By John Walker on July 25th, 2010 at 10:08 am.
Did you play Two Worlds? I tried for a bit. It was rubbish, wasn’t it? Well, interestingly enough, according to Destructoid Polish developers Reality Pump think so too. And they’re saying so in some videos that not only promote the sequel, Two Worlds II, but that mock the first one. Which is a bold choice. If they’re really from Southpeak, and not Destructoid punking them.
25/07/2010 at 10:15 Mac says:
I really liked Two Worlds …
25/07/2010 at 10:21 Guildenstern says:
I was in Two Minds about it.
25/07/2010 at 10:26 Mac says:
At least I could be arsed to finish it, unlike Risen and Fallout 3
25/07/2010 at 11:25 Tei says:
I finished Risen and Fallout 3. And abandoned 2W very early. Are you my evil brother?
25/07/2010 at 12:18 The Hammer says:
Perhaps YOU’RE the evil one, Tei.
25/07/2010 at 14:07 Wulf says:
I’ll round this off by saying that I finished Fallout 3, but I dumped both Two Worlds and Risen half way through.
Two Worlds was far, far too barren and unfinished in most places, it felt dead, and that got me down after a while because I like to explore. Due to this, it had a lot of space, but most of it felt needlessly artificial. Risen was an RPG on rails, with a rather basic storyline that turned into nothing but dungeon-humping after the half way mark. Also, Risen really felt like a massive step back from its precursors, leaving behind the vast majority of their better features (such as the illusion of a living world, as opposed to the immersion-breaking, idiotic AI that was present instead).
The most worthwhile thing about Two Worlds is that it seemed to have some interesting AI things going on, which was promising. The most worthwhile thing about Risen was the British localisation team, which actually provided better, heartier voice-acting than I’ve heard in most games.
To the contrary, Fallout 3 at least had a fairly open world with lots of things to see and side-quests to discover. It never felt like exploration was frowned upon, limited, or a chore. I still remember discovering the crashed alien ship for the first time and grabbing that retro-future laser gun. That was a laugh.
Oh, and mods. Fallout 3 had motorbikes.
I admit, Fallout 3 wasn’t the greatest game ever, and the writing could use a lot of work, but it was still head-and-shoulders above both Risen and Two Worlds, at least, in my opinion. Conversely, both Two Worlds and Risen could probably have been much better if they were as easy to mod as Fallout 3.
25/07/2010 at 15:32 KillahMate says:
Now, I haven’t played FO3 yet (working through my pile), but that laser gun encounter sounds awfully like an, ahem, homage to an identical encounter from Fallout 1. Could anyone who played both provide some perspective?
I’ve had an impression for a while now that most good parts of FO3 are actually the bits Bethesda retained from the old Fallouts, and the praise is coming from people who don’t know better. I’d like to be told I’m wrong so that I can buy the game and enjoy it… Anyone?…
25/07/2010 at 16:10 Mac says:
My problem with Fallout 3 was teh quick travel – I see how convenient it was, and I could have chosen not to use it, but there was little advantage in actually running somewhere rather than quick traveling.
Risen – I just found the story dull and slow.
25/07/2010 at 16:32 Eplekongen says:
@KillahMate
I’ve played Fallout 1 & 2, 5-6 times each over the years. And Fallout 3 is not as good as them, but that’s hardly a good measurement since Fallout 1 & 2 were, at time of release the best games ever made. I honestly believe that F3 is a worthy sequel to the series. Everything about the earlier Fallout games that made them so great is there. The only thing missing is the top down turn based combat. But most importantly, the thing that made Fallout so great were it’s complete open-worldiness. The freedom to kill whoever you wanted to kill, do whatever you want to do. And I’d say that the open world is even better done in F3, not in terms of the possible choices you feel you have, F1&2 did that better, but the world itself is so alive an full of new things to explore.
And yes, the alien crash site is an absolute hommage to the previous games. And I do not see why that would be a problem at all. Bethesta knew exactly what made the earlier games so amazing and they’ve borrowed liberally all over the place. If it was awesome, and it still is awesome, why should they not put it in the game? And it doesn’t come off as copying, stealing or lack of originality at all, it comes off as what it is, hommage, and it all fits with the rest of the game.
