Second Time’s the Charm

Some games fail on the first try, but come back as a better and more polished version of the original. I’ve always imagined what it’d be like to be the lead designer for a game. I picture it as sending your kid off to school, hoping he’ll do well in classes and make worthwhile friends. But then I think about what would I do if my game, that I thought was pretty good, totally sucked? Would I just throw in the towel and call it quits, pick up another career, or would I defend my game to the death while correcting the errors and proving that it could be worth something?

The first Two Worlds suffered from a host of issues. People either loved it or hated it.

I can’t say that I’ve heard of a company calling it quits after such a blow, but I have heard of a company trying to redeem itself. For instance, Reality Pump’s Two Worlds which received scores on all sides of the spectrum, from 1/10 to an 8/10. Reality Pump released the sequel Two Worlds II 4 years later in 2011 which got an average of 7/10. While the game wasn’t perfect, it was better than its predecessor, which says something in my opinion. It shows that Reality Pump truly cared for Two Worlds, and felt like they still had a chance to redeem the game, and released a game that would be received the way they had initially hoped for the first Two Worlds.

Two Worlds 2 came out with better combat, quests, and graphics. Even though it was still below AAA games, it did quite well with the fans.

That’s great, it truly is. Especially in the time we’re in now, with a lot of new game companies trying to make the next Call of Duty, you’d think that if the first release of a company were to fail, that they would take the easy route and just make another CoD clone. But no, Reality Pump stuck with Two Worlds and actually released a game that wasn’t half bad.

Another example of this would have to be the more recent Dragon’s Dogma. While Capcom’s DD didn’t receive particularly negative reviews, it did get some flak for being a little too “hardcore”. What I’m referencing are certain aspects in the game that weren’t too easy to jump right into and get used too. Most notably was the fact that there was barely a fast travel system at all. The only way you could fast travel was if you had at least two ferrystones. Ferrystones are items in the game that allow you to make a portal between two locations, and they’re hell to find in the original DD; they were either way too expensive, or way too rare of a find.

Dragon’s Dogma. Capcom’s decent attempt at their own version of Dark Souls.

That is until Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen was released. The prices for the ferrystones were dropped dramatically and the drop-rate of said stones was increased. And to top it off, it you already played the original Dragon’s Dogma before Dark Arisen and still have a save file to show it on your hard drive, you begin the game with an “Eternal Ferrystone”. This Eternal Ferrystone is the equivalent to having unlimited ferrystones. Now that’s a change.

The Dark Arisen expansion upped the difficulty, but made quite a few things, like fast travel, easier to accomplish.

This change in Dragon’s Dogma has been well accepted by most reviewers, so this is indeed another example of a game company paying attention to reviews, and corrected what was wrong with their game. Good job Reality Pump and Capcom! Way to take one for the team.