Two Worlds II Interview, Part One

After getting a chance to interview TopWare community director Jake DiGennaro about Two Worlds II, the guys at Kombo have decided to offer the conversation as a multi-part affair. Part one covers "redemption, challenges, horses, and more":
You were talking about how you reached the decision to make it Two Worlds 2, the sequel, instead of the expansion; Were there ever any thoughts of creating a completely different franchise, like, going in a different direction using the revamped engine, but avoiding the Two Worlds name?

I mean, that's one of the questions that we've gotten fairly often, is, you know, "With the critical reception of Two Worlds, the original, if we put this much time, and effort, and money and everything like that into creating a sequel, why stick with a branding that is kind of familiarized with poor quality and kind of hokey dialogue and stuff like that?" You know, on our front it's more of.... There's a personal investment to the franchise, and being the first outing for the console for us, and being the first time we've tried to do one of these open world RPG games, there's some sentimental attachment, especially at the development level.

And it's kind of a challenge, I guess, is one of the biggest things about it. Just being able to come back and say, especially to the people that did enjoy the first game and are looking forward to the second game, "Hey, we listened to you." As a studio and as a publisher, and as fans of what we're creating, we took to heart the feedback that we were given, the issues that our community had with the first game, and we've addressed them. We've brought a much more polished second round, second outing, a sophomore venture into this genre. I think that many times, especially when tackling these open world type games, there are a lot of problems the first time around, regardless.

We're constantly compared to, say, Oblivion, Morrowind, and stuff like that. Well, the first two outings in The Elder Scrolls were great games, but they were riddled with their own flaws. And it wasn't until they hit round three and, really, round 4 with Oblivionthat they really just nailed it on the head. And so that's kind of, we kind of took precedent from them, from previous examples, saying, "People will stick with us a little bit if given the chance." And we really wanted to build a franchise, build something that we could grow and expand upon and could see multiple iterations or possible spin-offs or whatever we decided to do with the franchise. But to just walk away from it really was something that we didn't want to do.