Fallout 3 is a damn good game, one of the best.
25/07/2010 at 10:23 CLD says:
I liked it too. Especially the music.
25/07/2010 at 10:29 Hippo says:
Yeah, Two Worlds was pretty neat. Rubbish start, meh first couple of hours, then it was great fun for 30 hours or so before becoming a bit boring again (it was a bit too large for its own good, I think).
25/07/2010 at 10:33 Heliocentric says:
Hi, the last game we sold you as being ‘really great’ was crap. But this one is ‘really great’.
That is the sound of a feedback loop.
25/07/2010 at 10:37 tome says:
Yarh! Christ, just turn it off, man!
25/07/2010 at 12:33 SF Legend says:
It works for Molyneux.
25/07/2010 at 16:46 Nick says:
just move the mic away from the monitor there.
25/07/2010 at 10:40 sockeatsock says:
Which begs the question: why make a sequel…
25/07/2010 at 11:56 Vandelay says:
You know, to me that is more reason to do a sequel. I usually think why bother to make a sequel of a game that is already great and doesn’t need improving. I would much rather see sequels being made of games that had great ideas, but weren’t properly executed (*cough* Alpha Protocol *cough*).
Never played Two Worlds, so don’t know if it falls into that category, but at least they seem to be aware of the problems that troubled the original and seem to be looking to fix them.
25/07/2010 at 10:56 Larington says:
The horse issues got patched out last time I played it. Myself, I rather enjoyed it so I guess I was able to overlook the various issues that got most folks riled up.
25/07/2010 at 10:58 leeder_krenon says:
i think it was shit on consoles, but the PC version really wasn’t that bad.
25/07/2010 at 11:01 Navagon says:
You’re actually trusting Destructiod not to epically troll? Way too trusting…
25/07/2010 at 11:09 pipman300 says:
stranger in thalmont?
i liked it’s voice acting. it actaully made me want to talk to every npc i could find just to hear more of it.
25/07/2010 at 12:04 Zogtee says:
The lady had a huge pile of floppies on her desk.
25/07/2010 at 12:44 Navagon says:
Next to a computer that actually looks about a decade older than the floppies.
25/07/2010 at 12:43 Jimbo says:
Two Worlds was very amateurish, but I still enjoyed it enough to finish it.
This one could do ok, as long as they get it out in September. If they slip into October they’re gonna be screwed.
25/07/2010 at 13:18 DeepSleeper says:
Two Worlds was fantastically broken, had surreal dialogue that barely matched what was happening on screen and occasionally wandered off down a rabbit hole and never came back, allowed you to do things like resurrect a town killed by an orc invasion and the orcs that killed them and set them living together peacefully or pick locks using your horse, and had that wonderful “duct tape objects together” method of increasing item power.
If they’ve actually figured out that all of these are bad things and fixed them without making any other mistakes, Two Worlds 2 will be a competent pile of game with no soul whatsoever and I will have no use for it. I just hope that they’re incompetent enough and genius enough to put together a NEW open world RPG which is just as broken in entirely new and ridiculous ways.
25/07/2010 at 15:52 Archonsod says:
Um, you just listed everything that made Two Worlds good.
25/07/2010 at 17:36 DeepSleeper says:
That was kind of my point, yes.
25/07/2010 at 20:44 Miko says:
I loved the “short sword + short sword = better short sword” system. I demand that it be included in every action RPG henceforth.
25/07/2010 at 23:29 Heliocentric says:
@Miko also rts tank+tank=megatank
Dating games date 2 shy girls and merge them.
Looted guns in shooters.
25/07/2010 at 23:40 Tei says:
tank + girl = tankgirl
25/07/2010 at 13:45 Internet Friend says:
This article should be titled “Two worlds II mocks two worlds too”, but is not, which is shameful.
25/07/2010 at 21:52 John Walker says:
You’re right. I’m fired.
25/07/2010 at 13:55 Alexander Norris says:
Two Worlds really wasn’t that bad. It was affably shit, sort of like a Bethesda game’s funner, more broken cousin.
