lot of ways of developing your character and progressing through the game. Because of the design of the character development, it's possible to finish the game in pure hack and slash fashion, but it's also possible to finish the game with a very limited amount of fighting, depending on what you prefer.

Another thing, which is worth mentioning, is the interactivity of the world. If you look at one of the screenshots, then basically everything you see can be interacted with. You don't have to, but you can, and by doing so, you can gain an advantage. Basically it's one big playground where you can try out stuff to see what happens. To give you but one example, you can even clean dishes using the patented medieval dishwasher ;) But it's not limited to objects. The characters you meet are *very* sensitive to the things you do."

Character advancement and gaining experience is done like in a RTS, so what we wanted to know was:

Action Trip: Creating a skill system in the form of a tech tree is a great idea. Could you tell us more about that?

Swen Vincke: "Certainly. I've inserted a summary from our design doc here:

The player can select to research skills. Every skill has a certain cost expressed in experience points attached to it. The player selects the skill he wants to research and when he has accumulated enough experience points he gains access to the skill, and gets the option to research a new skill. In addition to the way the player handles his primary statistics, the skill system is predominant in the area of character development. Skills are divided into three paths, which represent different character classes ? Way of the warrior ? Way of the wizard ? Way of the survivor These initial paths are available to the player upon startup. The player can gain access to skills represented in the other ways, but at a severe experience cost. The experience cost corresponds to the cost of the next level up. This basically expresses that it is hard to change profession. Each way contains 4 classes of skills. That means there are 12 skill classes the player can learn. Each skill class contains 8 skills. In total we therefore have 96 skills. Each skill is divided in 5 levels. The total amount of levels therefore is 480. Way of the wizard The way of the wizard represents the magic system of Divinity. The magic system makes a distinction between 4 classes of magic. These are the powers of matter, the powers of summoning, the elemental powers and the powers of body and spirit. Each class of magic contains eight spells, and each spell contains 5 levels, giving a total of 32 spells, and 160 spell levels. To learn a spell, the player needs to research the spell. To advance in the level, he needs to research the next level of the spell. To learn a spell of a specific class, the player first needs to research the class. The player can also learn a spell or advance a level if he finds a book corresponding to that spell. The way of the warrior The way of the warrior represents the weapons and armor system in Divinity. There are four classes: Basic weapon skills, advanced weapon skills, master weapon skills, and fighter's lore. The way of the survivor The way of the survivor reflects all those skills, which a smart and simple person uses to survive in a hostile world. It focuses on gaining wealth, no matter how, discretion and knowledge. The way of the survivor is split in four classes: The path of the thief, the path of the opportunist, the path of the charmer and the path of lore. The way of the survivor is an extremely interesting way to follow. For those of you who are not to keen on fighting, I strongly suggest you focus on this way. It contains some really nice skills, and though it is possible you'll progress slower through the game (as you need to use your wits quite a lot), you'll end up in some very nice situations.