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Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender


What is Dragon Commander? Dragon Commander is a mishmash of several genres. It combines a 3D RTS, with a Risk-style world strategy map, and RPG elements in political decisions. A lot of this information is definitely out of date and wrong, but I don't have a complete picture of all the mechanics so I'll wait until I play to correct it. If you're curious, ask questions and I'll try to answer as best I can. Feel free to give suggestions about how to improve the OP.

Reviews are starting to come in now.

Divinity: Dragon Commander Launch Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvnLAimI9PQ


If you want to talk about Divinity: Original Sin, it NOW has its own thread.




What’s the story of Dragon Commander? The game is set in the magical and technological heyday of Rivellon, over ten thousand years before the events of the first Divinity games.

For innumerable years, the races, humans, elves, lizards, dwarves, imps, and more waged war upon each other without cease. A being known only as the Architect offered the human warlord Sigurd demonic technology. Sigurd saw in the machines of war, the possibility for a peaceful, united Rivellon.

With the Architect and the great wizard Maxos at his side, Sigurd used the fearsome machinery to overpower and subdue all opponents, and within a few short years, he was crowned Emperor of all Rivellon. Under his rule, the races of the world enjoyed peace and prosperity for thirty years.

The Dragon Aurora, intrigued by the age of peace, appeared to Sigurd in his court in the form of a human woman. Both the Architect and Sigurd were instantly smitten with her. Despite Sigurd already being a husband and father, he won the affections of Aurora. The Architect became mad with jealousy and fled the court of Sigurd. Aurora bore Sigurd a child, who the wizard Maxos hid with an ordinary family after Sigurd's wife nearly killed the boy.
...
(I'll sum up the rest).
...
Aurora is poisoned, Sigurd falls into grief-driven apathy, and Sigurd's children (save his child with Aurora) are tempted with messianic visions into believing that they alone are the chosen next ruler of the Empire. Sigurd's children attack the capital, destroying it and slaying Sigurd.

You play as the bastard child of Sigurd and Aurora: the first Dragon Knight, charged by Maxos to save the empire from civil war and reconquer Rivellon from Sigurd's maddened children, piece by bloody piece.


OTHER INFORMATION




Cast of Characters





What do you do? In four words: Emperor, Strategist, Commander, Dragon.




(Click for larger)


You are an Emperor who must make tough political decisions balancing the conflicting wishes and goals of your wife, your generals, and your council of advisors, consisting of 5 different races that make up your allies and your conquered territories. You rule from your flagship, The Raven.



(Click for larger)


The council of advisors represents five political archetypes: conservative capitalists (Dwarves), smug libertarians (Lizards), religious fundamentalists (Undead), amoral technologists (Imps) and better-than-thou liberals (Elves). Being the ruler of an empire means that you’ll have to make choices and compromises based on politics to achieve the best result you can. Sometimes there are certain bonuses to your army that you want, but can only get from taking a position you may personally dislike.



(Click for larger)


Your generals direct the forces in battle, and have unique specialties that can be unlocked through your choices.



(Click for larger)


Every decision you make will affect your standing with the council members, your wife, and the various races as a whole. It will increase your standing with some races, and lower it with others. You will often find yourself making choices you may personally disagree with to reap the benefits on the battlefield.


(Click for larger)


Early on, you will have to choose a princess to marry, either Elf, Dwarf, Lizard, or Undead human. Each of the princesses has their own storyline and goal. Sometimes fulfilling the princesses goal goes against what their race desires – for example, Ophelia the undead princess desperately wants to be restored to life, which would greatly offend the other undead, who enjoy their existence as it is.


(Click for larger)


Upgrades are researched between turns. They have a certain cost in Research Points.

Certain decisions can unlock new upgrades for units. No faction has any unique units, each side uses the same 13 base unit types, but each unit has 3 possible upgrades, which can drastically change the role and use of a unit. For example, a Trooper bomber could be altered to enter Kamikaze mode with the press of a button, disabling their attack, but making them useful to swarm and overwhelm enemies. It takes a long time to get all the upgrades, so you need to prioritize what you want your army to do.




