E3 2010: Two Worlds 2 Preview

Two Worlds is an open world RPG in the style of Oblivion that caught a lot of flak for being, well, pretty bad, by most accounts. A healthy amount of skepticism surrounds the sequel, Two World 2, and Southpeak Games understands that. When they demoed the game for me today at their E3 2010 booth, they wanted to assure me that Polish developers Reality Pump Studios have been hard at work tailoring the game to make it better than its predecessor in every way.

Unlike Two Worlds, which was developed entirely for PC and only ported to Xbox 360 late in its development cycle, Two Worlds 2 has been made with consoles in mind since the beginning, according to a representative from Southpeak. The latest version of Reality Pump’s Grace Engine has apparently been “optimized” for consoles as well as for PC.

The game begins a number of years after Lord Gandohar, the antagonist from the first game, has imprisoned the main character. Since that time, Gandohar has executed a genocidal war against the orcs, who break the protagonist out of prison so that he can help them defeat the evil Lord. Orcs being the main enemies in the first game, this is quite a twist.

A heavy, heavy emphasis is being placed on the graphics, lighting and physics, and they are fairly impressive in several areas. A lantern hanging from the ceiling moves realistically as the character bumps into it, sending shadows flying in all directions. A large piece of wood floating in sewer water doesn’t give way for the player quite as easily as a small branch does as he brushes past them. In addition, there are no flat surfaces in the game, according to Southpeak; every surface has texture and depth, or so it appeared in the demo. Still, the graphics looked pixellated and downright strange in some areas, and they could definitely use another coat of polish.

That seems to be the case for the rest of the game, as well, especially character interactions, animations and dialogue, as well as hit detection and movement. However, Southpeak assured me that Reality Pump is busy as bees fine tuning and polishing the game. Players can add skill points to their characters’ stats in three different areas: warrior, mage and ranger, and they can switch between equipment and spell loadouts at will during battle. Some players will choose to concentrate in one area, and others will want to advance in all three for a more dynamic character.

The highlight of the demo was seeing the mage in action, and in its current state, it’s clearly the most powerful and fun class. There are so many different spell combinations and variants that the folks at Southpeak are in the process of applying to the Guinness Book of World Records for the “most spell combinations in a video game.” We’ve yet to see how that will turn out, but to be sure, there are a lot; spell cards, obtained in a variety of ways, can be combined to add elements, effects, summons, areas of effect, and more variables together so that a mage’s spells can be tweaked to very fine specifications. If there really are as many combinations as we saw in the demo today, Reality Pump may be onto something.

Southpeak also assured me that the game will have extensive online and multiplayer modes, though they weren’t ready to talk about them yet. The main story quests will account for 20-25 hours of gameplay, though side quests and back story will last several additional hours, according to them. When asked what specifically they’ve improved since the first game, they mentioned the dialogue, which “most people hated,” the myriad number of bugs, the combat in general, and the leveling up system. They said that Reality Pump sees the creation of Two Worlds 2 as their chance at “redemption” in the eyes of gamers, so look out for more information as it becomes available.