Divinity: Dragon Commander Preview

A new hands-on preview for Larian’s ambitious Divinity: Dragon Commander has been released, this time courtesy of Dealspwn. The writer’s pretty clearly excited, and so is Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke:

It’s difficult to get a handle on just how deep the RTS systems go after only couple of hours of hands-on time, but it’s immediately engrossing, and there’s certainly room for potential when it comes to the tech upgrades for units. Looking at the screens initially, I worried perhaps that Dragon Commander might prove a little impenetrable, but I needn’t have worried, as the game’s fundamental principals are really rather simple and straightforward to understand, with enough accessibility to reach out beyond a niche strategy audience towards a wider crowd. I punched the air after my first victory of the day in that third game, as the action wrapped up in breathless fashion, and I made sure I had time to return to the event later on after fulfilling some other commitments just so I could squeeze one more round in. At first glance, what the game lacks in patient depth on the battlefield, is more than made up for in requiring the player to be quick and decisive. Like the best RTS titles out there, games can turn on a knife edge, and it’s how you roll with the punches in those moments that will determine your successes on the field. Of course, thanks to the well implemented turn-based overlay, preparation can also be absolutely key.

“We wanted to make a strategy game that might appeal to action fans, and an action game that might appeal to strategy fans, and we wanted to include RPG elements in there, and have you experience the consequences of your decisions in the same way that games like Wing Commander did,” said Vincke. “And that’s really how the game came about. We were discussing these games from the past, games that we loved playing such as Dragon’s Breath and Command & Conquer and how older games took more risks, and weren’t restricted or hampered by genre. So we stared out with this board game idea, and then we added the real-time strategy, and then we got reminiscing about Wing Commander and added in the diplomatic, on-ship sections, and then Panzer Dragoon came up and we decided that we wanted the player to be able to roam the battlefield on a dragon, and wouldn’t it be cool if you could directly influence play. And then someone said, ‘Well, what if the dragon had a jetpack?’ and I sort of stepped in after that to stop it becoming too much to handle!” He laughs, but he returns to the point later on.

“So much of the time you find publishers looking for an audience before they even have a game, or specifically designing a game to suit a certain type of audience. But I’ve always made games that I would want to play. I think here in Europe you see more developers making games for themselves, and then working out how to sell that game And you might run into trouble commercially perhaps as a result of that, but it’ll be a more honest, and probably better game because of it.”