Two Worlds II - Community Interview @ Destructoid

There's a community interview with Two Worlds II Narrative Director Devon Smith over at Destructoid. Unfortunately, the opportunity is somewhat missed with repetitive questions and little directed to Devon's specific area. Here's the opening question:

Jonathan “Funktastic” Lee: From community member JoeCamNet: “What are your thoughts on the poor critical reception to the first game and how do you plan to take care of these problems?”

Devon Smith: Coming from a fresh perspective from the first game (I wasn’t with TopWare Interactive [during the first Two Worlds]) as a gamer, there were a lot of features that I saw in the game that we really wanted to bring forward. There were things on the back of the box that were really great ideas that due to the development time, you know, [that I learned about] when I came to the studio, we just weren’t allowed to do. Whenever you do a sequel you want to refocus, you want to refine it, and in a lot of cases, remodel. So we’re on a brand new continent, we’re not retreading the old material from the last game; we’re not in the same place. It’s the same world of Antaloor, but as far as gameplay features and things like that, it’s about taking all the features that really worked in Two Worlds and things that we thought we could do better and do within the timeframe and really make those things seamless. Things like the combat [are] completely revamped with unique animations and attacks that are unlocked for certain skill sets. The ability to build and unbuild essentially, to destroy weapons, and recombine them. And, you know, our magic system. I don’t know the exact number, I’m the narrative producer, but there is a letter in it, which means that it is high math. [Laughter] As an English major, not my style.

There’s infinite amounts of permutations and at this point, with a lot of things, it’s about finding the roof and just making sure that everything works within that. Building a world first, it doesn’t happen often, where you sit down and build a continent. You decide what you want to place in that world and then you tell the story within that world. We had a broad general direction that was on board when I came.

We talked about the fact I worked on Dead Space earlier. On that project, I worked on the story within the timeline, within the fiction and I worked on the backstory. When I came into this project, that was already all in place. I’m telling the story through the dialogue, which in an RPG is where all the power is. As the narrative director for North America, my job is basically to make sure that it’s not just a translated story. It’s a story that appeals to western audiences. The way that we speak, the way that our actors inflect. Those all change the performances you see in the animation. We saw some blank placeholders today but that’s because when I’m finished, once I get back from my second round in Toronto, we will be adding animations as per the performances that our actors deliver.

...and I'll sneak an unremarkable preview at OXM UK in here, which covers the same ground as previous articles.