Some of these benefits take the form of cards. There are at least six types of cards: Political cards, which can be applied to maps in the strategy part. Dragon cards, that offer extra powers for your Dragon form, Mercenary cards that add extra units to the field for one battle, Unit Advantage cards, which apply a buff to your units, Unit Subversion cards which debuff enemy units, and Special cards, which decrease the cost of certain unit types, grant you extra recruits or lowered build times. Cards can also be obtained from certain structures on the strategy map.






You are a Strategist who must decide which territories to attack, and what each territory should focus on to support your war effort.

You build factories, taverns, mines, and research institutes on territories you control, move your troops around, and apply any “political” cards you wish. Once you’re done, you hit a button to finalize your moves, and hope that you guessed what the enemy will do, because only after both sides are committed do you see what the opponent has done. Battles on the strategy map can be auto-resolved if you choose, and victory will be calculated based on the number of troops and bonuses on the territory, or if not, you can personally command the individual battles in the real-time mode.

Each unit type has a certain number of movement points on the strategy map, which is how many countries you can move them. This is why building factories and other unit producers closer to the front lines is important. There are transport units that can be used to move units faster than they can on their own.

Each country will only let you have one building on it. Wizard Tower buildings give you Dragon skill cards every turn, which let you use powers you haven't mastered yet. War Factories produce units, Gold mines double the revenue from the country, Emporiums will let you buy cards, Academies grant you bonus research points, and give you Unit Advantage (buff) or Unit Subversion (debuff) cards every few turns, Taverns give you mercenary cards every few turns, the Parliament gives you strategy cards for managing the political side – like to make a country immune to attacks and invasions for one turn, or destroy an enemy factory, or build a factory for no gold cost.





You are a Commander, who directs the individual battles in real-time, directing air, sea, and land units to defeat the enemy and accomplish your objectives.

You don’t start the battle with a base and resources to gather. What you start with on the map is based on the units to be found there in Strategy mode, any mercenary units from the cards you chose, and whatever starting point you get.

There is no Starcraft style base building. Buildings are erected on preset capture points which let you build certain types of buildings on them. Each building costs a certain number of recruits to build.




Recruits are the only resource on the map, and they’re acquired by building recruitment centers on certain points. Each map uses the population cap from the Strategy mode, so you know going in how many recruits you have available. There’s a catch, though – the population is shared between all players on the map, and once it’s depleted, it’s depleted. It is not advisable to just sit back and build up forces, you should aggressively expand or else you’ll get overwhelmed.

The idea is that a map should take only 10-15 minutes, 30 at the most, which makes sense given how many maps there are!

If you win, there is a formula to calculate the survival rate of your units, to see what it translates to once you return to the strategy map. Basically, if 60% of your units survive, you’ll get 60% back on the world map. A suicidal strategy might end up with you defeating the enemy, but you won’t have much left over to move to the next country on the world map.

It’s not game over if you lose in the RTS mode - unless you lose the territory with your capital city AND fail to recapture it on your next turn. Otherwise, you can keep playing.






You are a Dragon, who can join the battlefield yourself, delivering carefully placed blows to the enemy force.

The Dragon form is powerful, and can turn the tide of battle quickly by judicious use of its skills and abilities. Your Dragon can be set to one of three roles: A high-damaging yet fragile Mountain Dragon which is good at direct combat, A low-damaging buit sturdier Zephyr Dragon which is good at supporting troops, or the Sabre Dragon, which is in-between.

If the Dragon dies in battle, there is a cost in recruits to respawn, but otherwise respawning is free, after a short cooldown.




Switching between dragon and RTS mode is done literally at the press of a button, letting you zip into combat from any nearby friendly units, deal with what you wanted to deal with, then zap back into the RTS mode.


