Divinity: Dragon Commander Previews

We have rounded up a couple of new hands-on previews of Larian Studios’ upcoming Divinity: Dragon Commander, which ambitiously mixes elements of Risk, the RTS genre, collectible card games and moral choices reminiscent of the RPG genre.

Strategy Informer:

There are a lot of elements in this game a basic economy drives a respectable empire management system, where you can build buildings, or capture regions that have buildings already in them. Factories allow you to build units, and capturing/building one can allow you to open up another front, Tavern’s allow you to gain Mercenary cards, and so on. You move your armies about the map in true TBS style; although you have to make sure units aren’t caught out on their own otherwise they’ll be trashed. There’s also the RPG system which is one of the few things that hasn’t changed that much since we last saw it. At the end of the day, you’re playing as a Dragon Knight, and your goal is to not only unite the races of Rivellon, but also to defeat your grand enemy. Dragon Commander doesn’t sound like it has the greatest plot in the world basically your overall goal is to get rid of the very steampunk technology you used to win it, returning Rivellon to its more traditional High Fantasy state. Imagine if Divinity II had tanks and artillery. would have made an interesting game.

There are also compromises that you have to make do you develop your army, or do you develop yourself as a Dragon Knight? That’s not to say that you have to do one, or the other, but developing new Dragon abilities and developing technologies for your armies cost resources, and you’ll only have a finite amount turn-by-turn. Do you give your scout buggies rocket pods, or do you give yourself the ability to fire a nuke-like fireball from your mouth? Decisions, decisions. Most of the story in Dragon Commander unfolds on your flagship, which is separated into several areas War Room, your personal quarters, engineering, and so on. there are a loads of weird and wonderful characters for you to meet and interact with, and they’ll all give you insights into the world, offer you advice, or even give you moral challenges that you have to make decisions. There’s a lot of socio-political commentary in this game, which can be an amusing distraction.

RPGWatch:

You are the bastard son of the emperor, a Dragon Knight. There was peace once but his children have been waging war on the emperor with their armies using, until then unseen demonic technology and killed him.

There is chaos everywhere and Maxos fears the whole world will come to an end. You are the only person who can put an end to that by defeating your half-brothers and sister and banish this demonic technology from the face of the world.

The presentation started at your ship The Raven were we already created a small empire of our own on board of that ship. With this new position comes new responsibilities. We have nations to look after and the more nations you conquer the more people become dependent on you.