GB Feature: E3 2010: Two Worlds II Preview

It’s been a full month since I spent some time with Two Worlds II at E3, but hopefully that won’t keep you from checking out my two-page preview. Quite a bit of the preview is based on a conversation I had with TopWare’s James Seaman during the event, so hopefully you’ll find more than a few interesting tidbits within:

The original Two Worlds didn’t have many loading screens, but James promises that there won’t be any in the sequel. Thanks to the technology embedded within the GRACE engine, Antaloor will be presented as a continuous, open world. Well, not entirely open. When I quizzed him about whether we could accidentally stumble into an area way above our character’s capabilities, he did confide that some of the game’s areas would be locked until we reached a particular level or a certain point in the storyline. My impression was that these areas were few and far between, though, so hopefully this won’t be an issue for us exploratory types.

James also talked a bit about the “DEMONS” magic system and the ridiculous number of combinations we’ll be able to employ by interchanging our spell cards. The current count is 13.4 million spell combinations – a number that has raised some eyebrows over at the Guinness Book of World Records, and just might wind up being penciled in as an official video game record. Dabbling in these card-swapping mechanics will allow you to add additional variables, effects, and parameters to your spells, with as many as four different cards being combined at once. For example, a standard firebolt card can be boosted with other cards so that it unleashes multiple projectiles that bounce off any inanimate object they meet. It’s an intriguing system, and just might be enough to get me to play a mage on my first play-through.