Beyond Divinity Preview & Interview

Fragland has dished up a preview of Beyond Divinity, as well as an interview with Larian Studios' Swen Vincke. Here's a clip from the preview:
There are less opponents than in Divine Divinity but they sure have become a lot more fun ! This is mostly because they've grown more clever and seem to 'think' a lot more tactical. There is, for instance, a Black Bishop who first paralyses you, then puts a circle filled with traps around you and when you wake up he'll unleash an acid drain on you. A real arsehole (to say it with the words of the Project Leader) and there are more like him running around. With the party-element you can take on guys like these, whilst if alone, you certainly couldn't. Larian's site doesn't say (tactical combat) for nothing!

And a clip from the interview:
Q: If I remember correctly, a number of gamers found the end-part of Divine Divinity somewhat of a lesser quality compared with the rest of the game. Does the end of Beyond Divinity promise to be more exciting and/or more complex? Is it possible to play on after the end of the story?

A: The end of Divine Divinity totally sucked. We weren't quite ready actually, so we had to (rush) things very hard in order to get it all done. We were planning to kick out the entire last part of Divinity, the Wastelands, and to keep it for Beyond Divinity so then we could have made it right.

You have a village there and normally there would have been all kinds of stuff to do but we had to cancel all that because time was running out. The publisher on the other hand still wanted us to bring variation into the terrain. That's the reason why those Wastelands are so terribly boring.

There isn't anyone here who still played that part after release because we all knew how boring it was. All those houses in the Wastelands were empty and should have been full with monsters and unique items. The intention was that all the previously beaten beasts returned in the last level as some kind of final offensive from monster against man.

So actually the story stopped in Councelor 7 and normally we would have continued it with this title. This time round, we started out by making the end for Beyond Divinity. Naturally, I can't tell you anything about that yet. Though it will be possible to play further after the end, because you still have the Battlefields.