25/07/2010 at 15:39 Unaco says:
It’s possible to break a Bethesda game, or have a game more broken than a Bethesda game? I thought that was why they could safely release the TES Construction Set with their games… because there is no way a member of the public could break it any more than it already was.
25/07/2010 at 21:33 Nick says:
Yeah, they don’t get more broken than Bethesda games… I still have nightmares about Daggerfall’s save corruption =(
25/07/2010 at 23:12 Ashen says:
I still have nightmares about save corruption in Fallout 2. Not to mention official patches breaking savegame compatibility.
25/07/2010 at 16:07 Javier-de-Ass says:
love two worlds. it’s a bit fucked up, but that’s what makes it great most of the time. really fun weird things going on in that game world. also, stacking the inventory rocks
25/07/2010 at 17:49 ruaidhri says:
the teaser trailer on their website actually looks kinda good. cant trust that sort of thing i know but the combat looked like it might be more visceral than the norm.
what i want to see though is a good RPG in a full on fantasy setting ie hulkmen and metal bikini warrior princesses etc but where the main character is someone transplanted from our ‘realm’. There was a radio 4 comedy series with that premise and it was bloody refreshing
25/07/2010 at 21:24 7 Seas says:
I enjoyed Two Worlds as well. Way to go hivemind AGAIN rps….. If it isn’t by Bioware, Bethesda, or Blizzard IT IS SHIT AND DESERVES NO CHANCE.
Sure it was a partially buggy mess (got quite a bit of patch love though), but it was still pretty fun.
Now I anxiously await your fawning 6 peice article on the latest turd of DLC to be excreted by Bioware.
25/07/2010 at 21:32 Nick says:
Alternatively and perhaps more reasonably, John just didn’t like it very much.
25/07/2010 at 21:45 Heliocentric says:
The last other rpg was that recettear game. Made and then localised by no one the collective consciousness had even heard of.
Clearly beth-bio-bliz benefit bias*.
Aliteration combo.
25/07/2010 at 22:01 John Walker says:
Um 7 Seas, you are aware that these are videos made by the people who MADE Two Worlds, right? I didn’t make them. So, well, your being angry with me is a little bit confusing.
Just to help you along your way, I couldn’t get into Fallout 3, and never had much love for Oblivion. And my last review of BioWare DLC was for PC Gamer, Return To Ostagar, which I gave 30%.
But apart from that, you’re bang on!
25/07/2010 at 22:11 Heliocentric says:
John Walker in Blizzard blog bumming blasphemy.
25/07/2010 at 22:19 John Walker says:
Oh yeah, I don’t really care about Starcraft II.
25/07/2010 at 22:42 Heliocentric says:
John denies default dedication, derelicts demented defender.
25/07/2010 at 23:25 pipman300 says:
john walker is part of the world-wide communist gangster-government frankenstein computer god conspiracy to discredit two worlds by posting a video made by the developers.
john walker is a reptoid.
25/07/2010 at 22:19 Jimbo says:
Hey 7 Seas! Why so blue??
Hahahahaha! BOOM, Grapeshot!
26/07/2010 at 01:39 pupsikaso says:
Did she call him “Sort-of-hung”?
26/07/2010 at 13:07 Songbearer says:
@Heliocentric
Play bizzare Russian RTS Perimeter, you can merge units together and make them into bigger tanks!
26/07/2010 at 13:09 Luttman23 says:
I played Two Worlds for about an hour before putting it in a drawer. Weirdly I found it again a couple of days ago. It’s still there though.
27/07/2010 at 18:25 Oliver says:
You really should play it. Just through out any preconceptions that it’s an Oblivion clone, or that you should be riding horses, or that you’re supposed to listen to dialog. If you assume straight up that it’s supposed to be ridiculously dumb and all about the loot, you’ll be fine.
See my review here:
http://games.thegeeklynews.com/2009/10/risen-vs-oblivion-vs-two-worlds-vs-torchlight/
27/07/2010 at 18:26 Oliver says:
ack! THROW not through.