Who’s making it? Larian Studios, the team behind the Divinity series (Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity 2)


(Click for larger)


What does that thread title mean? This game presents a lot of scenarios based on real life political debates. Larian looked at various political ideologies and translated them into the game. Specifically, the title refers to something the head of Larian said in an interview:

quote:

Q: Which regional market are [you] most afraid of when it comes to the reception of the ideas portrayed in Dragon Commander?
Swen:
It depends on which particular parts. I mean, there’s stuff that I’m really sensitive about. We even talk about abortion in the game – it’s a big topic right? But why can we talk about it in games? So I mean obviously it’s documented in a very soft way, but it’s still “could one race prevent the birth of another race?” So then you’re sitting there, and you’re thinking about it! Could the Imp’s stop the Troll’s from reproducing? You take a softer word for that, and you put it in the RPG – but you put it like this: prevent the Trolls from reproducing: yes or no? This will be the end of their race. And you start thinking about this, and you say “well that’s wrong!”

What platforms is this going to be released on? It’s being developed primarily for the PC at this time, although a console port is not being ruled out. There may not even be support for a controller at all. That makes sense given that RTS’s lend themselves much better to the drag-select abilities of a mouse than to controllers.

What’s so special about this game? This game is built around Choice and Consequence.



(Click for larger)


Gone are the canned dialogue animations from Divinity 2. The recording sessions for the voice-acting used motion capture at the same time, so each live actor’s performance will end up on-screen.

There are no pre-made missions like Starcraft 2, but the single-player will have many asymmetric levels. The length of the single-player campaign depends on your choices on the strategy map. The first chapter of the game is basically an extended tutorial to ease you into the game. Later chapters will be longer and harder.


Will there be multiplayer?
Yes!

(Click for larger)


Multiplayer doesn’t have the RPG-lite political decision part, but it does have the strategy map and RTS phases. Multiplayer matches are 2v2. Each player selects up to 5 cards to use – three are visible to all players, two are kept hidden. There are also upgrades that can increase the number of cards that are hidden. In multiplayer, any enemy dragons appear as team-coloured stars if they’re not in sight, and if they’re in sight, they have a team-coloured trail.

Larian is thinking of adding a special team mode so that one player can control only the Dragon, while the other handles the RTS parts of the deployment, but it probably won't be out on release.


Where can I get this? / When's the release date? August 6th from GoG, on Steam and from the Larian Vault. A limited English Retail edition will come out on August 19th.


What are the System requirements?

quote:

Minimum system requirements:
  • Windows XP SP 3 (Windows 7 SP 1 recommended)
  • 2.6 GHz Core2 Duo E6600 or equivalent or better (i5 2400 or equivalent or better recommended)
  • 2 GB RAM (4 GB RAM recommended)
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT (512 MB) or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 4850 or better (NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 550 ti 1GB ram or or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6XXX or better recommended)
  • 15GB HDD space (30 GB recommended),
  • DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, Mouse, Keyboard.



VIDEOS:

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq2cDhcVmOA

Gamespot Gameplay preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbHsdC4U_2k

Twitch TV Live Stream (with pre-order code) - (added 4/10)
Larian Studios Dragon Commander grudge match: Round 1 Part 2, post crash
Larian Studios Dragon Commander grudge match: Round 2


PREVIEWS (and interviews):
RPG Codex Interview with Swen Vincke (Feb. 2012) (added 5/10)
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
PCG Media Preview
PCG Media Interview with Swen Vincke
iSeries
Strategy Informer
RPG Watch
Games Radar
On RPG
Deal Spwn
Jeux Video (French)
Gamespot Preview
The Game Station podcast: Dragon Commander Trailer (2:14 – 2:20) (added 3/28)
Total Biscuit – interview with Larian (Dragon Commander specifics starts at 13:55 - added 3/28)
Gry Online Preview (Polish, (added 3/30))
Divinity: Dragon Commander Preview on French Radio (French, (added 3/30))
New Preview from PCGamesN (added 3/28)
Dagons Lair - Interview with Swen Vincke (53 min.) (French with English subtitles) (added 3/28)
Colony of Gamers (added 4/01)
RPG Gamer.com - Dragon Commander E3 2012 Interview (added 4/06)
RPG Codex Preview - (added 4/20 - scroll down past the Original Sin preview)
PC Gamer Hands-on Preview (added 4/28)
Official Larian Video: Let's Play One turn of Dragon Commander (added 6/26)
Rurikahn's Single-player Beta Preview Video (added 7/1)
Quill 18's Single-player Beta Preview Video (added 7/1)
Force SC2's Single-player Beta preview (added 7/2)
Rock Paper Shotgun beta build preview (added 7/9)
Total Biscuit WTF Is Dragon Commander Beta (added 7/18)
PCG Media - Why Dragon Commander Isn’t All About Blobs (added 7/18)
PCG Media RPG Elements preview
Penny Arcade Report beta preview: I came for the jetpack dragons, but stayed for the political intrigue (added 7/18)
Destructoid beta preview: A day in the life of a jetpack-wearing dragon monarch (added 7/18)

