Two Worlds

2007/05/25

Antaloor has still not recovered from the turmoil which arose when Aziraal, the god of war, broke the agreement of the gods 300 years ago and went his own way. He gathered the hordes of orcs and led them in a bloody battle against the civilised world. In the midst of these events Kira, the sister of our hero, was kidnapped by a mysterious brotherhood. Our nameless hero travelled aimlessly through the countries for months hoping for a sign of his sister. He made it his aim to find his sister again!

“Two Worlds” gains its first plus point with the packaging design and contents. Even if you buy the normal version you get a piece of packaging which looks good and fits nicely into a bookcase. Alongside the pretty CD case made of glossy cardboard a double-sided poster is also enclosed with the game. On one side there is a map of the gaming world, which you can use to find your way around, and on the other side there is a picture of Kira in a sexy pose. It’s not hard to decide which side you’ll want to hang up ;).
People who buy the “Royal Edition” also receive a letter opener in the form of the “Kilgorin” sword which appears in the game, a bonus DVD with the soundtrack, a “making of” documentary, wallpaper and a web-kit, a Two Worlds T-shirt and a card game (with 55 cards).

Our adventure begins in the village of Komorin in Thalmont. A mysterious letter reaches us which contains the first life signs of our sister Kira for months. Understandably we make our way immediately to Komorin. After our arrival and the completion of the first quest, the main story line continues.
It soon emerges that a secret organisation, whose leader is called Reist Tungard, has kidnapped Kira. In order to have her released, we must complete a mission for the order. To our advantage one of the members of the order (Gandohar) is on our side, as he feels obliged to our sister for unknown reasons and passes on important information to us in the further course of the game, even allowing us a short meeting with Kira.

Even though the story is somewhat unclear at the start, it gives you some things to get stuck into. The side-quests are cleverly connected with the main story and explain the history of the characters and life in Antaloor really well. Alongside the main quests, however, the obligatory “find me 10 pieces of x” or “kill x bandits” quests are also evident in Two Worlds. Sadly the quest-log is quite confusing, so that you sometimes think twice about even taking on a quest. For example it was not possible for us to remove already completed quests from the quest-log or at least to hide them. Also, all accepted quests are drawn directly onto the map. On the one hand it is positive for players who like to just explore the world a little bit without strictly following the flow of the game, as they can always see when they have arrived at a place where they can complete a quest. On the other hand it is more irritating for regular quest-players, as they cannot see on the mini-map where they have to go to for the quest they have just accepted.

What we really liked about Two Worlds was the free development of our character. In other games, where the character development is race-dependant, Two Worlds gives us a free rein. In the same way future role-playing games will be able to interact with the magic book of Two Worlds. In addition to the 3 slots for the main spells you have three slots per main spell for so-called “boosters”. They affect the main spell together with your attributes. In this way your fire magic can be made much more effective with two boosters. Fire magic + manna booster (reduces manna consumption by 20%) + magic booster (increases the effectiveness level of magic by 2). As a result no limits are set on your individuality.

Hopefully nobody, because “Two Worlds” loses a lot of points here. The following is taken from the manual: “The commands that you enter on your keyboard are not sent directly to the horse, but are transmitted (as in reality) via the rider i.e. in this case your character. For example, if you press [W] to go forwards your character gives this command to the animal being ridden, which then acts upon it. Therefore this movement is implemented with a slight delay.” We think that this idea is really good - unfortunately the implementation has been fudged. The animal never reacts correctly to keyboard inputs (even if you have a high riding skill level). In addition, the collision response with the environment (whether on horseback or on foot) doesn’t work. During testing it was often the case that while we were going a full gallop we rode into a tree (partly because of the navigation and partly because of the inability of the tester ;)) whereby the horse emitted an audible whine but stopped abruptly and without animation. Even the function “call horse” which is praised in the manual does not work at all in some areas. Here another quote from the manual: “… you can call your horse back to you using a special whistle at a distance of approx. 100 metres. Simply press the button [H] and the horse makes its way to you. It can of course take a while depending on the surroundings”. In our test the horse was not interested in the whistle at all either at a distance of approx. 80 meters or at a distance of 30 meters.

In games like Gothic 3 or Oblivion the monster battles are really taxing (because the monsters are always around the level of the individual character). This is not the case in Two Worlds. Firstly, monsters maintain their start level (which means that you can easily finish off wolves after level 20), secondly there is the practical “evasion” and “nasty trick” function (which we found to be a positive thing, although the battles are very action-heavy) and thirdly the opponents are not particularly clever. You can quite easily lure opponents to a manna or life regeneration point in order to beat them, so that you can kill hordes of up to 30-40 opponents without a problem. Fire magic, cure, attack, fire magic, cure … We evade the few counter-attacks using the afore-mentioned functions “evasion” or “nasty trick” (which kicks dust up into the eyes of the opponent immobilising them for a short period). What we did find to be very positive after doing this though, was that Two Worlds displays with two symbols (an open eye and closed eye), whether we have already plundered an opponent or not.

The atmosphere of the world does not quite reach the level of Oblivion and Gothic 3. Although the world outside of the towns is populated by all possible types of animals, it comes across a bit unrealistic when a pack of 5 wolves awaits you every 50 meters. On the other hand we think that the idea of letting opponents who we have killed that day creep around in the night as ghosts is completely unimaginative. In addition, although the towns, villages and suburbs are well populated, the inhabitants and workers do not really give the impression that they are busy.

The graphics in Two Worlds are a double-edged sword. On the one hand the game has wonderful vegetation, an enormous world view, great weather effects and the architecture of the game looks good. Mirror and bump-mapping effects make Antaloor into a beautiful, believable world. Even the movement animations recorded by motion capturing look fluid and realistic. However, the developer “Reality Pump” worked badly on the face animations. The face animations look similar to those used at the time of Gothic 1. Furthermore the collision response with the individual elements on the map is catastrophic.
The synchronisation of the figures is not very successfully done and merely serves as a means to an end. Gandohar's voice, for example, sounds more forced than grave and mystical. This is crowned off with the “here I am again” of your character when he reappears at the re-spawn point after he has died. The whole thing comes across as laughable and forced.