Two Worlds Series Interview

Loutrage, a French website, had a chance to talk with Dirk P. Hassinger from Reality Pump. First thing that becomes apparent from the interview is that Loutrage should really invest in better English translators. Still, it’s not quite the unintelligible automatic translation so the point gets across well enough.

The interview mostly talks about Reality Pump’s Two Worlds franchise and their decision to release several expansions(Call of the Tenebrae and Shattered Embrace) for Two Worlds II, a game that initially came out in 2010, before focusing on the third entry in the series. There’s also a rather lengthy explanation of Raven’s Cry troubled development, and a short but to the point confirmation that another Reality Pump’s project, Sacrilegium, is still on indefinite hold. An excerpt:

Hi ! It’s been a while since we heard something about the Two Worlds Franchise ! Why did you come back with three add-ons instead of directly release Two Worlds III ?
During the concept development of Two Worlds III, the most team members have no tasks. It makes best sense to employ them with DLCs for Two Worlds II while another part of the team creates the concept for Two Worlds III. This also gives us the possibility to try out some ideas and features we have for the next full game and we can train some new people on the job.

Call of The Tenebrae seems to had a pretty long development and suffered from many reports, is the add-on more ambitious than it was planned ?
Yes. It was planned as a 3 month development, but it came out that it will bigger as planned and we needed to solve some technical issues. After 10 months we still do not have a save release date yet. On the other hand we have no obligation against a publisher to push it out.

It may be too soon to ask but, what will be the length of the add-on ?
This is – like always with an RPG – difficult to answer. Depending on the players way to play it, it should take between 6 and 20 hours to explore it. Maybe a bit more.

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I think it will be my last question, the development of Raven’s Cry seemed really intricate, can you explain why did the game take so long to born and why wasn’t it on early access first at it launch as it was planned ?
This had several reasons. First, there was a probem with Octane and Zuxxez. Zuxxez signed the project for a development budget. Then this budget and also the development time was increased two or 3 times and Reality Pump was hired to help with MoCap and animations. At a certain point Zuxxez came tot he conclution, that Octane underestimated the projet and will not be able to finish the game. At this time Reality Pump got the full project and the former team leader of Reality Pump estimated 9 – 12 months for completion. Based on this Zuxxez gave us a budget, but after the team leader left Reality Pump it came out that this project took two years more than initially estimated and budgeted. Of course this further delay and rise oft he costs caused tons of problems at Zuxxez and all their distribution partners. And somehow this project is cursed. Millions of players « know  » that this game is crap. But only a few thousands ever purchased and played it. As you already mentioned, you have been suprised by the quality of the script while you played it. Maybe, if we fix the few bugs left and make some improvements the dirty raw diamond can become a brilliant or get at least a princess or emerald cut which makes him shining bright.