REVIEWS
Collection of Reviews is over here.
Giant Bomb Quick Look: Divinity - Dragon Commander


Developer Blog Entries

  • Politics and Games:

    quote:

    So now we’re making Dragon Commander, and one of the things we’re trying to do with that game is putting recognizable real world situations in a fantasy context. The game contains a RPG part that’s all about choice and consequence, and the idea is that you have to decide as a ruler how you want to organize the societies in the lands you’ve captured. That means you need to make political decisions, so we figured it’d be cool if we filled the game with situations that are very similar to the things we read in our newspapers every day.

  • Choice and Consequence in RPG’s

    quote:

    What’s really interesting about it all is how the different story trees for the characters interact with one another. It’s made the architecture for this a very complex mess and just the paper design took our design team over a year to complete, but I have good hopes that’ll give us a very rewarding result when the final game comes together. The thing I like the most is that each branch is guaranteed very different from the other branch.
    To make it more concrete – take our infamous undead princess as an example. She has has 5 possible endings, but the path towards those endings is not only dependent on your interactions with her, but also on your interactions with the other characters, which themselves again have multiple endings, with the same complex dependency trees.
  • Land Ahoy

    quote:

    For a long time, our main problem was phase 3, the combat phase. Balancing the dragon and RTS components was no easy thing, and it took a lot of iteration to come up with something cool. We went from a lot of action to almost no action, all the time trying to blend the control over your dragon with the feeling of also being in control of your fleet(s), and ensuring that what you did in combat had an impact on the other phases.
    While the dragon/fleet on its own was already very complicated, getting it right in such a way that it tied in well with the strategy phase turned out to be a far bigger pain than we’d ever expected. Still, we continued developing because we assumed that our skills were sufficiently good to eventually find (or stumble upon) a solution.
  • Dialogs solved

    quote:

    Because there’s a shitload of choice and consequence going on in between game turns, the dialog asset requirements are pretty steep in that game, and when we did the initial research on how much it was going to cost us to animate all the dialogs, we came up with numbers that were bananas. (between half a million and one million U$ for one language!)
    For a long time actually we thought that we’d have to resort to plan B, which was just recording and animating the opening lines, without having anything in terms of animation or voice for the rest of the conversation.
  • To Listen or Not to Listen

    quote:

    We received feedback today from a group of journalists about what they thought of a hands-on session with a beta-version of the game. Specifically, they were asked to name three things they liked and three things they disliked. From that list a few issues got flagged, and the question now is whether or not we’ll address those issues.

    We are dangerously close to release, so anything we change now is bound to have a significant impact. But of course, not intervening means that for sure those issues will pop up in reviews, and if they’re bothering the journalists, they’ll probably also bother our players. Naturally, if we continue fixing things that pop up, we’ll never release because there’s no such thing as a perfect game. So, when is enough enough ? And should we listen to the feedback we received?

    Had this been one of our previous games where we were paid via milestones, the decision would already have been taken, and no changes would be made, definitely not at this stage in development. But it’s not somebody else’s decision to make this time. It’s ours, and I am happy that we get to make this type of decision.
  • Crunch time thoughts

    quote:

    So, we’re in crunch. Not because we’re in panic mode or because a publisher is threatening us with whatever legal nonsense, but because we still have a ton of small things we want to finish before the game goes live *and * because we selected a release date we swore we wouldn’t miss (August 6th 2013 for those interested)

    The current situation is that there’s still some stuff on our task list and there’s a whole bunch of stuff on our bug/suggested features list, but most of it still all feels possible.
  • The Pitfalls of Politics & Ethics in Video Games

    quote:

    What we also discovered though, and this is something we considered important as designers, is that it made players sit back and think about what decision they should make. Because the decisions you make aren’t simply ethical ones. Dragon Commander remains a game and decisions influence gameplay. That means that what you consider to be ‘the right thing to do’ may not bring you the rewards you’d have liked.

