Larian Studios Visit: Riftrunner, part 3
The Visit Report, part 1

Myrthos, 2003-12-12

Creating your character
In Divinity you got to choose out of six predefined characters. In Riftrunner this has changed dramatically. First of all you are given a set of stat and skill points that you can spend. The stat points (at that time we tested there were 14) are spent on the 6
different statistics; strength, constitution, agility, speed, intelligence and survival. Or you can select one of the pre-defined characters like a mage, a warrior, a ranger or one of the others, where the stat and skill points are divided in such a ways that they match that type of character.

As mentioned you also get skill points with which you can select your starting skills. There is only a limited set available to you at that moment, or at least there will be in the final version. In the special version we had, we could use any skill we want. But I'll get more into the skill creation in the fourth and last part.

You also have the option to select your gender/age (male, female, child), the hair and it's color, including a punk look - and your personal taste for slim, muscular, normal or fat chars. For those who would like to know: "specific" female physiology can't be changed individually, only the whole body. So there are no Lara Croft look-alikes.
The choices you make with respect to the looks of your character have absolutely no influence in the game. Women are just as strong and fast as men are or child like characters. The only thing that looks different are the animations of your character. Swen showed us an overweighed and a slim woman running. They both ran differently, like they in real life would do too. With the difference of course that they both run equally fast in Riftrunner.

Finally you can enter the name you want to use for your character. Currently your character will use a predefined avatar image. Swen did mention that he would be looking into the possibility to allow for user defined image. Which would be a nice addition to the whole.

The beginning
The game starts in a dungeon. We have been told that there will be some sort of introduction in the final game that explains a bit about the story and how you got at that place. But for now there was none so after a few seconds the Deathknight entered the room. As we already know from Divinity, a Deathknight is bound to a witch and only serves her. This specific one was originally in the human army from Rivellon and wants to return to his mistress. But he is soulforged and thus stuck with you in this dungeon right now.
The Deathknight is of a neutral alignment, arrogant and sarcastic in a hilarious way and gives helpful and not so helpful hints and comments throughout the game. Your problem will be which suggestions to follow and which to reject. Like you, he didn't choose his fate so he doesn't waste time on being polite or diplomatic, but he is a faithful co-fighter. But if one of you dies in combat, both are dead, so you should keep a careful eye on both yours and his status.

Controls
In this first part things are not too difficult as it is also intended to give you a chance to play around with the controls. These controls have not changed much since Divinity, so anyone used to those will find things easy. The major change in the controls is related to party control. You can select an individual character, a selection of characters or all of them. One of your characters will be the leading character and will be the one accessing things and initiating conversation. This character is the one you selected first.

Walking and running has remained unchanged from Divinity and so is accessing objects, unlocking doors and fighting. What wasn't so great was one of the inevitable side effects of having a party; they tend to get in your way. At occasion even in Divinity the pathfinding algorithm would sometimes get lost and send your character to the other side of the wall instead of opening the barrel or pulling the lever in front of it. This was mostly the case when there was some other stuff blocking some of the paths to that barrel. By making smaller steps it was then normally always possible to open that barrel or access that lever or whatever it was you wanted to do. In Riftrunner this is even more complicated because one of the other characters can stand in the way and block the path. This didn't happen frequently, just occasionally and you can always move that character away of course.

The controls are just as easy as they were in Divinity and look similar too. You can do everything with your mouse and you can assign hotkeys to most of the operations if you like also, like saving and loading. The good news with respect to that is that the loading and saving times are shorter than in Divinity. The save games are also smaller, which is probably one of the reasons it's faster. What I didn't get used to however is that after loading a game, it was automatically paused. I can imagine this can be useful to some in combat situations, but for me this ‘feature' simply doesn't do it. In the few hours I played I always forgot that it was in pause mode. In all likelihood I'll probably get used to it, but I really hope that they will make this configurable, so that I can set it in such a way that things immediately continue after loading a game.

Quests and puzzles
The part of Riftrunner we played had a large share of side quests and puzzles. In the small area you start in there is even a side quest that refers to the Count of Monte Christo. So if you know the story then you might get a clue on how to solve this somewhat hidden quest. Yes indeed, like in Divinity if you don't check out everything you might miss some of those quests that are also referred to as ‘Easter eggs'.
If the rest of the game is like this part with respect to the quests and the puzzles then it will keep you occupied for a long time.

At occasion there were also puzzles that can only be solved because you have a party member. One of them involved the pulling of levers that opened and closed doors in such a way that you could not solve it without a party. Then there were also objects that could be tackled more easily by the two of you instead of doing things alone.

Like in Divinity there is the usual amount of keys that unlock doors, levers that do the same and even crystal balls that you need to collect throughout one of the level in the dungeon in order to get a gateway out of that level to open. Sometimes these things are obvious and sometimes they are not. What is helpful at times are the writings on the wall, which you find rather frequently. However in order to understand these writings you need to learn the language first. You accomplish this by locating three books that are scattered throughout the first part of the dungeon. After you have read all three of them you have mastered the language and can read those scribbles.

You will also find a book somewhere that will teach you how to detect traps. This is a very useful skill as after you found that book the number of traps start to increase also and there is no way you can find and avoid them without having that skill.
I don't know how this will be in the rest of the game, but in the part we played when you couldn't solve something there was a hint somewhere you must have missed.

Graphics and Music
The graphics in Riftrunner are very nice to look at. The 3D characters fit in real nicely with the pre-rendered backgrounds. The animation of the characters has been done very well also as are the animations of other objects in the scenes. Of course it's not a 3D game with the looks of Spellforce, but as 2D games go it looks very good and besides that it has a whole lot more RPG in it than Spellforce does and that's what counts.

As to the music we can be short about that. It didn't exist at that time of writing and even though the music in a game can pull you more in the game, the part we played was exciting enough to not miss the music and sounds too much. It goes without saying that the final game will have music of course.

Next week I will tell more about the skill system, combat the interface panels and wrap up the loose ends.