Divine Divinity was one of those delightful surprises when it was released in 2002. The name notwithstanding, the experience was a delight. The game itself had a few problems but there was certainly depth there, and the game was a lot of fun to play.

Even Larian Studios’ project leader Swen Vincke admits that Divine Divinity was not the experience the developers really wanted.

“We weren’t all that happy with Divine Divinity,” he said, in a phone interview from San Francisco, where he is staying while attending the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. “There were a lot of things we wanted to improve. In Beyond Divinity we added the things we wanted to have in the first place.”