    You take on the role of an emperor after all, and if you were really to command an empire, how long would it take you before your ethics would take a backseat to more Machiavellian concerns? Compare it to conveniently ignoring injustice in a particular country, say, because the natural resource deals you have going on there are just too good to pass up.
  • On Last Minute Changes & Media

    quote:

    So the very real problem poses itself – when should we send out review code of Dragon Commander? As it happens, I needed to answer this question today, because we’d announced here and there that today was going to be the day.

    Obviously, if you intend on continuing to make changes to make your game better, you want to send out review code as late as possible, so that reviewers have the most up to date code. Preferably, you do give them sufficient time to create their review and the consensus seems to be that 10 days is sufficient.

    Sadly, that’s not always feasible.


LINKS

Larian Studios Youtube Channel
Developer Blog
Divinity: Dragon Commander Official Website
Dragon Commander Facebook Page
Divinity: Original Sin SA Thread
Twitter: Larian Studios
Twitter: Swen Vincke

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Aug 9, 2013

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particle409
Jan 15, 2008

Thou bootless clapper-clawed varlot!
This sounds like they're trying to do eight million things at once. I'm hard-pressed to think of too many games that successfully pull that off.

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
I love Larian Studios, but I'm cautiously optimistic about this. The isometric party-based Divinity 3 that they are also working on sounds really promising though.

Orv
May 4, 2011
I hope this is any kind of decent, because I love You-are-a-unit RTS games, and who doesn't love a dragon with a jetpack. Like particle said, they're juggling a lot of plates and any large enough slip up could be disastrous.

Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


Orv posted:

I hope this is any kind of decent, because I love You-are-a-unit RTS games, and who doesn't love a dragon with a jetpack. Like particle said, they're juggling a lot of plates and any large enough slip up could be disastrous.

What did I teach you about having hope, Orv? :argh:

Orv
May 4, 2011

Zaodai posted:

What did I teach you about having hope, Orv? :argh:

It springs eternal? :ohdear:

Zaodai
May 23, 2009

Death before dishonor?
Your terms are accepted.


Orv posted:

It springs eternal? :ohdear:

No, that hope is what gives your dreams that satisfying "CRUNCH" sound when they get smashed.

ijyt
Apr 10, 2012

This game sounds like Shogun 2 with better politics, dragons and lizard wives.

Where can I pre-order?

jizzy sillage
Aug 13, 2006

Gonna marry that skeleton princess so fast. So many boner puns to gleefully cackle at!

Pound_Coin
Feb 5, 2004
£


Looks like I'm gonna be ignoring the gently caress out of everyone's opinions but the elves.

Rookersh
Aug 19, 2010
It honestly sounds like they are focusing entirely on the politics/cards stuff, rather then trying to balance everything. I've been paying close attention to this game, and this is the first I've really heard about the RTS features ( outside of "we will add them yes" ). Looking at them from the screenshots, they don't look very amazing either.

It really looks like the core of the game will be managing loyalties, and the combat will mainly be blobpushing. I'm cool with that as I mainly want to fiddle with all that politics stuff, but I can see this game getting railed on pretty hard at release for "bad" RTS features.

There's also the factor of a hardcore RPG dev team making an RTS.

DrManiac
Feb 29, 2012

I'm cautiously optimistic.



If they can get the political stuff right and have the combat be atleast passable then this game will be pretty rad.



And who doesn't want to marry a skeleton princess with lipstick smeared around her face bone.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Rookersh posted:

It really looks like the core of the game will be managing loyalties, and the combat will mainly be blobpushing. I'm cool with that as I mainly want to fiddle with all that politics stuff, but I can see this game getting railed on pretty hard at release for "bad" RTS features.

