Meta:The Game Informer Show Episode 32: StarCraft II, Two Worlds II, Comic-Con

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This Q&A was posted to the website gameinformer.com by Phil Kollar on July 29, 2010.[1]

Summary[edit | edit source]

The Game Informer Show returns this week, and boy, is it ever a big episode! Kicking off the show, I'm joined by Dan Ryckert, Sean Lowery, and Adam Biessener. We spend a nice long chunk of time gushing about what we've played of StarCraft II so far, including lots of single-player impressions, discussion of the new Battle.net tweaks, how much you should play before jumping into multiplayer, and more.

In the second segment, Jeff Cork sits in along with special guests Aubrey Norris of Southpeak Games and Jake DiGennaro of Topware Interactive. They tell us all about the upcoming action-RPG Two Worlds II and how it's going to surpass the troubles of the first game.

Finishing off strong, Ben Reeves and Meagan VanBurkleo hop in the studio fresh from San Diego Comic-Con. Ben has plenty of exciting events to discuss, including his first hands-on with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, viewing the Scott Pilgrim movie (and game), and meeting Stan Lee. Meagan, meanwhile, didn't get to see much of anything besides a lot of camera flashes. She gives us the inside scoop on what it's like to be a cosplayer at Comic-Con. Give it a listen!

You can listen to the full episode below, or if you want to receive new episodes every week, subscribe via our RSS feed or on iTunes.

Some stuff mentioned in this week's show: Liveblogging StarCraft II Spoiler-Free by Adam Biessener StarCraft II Campaign Reactions by Adam Biessener SDCC 2010: A Cosplayer's Perspective by Meagan VanBurkleo Game Informer's Comic-Con 2010 Hub Game Informer's CosBlog Hub Mass Effect Costumes Make Cosplayers Weep by Meagan VanBurkleo

Music on this episode is provided by The Barnstormers. Check out their latest CD, Graveyard Town, streaming on their website or on iTunes.

Mirror[edit | edit source]

Transcript[edit | edit source]

IGN Summary[edit | edit source]

If you want to learn everything you need to know about the game from scratch (including the history of development) listen to GameInformer Podcast StarCraft II/Two Worlds II edition. Dake JiGennaro (as they called him :P) and Aubrey Norris from Topware spill the beans on the game. They highlight the platforms being developed for and explain the various features. Some highlights:

Ladders and climbing is still in the game since TW:Temptation

No pigeonholing the character into evil/good paths despite allowing many choices to all quests. Instead, you'll have to go with your gut feeling or what you feel is right for your character at that point. While there's only one possible ending, more than one path will lead to it.

Character progression is retained from TWI, skills and parameter points are gained each EXP level. As mentioned before, some of the skills influence various aspects of general, tradeskill, rogue, warrior and mage paths. Warriors can not only learn special new moves but also increase proficiency with certain weaponry. Mages can improve effect of certain schools of magics (each spell you create or get can be comprised of one or more schools), mana cost, speed of casting etc..

Multiplayer and singleplayer characters are developed separately. Three modes are retained, with Village Mode now regarded as official name of one of the featured MP modes. Co-op campaign is split into separate missions which can be grouped into separately. Co-op teamplay starts with easy to complete missions with only 1 or 2 people matched together in the matchmaking menu (console versions). As the co-op campaign progresses, you'll need more advanced characters (and more of them, up to the 8 players cap), which can be levelled (presumably) in Crystal Hunt or Village mode.

Village Mode allows cooperation in more ways than just incentivizing specialized productions that others might not have. While the overall pool of generated missions for the villages is constant, every newly created village gets a smaller amount of the quests available - and they might not ever show up at other villages. This means that inviting players will be interesting as they might pick up the quests and do them at friend's village but gain the rewards as well. It's not known yet how this will factor in into the own village progression though, except that it might allow producing some of the items of the other village's (this is not clear from the Podcast though - we'll have to wait for the devs to describe the dependancies here!). Villages are kept in unique large chunks of gameworld which feature a settlement on the trade route.

Crystal Hunt mode is basically an ad hoc freeplay PVE/PVP mode. You can just join in on the fun and hunt Verita crystals on the MP maps (also up to 8 players). You can collect crystals for various bonuses - faster movement, or special skills or buffs. You can work together or kill other crystal carriers to take their crystals.

Aubrey told a bit about the Oculus. Oculus is created by ripping an eye out of the fallen enemy and enchanting it to use it in various ways. Basic effect is scouting. Depending on the creature, they get a plethora of special effects, like defending or AOE damage on enemies, and also get different innate characteristics - like range (i.e. how far can you fly with an Oculus before the connection between the artifact and your avatar breaks).

Current studio numbers 37 people - RP is pretty featherweight class considering the scope of their current project, but their results seem to be pretty astounding.

DJake once more confirms date of release as October 5, 2010.

Check back at GameInformer Show podcast for a great listen!

-- Propheet @ Tuesday, 3 Aug, 2010[2]

References[edit | edit source]