Tweet
Kickstarter and RPGs have gone together like, well, nostalgia and money over the last couple of years. From Wasteland 2 to Pillars of Eternity to Divinity: Original Sin, they've done great business, and resulted in great games. But that was then. It's time for the second wave.Larian's Sven Vincke is one of the first developers to return for a second try - at least with a new project, as opposed to another revival like Brian Fargo's upcoming Bard's Tale 4. Divinity: Original Sin was a huge success on every front, getting great reviews and selling well enough to justify a huge Enhanced Edition in the coming months that, amongst other things, takes the game to consoles, rewrites some of its rough edges, and puts voice to all of its dialogue. After such success, why go back to the crowdfunding well?
"We have Original Sin 2. It's funded," Vincke states. "There's no doubt about that. Original Sin was a success, and we're putting everything from that into Original Sin 2. We don't need publishers, we don't need investors. But, what defines a great RPG is freedom of choice - and choice means options, and options mean features and features obviously translate into budget. So, what are the options that Kickstarter let us increase? We can increase the number of origin stories. Every one is going to be a lot of work, with a lot of choices to make. We can have more races, each with custom armour models and animations and voice, and since there's no point if characters aren't reacting to that choice, that's a whole lot more writing to be done. Then we have skills. We already have a lot in there, but there's a lot of skill trees people would like to see and we just can't do all of them. Same goes for systems. There's a lot of systems we could add... If people give us the room to do all this extra stuff, then we'll happily do all that, because we like our RPGs! We're also offering people the game at a lower price, and with Kickstarter, if you back it, you know that your money is going into the game rather than just into someone's coffers. We're not doing this to grab money. It's all going into the game."
Read more…
More...