Blobpushing isn't so bad as long as the RTS components feel right. You don't need StarCraft's balance, just StarCraft's instant responsiveness and precision.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Can't gently caress an Imp, not interested.

Okay, fine, I'm a little interested. I wish the RTS part of the game wasn't there, though. I've never played a turn-based strategy with real-time battles where I enjoyed the latter.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
It is true that Larian is building this game around choice and consequence, but I remain optimistic. The previews haven't been making GBS threads on the RTS side, and in fact, many of the previewers have said that they liked it so much they went back to play some more.

They let 1000 gamers try the game at the Frag-O-Matic LAN party in Belgium. The feedback they got back wasn't that the game was perfect, but the complaints were fixable.

Larian has also said they'll be releasing a demo before release.


Megazver posted:

Can't gently caress an Imp, not interested.

Okay, fine, I'm a little interested. I wish the RTS part of the game wasn't there, though. I've never played a turn-based strategy with real-time battles where I enjoyed the latter.

I think Larian said the imp princess was killed in a lab accident. My guess is that they didn't have enough resources to do 5 princesses.

I'm mostly interested in this game because I want to blow poo poo up with my Dragon, but the game will give you options for how much you want to play as a Dragon and how much you want to play as an RTS commander.

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Mar 22, 2013

Margoyle
Dec 26, 2012

Those shoes with the curled-up toes.
The game has some great potential, though I can't get over how sexy skelo-babe has lips. Lady lip bones?

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

From the art I've seen, she's just wearing lipstick where her lips would be. So it's all over her teeth.

Turncoat Mommy
Oct 3, 2010

I believe in you.

DrManiac posted:

I'm cautiously optimistic.



If they can get the political stuff right and have the combat be atleast passable then this game will be pretty rad.



And who doesn't want to marry a skeleton princess with lipstick smeared around her face bone.

Pretty much this, I don't have much attachment to Divinity, but I'll definitely pick it up if the word about it is good. I love the political concepts, just hope they can pull it off.

Turncoat Mommy fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Mar 23, 2013

Lil Swamp Booger Baby
Aug 1, 1981

That blurb about abortion is utterly retarded, but I love the Divinity series and this looks like it would at the very least be a fun clusterfuck of failed ambition, and at best it'll be a hella-fun genre masher.

Captain Beans
Aug 5, 2004

Whar be the beans?
Hair Elf

JebanyPedal posted:

That blurb about abortion is utterly retarded, but I love the Divinity series and this looks like it would at the very least be a fun clusterfuck of failed ambition, and at best it'll be a hella-fun genre masher.

I see the devs are from Belgium, this worries me. I only trust this level of mish-mashed insanity to Eastern European devs.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
A whole bunch of news has come out on Larian's other title, Divinity: Original Sin, and they've launched a kickstarter project to increase the development team to pack even more features into the game.

I'm currently working on an update to add Original Sin information to the thread, which I'll post when it's ready and not so disorganized. Feel free to use this thread for discussion of all things Divinity.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weUPfejQ7xE

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Mar 29, 2013

Corin Tucker's Stalker
May 27, 2001


One bullet. One gun. Six Chambers. These are my friends.
The $65 tier of that Kickstarter gets you both Dragon Commander and Original Sin. If you want to help an awesome developer and save some money in the long run, that's a pretty good deal.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:

The $65 tier of that Kickstarter gets you both Dragon Commander and Original Sin. If you want to help an awesome developer and save some money in the long run, that's a pretty good deal.

I settled for the $50 tier, not because I don't want Dragon Commander, but because there was talk of a special collectors edition of Dragon Commander, and I think I want that instead.

EDIT: Update on the Kickstarter, and a video showing part of the process of using the editor to make quests and dialogues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG-PujUp-9Q

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Mar 29, 2013

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
First update about the Editor. It's alright.

It's a bit sad that they're not gaining the money faster. It just feels like they've botched the release a bit by starting early.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

Megazver posted:

First update about the Editor. It's alright.

It's a bit sad that they're not gaining the money faster. It just feels like they've botched the release a bit by starting early.

