Two Worlds II Preview @ IGN

[Infamous]

Two Worlds was a laughing stock. There's no point in pretending otherwise. A vaguely Oblivion-esque roleplaying game, it reliably failed to match its ambition with its budget, resulting in a buggy, bizarre thing with a script seemingly written by a madman drunk on tramp juice. The one thing it did get right was timing - fairly hot on the heels of Oblivion, and something a little refreshingly different in the 360's relative youth. Also, it let you strap multiple swords together to make one even better sword. There's no arguing that that's a bad idea, right? Snickerfest it might have been, but the 2007 RPG sold well enough to warrant a sequel , one that we're told will be much, much better: built new from the ground up, rather than being simply more Two Worlds. That's your cue to stop sniggering at the back and pay attention.

The improvement starts with a new engine, known as Grace - apparently so impressive that some of its code is being used in college-level textbooks. "It's truly a next-gen title", claims Producer Scott Cromie. In person, it's pretty enough, though in the build we saw, it seems to spend more of its energies on incidental lighting effects than on especially convincing character models. Dynamic lighting, bump-mapping, weather effects, bendy grass, physics: y'know, the works. "Everything moves the way think it would", says Cromie in reference to the various tumbling crates and swinging chandeliers on show.

Read the full preview at IGN.COM