Quite frankly, the AI discussion isn’t very interesting to me, but I know it is to others, so we’ll start with that. Note that I may liberally cherry-pick the Q+A here, so feel free to view the link for full quotes and context.
Q: What is your opinion on the role of (Generative) AI in the game development process, and for your studio in particular?
A (Swen): There is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion. So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development. That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art. Having said that, we continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think GenAI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game. The important bit to note is that we will not generate “creative assets” that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own.
And the reasons I got excited when I found out about this AMA, the differences between D:OS2 and the new Divinity. It seems many shared my criticisms, and these next two questions and answers bode really well for my tastes.
Q: Will Divinity be sticking to the armor / magic armor system found in DOS1 and DOS2?
A (Nick): Divinity will not keep the magic armor system from DOS2. There will be ways to protect your characters from harm, but you will not have to wait before you can use your fun skills on enemies. We are still cooking a system that makes sure that you have to work harder to stunlock solo bosses with level 1 skills, but it won’t be tied to damage.
My frustrations were more with the stunlocking going in the other direction, but that’s cool, too!
Q: Are you guys creating a new combat system away from the action point based combat based on the past DOS games? The mechanics, rather than the spells itself.
A (Nick): We went through our original ideas for DOS1 and DOS2, looked again at how they worked out in practice, picked up some inspirations from our BG3 EA and post-release journey, consulted the star charts to see what we need to do to stay competitive - and cooked a new action economy and character progression system. Feedback from BG3 players trying DOS2 for the first time has been especially interesting to us, seeing the two worlds colliding. We hope that both fans of BG3 and fans of DOS2 will find the new system intuitive but deep.
Anyway, I’m more excited about this game now than I was yesterday. Feel free to share anything else from the AMA that you found interesting.