Their hand was forced by the earlier-than-expected release of an Original Sin preview. One preview meant that a bunch of other sites would also release their previews. Larian wanted the mention of the Kickstarter in as many as possible, so they had to launch it now.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

Their hand was forced by the earlier-than-expected release of an Original Sin preview. One preview meant that a bunch of other sites would also release their previews. Larian wanted the mention of the Kickstarter in as many as possible, so they had to launch it now.

Yeah, I know. I have a feeling they should have tried to make that one guy retract his poo poo and go on a damage control discussion spree with everyone else first.

poptart_fairy
Apr 8, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Margoyle posted:

The game has some great potential, though I can't get over how sexy skelo-babe has lips. Lady lip bones?

Oh sure, dragon with a jetpack is fine, but skeleton wearing lipstick? :colbert:

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Wait, is it me or did they close off some of the tiers? Can anyone else get the $40 tier now, for example?

EDIT: I think they just made it no longer limited.

Megazver fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Mar 29, 2013

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
In case you missed it, Divinity: Original Sin and it's Kickstarter now has its own thread for discussion that and other Divinity games.


Gry Online Preview (Polish)

Divinity: Dragon Commander Preview on French Radio (French)


New Preview from PCGamesN

quote:

Between those battles, or during the pauses when you aren’t shuttling tokens across that strategy map, Dragon Commander has you wandering about your mothership, a brassy, Victorian-style base of operations where you brush shoulders with lizards, dwarves, imps and even friendly undead. Stepping into the bar, there’s time for a chat with some of your war-weary comrades and colleagues, while searching out the resident technologist has you discussing what equipment or units you should begin research on next. Back in the map room, your advisors wait for you to make important decisions that could well affect the course of the war, and these decisions are more often economic, or even moral, than strategic.

One case in point that I saw was a ruling on, of all things, organ harvesting. While a war rages around me, my armies fighting to liberate territories left, right and centre, my advisors ask me whether I want to pass a law that allows the people who live in my realm to sell their organs for money, a very real possibility since a strong demand for the body parts of all sorts of creatures seems to have sprung up. Surely a legal trade in organs is better than a black market equivalent?

The fantasy factions that make up the world of Dragon Commander, those dwarves, elves and imps, all sit at different points on the political spectrum and my advisors give me opinions that reflect these. The capitalist dwarf talks about a free market, while the left-wing elf worries that the weak will be exploited. Whatever decision I make will have consequences down the line, affects how the races in my empire respond to me and will, without doubt, be splashed across the front page of the in-game tabloid as soon as the next edition goes to press. It’ll be right there, next to a roundup of my polling numbers.


EDIT:

An interview about both Dragon Commander and Original Sin:

Dagons Lair - Interview with Swen Vincke (53 min.) (French with English subtitles)

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Mar 31, 2013

Satanos
Feb 5, 2010

So the prince can have an undead wife? That's... huh.

Well, the OP's sold me on getting the game anyway, I'll pre-order it through the relevant Original Sin pledge option for a discount.

Veyrall
Apr 23, 2010

The greatest poet this
side of the cyberpocalypse
Wow, they weren't kidding about bringing real-world political issues into the game. The sale of organs is still a divisive issue.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

Satanos posted:

So the prince can have an undead wife? That's... huh.

It was one of the first things revealed about the game, that one of the princesses to marry was a skeleton. Basically, you have to marry a non-human for political reasons. Ophelia did used to be a human when alive, and she wishes to be alive again.




I think the story behind the undead faction in this game is that they were humans who were suffering from a plague, until the priests of the One God empire (the bad guys) saved them (so to speak).


A short interview with Swen Vincke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCymMu4IGr8

He's confirmed that there will be a special collectors edition of Dragon Commander featuring the board game on which the strategy map portion is based. That sounds pretty tempting.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
Another preview:

Colony of Gamers

quote:

Yes, you read that right. If you play this game your avatar will be asked about social issues like gay marriage, and you will have to answer them. When I was initially presented with this political aspect of the game, I was a little worried about the implications. After seeing it in action and speaking with the designers, however, I’m significantly less worried. It’s clear that each of the races represent some stereotype of a political faction, but one doesn’t come off as ‘worse’ than the other. You’ll find yourself rolling your eyes at the foolishness of the Elves just as often as at the draconian tendancies of the Undead. Also, a running theme in this game is the slippery slope: sure, you may agree with a female general that women should earn the same pay as men, but what happens when she asks you to abolish an ancient Dwarven tradition because she finds it sexist?

