I'm not happy about this either, but I can't really blame GOG.com for this.
We saw what the other option would be with Night of the Rabbit: GOG.com only gets the cheaper version of the game, which in this instant meant no German language version. How do we - the consumers - benefit from having less options?

So, while I understand people not being pleased, I'd recommend directing your anger at Larian. Because if GOG.com didn't agree to this, it wouldn't mean that we would get the Imperial edition for free, but that we wouldn't get it at all.

I personally would have waited for the reviews, and then maybe would have even picked it up at full price, but now I'm just gonna wait till there's a sale and I can pick up the entire game for 20$ or less. DRM and DLC tactics made me a very patient man, I've outgrown the "must have nao!" age.
(Although to be entirely honest, 50$ is still in the normal range for an AAA title, so it's definitely not overpriced.)

To those complaining about bonus material not being free: remember, it is a privilege, not a right, to get stuff for free. You cannot expect to get the same deal for brand new material as you do for old material. If you choose to wait for the reviews to come in, and not pre-order the game, what have you lost? 2 games that you either A: have anyway, B: not interested in anyway, or C: would be able to purchase at a still reasonable price anyway. That, and the 5 dollar discount. The $9.99 bonus material is purely cosmetic. Still want the soundtrack? You'll probably find it on You Tube anyway. That being said: this is an awesome deal if you love the Divinity collection already, and are willing to take a chance on a new Divinity game. Even if everyone says the game is shit, there is a chance that you, personally, might like it. Take a look at Ultima 9, one of the most maligned games every released on GoG. There are still a few people who have absolutely no problem with it, despite its legion of faults. I personally am very intrigued with this release, and would pre-order myself immediately if I could afford it. But if I can't, and have to wait, then I haven't lost a whole lot. I already own the Divinity collection, and I can buy Master of Magic anytime I wish at a very reasonable price. Total Biscuit makes very legitimate points on whether or not to pre-order, but he admits it is up to you whether or not you want to take a chance. All he says is, don't get lured in by shiny material stuff that you can do without. If you absolutely love it, go for it. If you are unsure, just wait.

Reading part of this sad conversation thread, I am left to wonder if I am the only who thinks there is not enough boobage in games anymore. "Shrug"

Dragon Commander's soundtrack will be in flac and ogg formats.

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Well, a young, brash female general who started on the streets and quickly rose up the ranks of the army isn't necessary going to wear the same outfit as an old battle scared man with a prosthetic arm and eye that are more of a reminder of failure and past glory than a fashion accessory to be highlighted with short sleeve shirts.
They are also both also in a bar, in a secure location, and are not about to go into battle.

Sorry, it was late and I only reacted to part of what you said, and not the why. Though, if you had said that was said that was a sample of a bunch of screenshots (and, as you found, there are certainly other examples like that, particularly in some of the concept art), it would have been less of a stretch to be concerned about the company itself.

In Larian's previous games there have been strong female characters, with women in (and leading) armies, etc, and a complete lack of damsels in distress. There are more male characters in the games than females (Divinity 2 having a higher percentage of female characters than Divine Divinity), but I can not think of any gender stereotypes. You can choose your character's gender in each of the previous Divinity games (and change gender/appearance in Divinity 2), and there is no difference in stats, NPC reactions, etc (there is a quest in Divinity 2 that you need to be a female for, to take over a short part in a play). Even the (PG-13 rated) house of ill repute in Divine Divinity had male and female employees (the place itself was hidden out of the way, and not promoted in the game, requiring several steps to find).

The armour for the main characters in the previous Divinity games is pretty similar in design between genders. In Divine Divinity the female warrior starts off with kind of bikini armour, while the male warrior starts with a kilt and mostly bare chest, for a gladiator style look), but none of the actual equipment in the game is designed like that (for either gender; that is just what the characters look like with no equipment). In Divinity 2 I played a female character because I didn't care for any of the male character voices, and thought one of the female ones was good. I showed my brother the game, and some time later, after a change of equipment, he saw me playing again and thought I had started over with a male character. If he saw the character from the front he probably wouldn't have made that mistake, but there isn't a lot of feminization of the armour. Realistically there wouldn't much difference between male and female armour, but female armour is certainly not designed to be provocative or revealing.

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Yes, there are lots of special editions that include commentaries or behind the scenes type videos that cost more that the standard version. And there could be anniversary editions after that with extra videos and maybe something remastered.

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Would you like a copy of Divine Divinity to check it out?
Being a 2D game (even though the graphics still hold up quite well) there isn't as much of an option to show a visual gender bias as 3D titles (even if Larian had wanted to), but you can get a feel for the game design, dialog, etc.

