Two Worlds 2 Preview!!!

Here's a preview for all you Two Worlds fans out there the details are below.

April 14, 2010 - Random Internet defenders aside, in my experience there haven't been many people with a lot of good things to say about Two Worlds. Most folks I've talked to dismissed it entirely because it released so close to Oblivion, but the few I know who did play it generally complained about the game's often laughable lack of polish. Some developers blow off the critics, mumbling that they or the unappreciative players didn't understand what they envisioned, but developer Reality Pump is different. They heard you, the gamers, and are hoping to make good on the missed potential that people saw in the first Two Worlds with the sequel, Two Worlds 2.




Two Worlds 2 started off as the second expansion to the first game (called The Temptation), but quickly grew to a scale that made it much more than that. Eventually the team decided that the content they were working on -- and where they were taking the narrative -- warranted both a new game and a new engine. Scrapping the expansion in 2009 (at least as far as the game engine was concerned), the team went back to work and completely overhauled the project. The result is Grace, an engine with all the lighting and physics bells and whistles people expect in 2010, and that makes Two Worlds 2 look like the efforts of far more people than a studio of less than 50.

Beautiful sunsets, rippling water, and blades of grass that push as you run through them are nice, but ultimately our mothers taught us that it's what's on the inside that counts. Reality Pump agrees, and has designed Grace to be an engine that allows them to develop simultaneously on PC and console. That may sound like a no-brainer to the non-development community, but this is important because it means that Two Worlds 2 should be a significantly more polished game than its predecessor. Because the first Two Worlds was meant to be a PC only game until less than a year before its release -- and the team hadn't made a 360 game before -- they lost a ton of debugging time in the push to put the game on 360.

Technical issues weren't the only thing that people complained about in the original, and Two Worlds 2 is undergoing several changes to make it the experience people expect. New writers have been brought on to address the strange translations of the first game, and a variety of environments have been incorporated into the world to make the places you go actually feel unique. For instance players will encounter cities where the culture is largely Egyptian inspired, but will also explore areas where the culture looks more medieval European, or Japanese. Non-city environments are also varied, ranging from the typical fantasy forest and mountains, to swamps, savannas and dank dungeons.




Not every part of the original Two Worlds was critically slammed, and just as they've listened to the critiques, the team behind Two Worlds 2 wants to build upon what the fans loved. The card-based magic system returns, only this time it's deeper than before. Players get cards -- which can either be spells or cards that augment a spell -- and then use these to make a spell that suits their purposes. For instance a player might get a spell card that allows them to shoot an ice missile, which they could then augment with a ricochet card, making an ice missile that bounces off of the environment.

Spells can also sometimes be combined with other spells, so that when one spell finishes another is triggered. I saw this demonstrated in the game as the player cast a magic missile, only to have it summon minions to fight for the wizard after the missile dissipated. The visual effects weren't fully implemented in the build I saw so I can't speak as to whether the casting looks good, but the potential for customization was really impressive, and made the idea of playing a caster more intriguing to me than it usually is in other fantasy games.

Not that specific classes exist in Two Worlds 2. You always have to play as a human, but as you level up you allot points into various stats that affect how good your character is at skills such as casting or wielding weapons. Want to make a battle mage? Just put points into both combat and casting skills, rather than specializing. Granted, lots of games let players make a custom class, but few allow players to do so over the course of their character's journey, instead forcing the player to make their all-or-nothing choice at the beginning of the game.




Two Worlds 2 has all the elements that players of fantasy RPGs expect, but the one place it goes where few dare tread is multiplayer. While nothing's been shown yet, players can expect competitive multiplayer as well as cooperative. The character you create in multiplayer is different from that of singleplayer, so players have to build them up and equip them all over again. To help with this, Two Worlds 2 will also include what's internally called "village mode," where players can build up their own village and customize it so it specializes in something that helps the player in their journey (one village might make great weapons, for instance). It's not clear how players will level up their villages, but it was revealed that players will be able to visit other players' towns in order to benefit from one another's specialties. This will allow a team of players to specialize in very specific trades that help them in the cooperative campaign, and also give players something more than a character model to customize.

With a game like Two Worlds 2 it's ultimately hard to say how good or bad it could be until you get to try it, but the new engine and obvious attention to the critiques that were leveled against the original make the sequel intriguing. It's rare to see a developer be so candid with their past failures, but the humility and passion behind Two Worlds 2 shows, and is already making it much more than a game to be quickly dismissed.

Well it definitely has potential to be great, but were just gonna have to wait and see. The first game was very disappointing, but it seems that they are serious this time around.

even though the first game was a little rough, i played the hell out of it.

sometimes it played like a slideshow and lagged horribly, and the voice talent was weak. but i enjoyed the open world that is similar to Oblivion.

i am definitely excited about this next one. its a must buy for me.

S7 Tico wrote:even though the first game was a little rough, i played the hell out of it.

sometimes it played like a slideshow and lagged horribly, and the voice talent was weak. but i enjoyed the open world that is similar to Oblivion.

i am definitely excited about this next one. its a must buy for me.

Hell yeah I'm with you on that my friend I played the hell out of it on SP and that's not to mention the MP time invested I remember one day Me, Diehard, and his brother and a few other people we're questing online until someone made a wrong turn into a cave and came out running with a huge Dragon made of stone coming at him and us now and mind you we we're maybe lvl 10max the dragon was around the 20 something mark lol. Great times on that game I can't wait for this one as they're really taking it more serious from the looks of it which hopefully works out.

If they fix the problems from the first one I'll be all over this one. Especially if there isn't a new Oblivion by then.

I loved Oblivion - never tried Two Worlds - this looks interesting and worth watching - what's the release date?