<snip>

The battle is fought on a map representative of the size of the territory on a 3D landscape. You have a base from which to start, and neutral command points dot the land. All of the units you bring to the battle are grouped around your base, and it’s best to send them off to start capturing command points right away.

The interesting thing about Dragon Commander’s battle mechanic is that each territory has a set ‘population’ limit. If you capture command points you begin draining that population, and so does your opponent. Since the population is shared, the battle is a balance between getting as many recruits as fast as you can and using them tactically to defeat your opponent’s. In the 2 vs. 2 multiplayer game I played it seemed like one of our battles was lost, as the enemy decimated our units wave by wave. Due to my enterprising (some would say ‘greedy’) hoarding of command points however, once the population of the territory ticked to 0 my ally and I still had more recruits to use and struck back without mercy.

Again, there’s more than enough depth in the RTS portion of the game with unit upgrades, card strategies, and army makeup to be sufficient for a game release. And yet we still haven’t reached Dragon Commander’s core game mechanic: the fact that you, the young Emperor, get to change into a dragon every battle and bring destruction to your foes.


I think one of the really clever parts of the design is that Larian doesn't have to worry as much about balance, because the nature of the games - up to 30-odd fast matches on different maps - isn't intended to be perfectly balanced. Players can have different cards, different upgrades, uneven numbers of units on the map to start with, and then there's the Dragon form, where key use of it can change the face of the battle, at the cost of losing strategic focus.

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Apr 1, 2013

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
Gog.com to carry pre-orders for Dragon Commander, and provide DRM-free copies of Original Sin to Kickstarter backers

quote:

GOG.com, DRM-free digital purveyor of all that's good in gaming, has announced today that they will be partnering up with Larian games on their next two release titles: Divinity: Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin, kicking things off with a live Google+ Hangout On Air Q&A session on Wednesday, 10 April 2013 at 2:00 GMT (10:00 AM EDT), which will reveal new gameplay footage of the game and have a special code for $2 off the preorder for anyone who watches the Hangout On Air.

Preorders will start on 10 April 2013 at 3:00 GMT (11:00 AM EDT) after the Q&A session on Google+ is finished. During the Google+ Hangout on Air, Larian Studios will be revealing a code good for an additional $2.00 off the preorder price (for a total savings of $6.99) to everyone who watches the stream. Dragon Commander will be available for preorder on GOG.com for $39.99 during preorders, which will launch on the 10th of April. Check out GOG.com's Google+ page to watch the stream.


Hmmm... I'm not sure exactly what Google+ is, but if I were to join Google+, would I be able to un-join it after this is done?

EDIT: I think I'll pass on joining.

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Apr 3, 2013

MLKQUOTEMACHINE
Oct 22, 2012

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

Hmmm... I'm not sure exactly what Google+ is,

Imagine facebook, but without the people or any real ease-of-usability.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
And if you leave G+ any videos you upload to Youtube get set to private and all the comments wiped.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Edit: wrong Divinity thread.

Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Apr 3, 2013

MinionOfCthulhu
Oct 28, 2005

I got this title for free due to my proximity to an idiot who wanted to save $5 on an avatar by having someone else spend $9.95 instead.
I've never even played a Divinity game before but literally every single thing I've read about this game has made me want to break my 'no preordering' rule (still kinda burned by breaking it the last time for The Cave ugh). Do we know how much it's going to cost?

Drifter
Oct 22, 2000

Belated Bear Witness
Soiled Meat
I can't imagine you would want to sell a game of this size/type for less than 39.99 at release.

Divinity 2 at release was 50 or 60 dollars, Divine Divinity was around the same at launch, I believe.

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Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



There is a tier on the D:OS Kickstarter that allows you to get both games + extra stuff for 65$. It's a pretty good deal, especially if you're in Europe, given the $:€ conversion rate.

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