Okay, I just busted my budget and preordered.

However, Divine Divinity doesn't seem to have been added to my account - is that only to happen when the release occurs?

The game library doesn't specifically label Dragon Commander as the imperial edition either - again, something that will only happen on release?

Likewise, I did already own Master of Magic but I don't have a code for the extra copy I should be getting out of the preorder, and I was under the impression that you'd get that right away.

I'm mainly posting to ask about this out of an abundance of paranoia - I don't want to lose out on all the extras if there's a glitch happening somewhere. ;)

The The Imperial Edition news on the Dragon Commander site says "The Imperial Edition will be made available on the day of release as downloadable content, and people who preorder will receive a download key."
I don't know if GOG ever said how they would handle listing DLC, but if they are going to have a separate game page for the full imperial edition, it might not go up until the release.

However, you should get the two bonus games soon. When Master of Magic was first added a couple people posted to ask how long it took to get the key, and then edited to say that they got it, one specifying that they got the email about an hour later.

Okay, so it's probably just an expected delay re the bonus items. No need for panic mode!

Thanks Larian,
you guys are still my favorite Belgians.

Thanks for the reply. I actually downloaded and installed Divine Divinity earlier today and started playing it. Seems like a really good game. A what was supposed to be a quick session turned into hours of running away from everything. :)

I don't understand as to why you think there will be one time activation in gog. Making assumption likes that is wrong. Gog policy states that ALL games are drm free and everyone pays the same price. If big publishers want to release games drm free they will go to gog if they dont they will go to steam. i dont see why gog would start introducing drm into big games just because they want that game in their catalogue. They are doing just fine by releasing indie games and old classics. As for the pricing goes if a game has good enough content then a high price for it is fine cause your paying for what you get for. Increase in game price for certain games is fine. Its when the old classics start rising in price is when we get worried. I don't understand why an increase in price is such a bad thing. When the new witcher is released are they going to release it for $20? no the game will have a high price

also totally agree with pre-orders, i've watched the video before and its one of my motivations to stop pre-ordering games. I will however pre-order witcher 3 because cd-projekt is the only company that i trust 100%

CHANGED MY MIND :)

Well, I will admit when I'm wrong and, in this case, I'd say ignore my previous posts as, yes, I think I was wrong.

I'm now understanding more why Larian is doing this pre-order on GOG with all the bonuses etc. I'm guessing it's because, if you pre-order the game on Steam you get immediate access to the beta which GOG, for obvious reasons, can't offer. So, to get people to buy the game on GOG DRM-free, they had to offer more incentives for the pre-order. I now have no problem with that, as anything that dissuades people from buying games on Steam the better :)

I also have to go back on my statement that I would likely never buy anything from Larian again as I just watched Quill 18 playing a single-player campaign from Dragon Commander and the game looks AWESOME. Will be buying it when it comes out (I still won't pre-order as I just don't do that, no matter what the incentives are).

So sorry Larian - I WAS WRONG :)

btw -- watch Quill18 playing Dragon Commander -- it looks like an absolutely gorgeous game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pALxKh9rUnQ

Oh and for the record -- I'm a girl, but I have absolutely NO problem with 'boob armour'.

If guys want to get off on cartoon characters running around with their boobs out, who am I to stop them. I think it's funny but, nope, no problem with it :)

Glad to hear that.

There are not a lot of games I would pre-order without trying a demo first, but I'm not philosophically opposed to them.

I'm torn. I'd like to show my support for a DRM first release, but $45.20 is a lot of money to gamble on a pre-release and I have the two free bonus games already.

Maybe if a GOG staffer could come out and advise the soundtrack will be available in FLAC (they did it with one game once) I might give it some more thought. I too get music from bandcamp for the lossless FLAC files.

On a side note does anyone using firefox have it crash heaps. I run about 130 tabs on winXP and often have a slower connection due to download apps and it is dying once a day (just crashed while I was typing this). I never used to have these sort of crashes with a heap of tabs open and slow bandwidth. I even disabled plug-ins and extensions to no avail.

Found your problem.

Sorry, but having that many tabs open probably isn't expected behavior. It's great if it works, but I don't think FF 'only' mostly supporting using 130 tabs is an issue.

The newer releases of Firefox will do that to you. I have to restart by browser once a day because Firefox will eat all my memory and then lag and freeze.


Shakespearean names of all the characters makes me want to be willing to pay $40... I'm so torn! =/