Video Game / Two Worlds

"Say 'Hello' to DEATH!"

Verily, thou has cometh into this page to read about the video game Two Worlds.

Two Worlds doest be a Role-Playing Game released for PC and Xbox 360 in 2007.

Forsooth, thou doest playeth as a mercenary in the fantasy world of Antaloor. At the beginning of the game, thy sister is kidnapped by a cult that doest wisheth to summon Aziraal, the evil god of the Orcs. The cult doest blackmail you in hopes that mayhap thou shalt help them achieve this foul deed.

....

Okay, enough of that.

Like its obvious inspiration, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Two Worlds drops the player into a huge landscape full of villages, dungeons, side-quests, and enemies with a set objective that is ultimately optional. Emphasis is on exploring the world of Antaloor and developing your character.

The sequel released in 2010, Two Worlds II, is an entirely different animal. Besides a greatly expanded world with much fewer bugs and more animations, it notably featured a completely separate co-op/multiplayer campaign, multiplayer duels, a magic system, dialogue that was sometimes actually clever, and even a village simulator.

The games were developed by the Polish studio Reality Pump and published by TopWare Interactive, with SouthPeak Games handling the North American releases.

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The Two Worlds series provides examples of the following tropes:

General Tropes

• Artifact Title: Before the game was even released, in fact. The website for the original games has an outdated synopsis that challenges you to choose which of the Two Worlds you will save. This has nothing to do with the released game or its sequel.

• Black-and-Gray Morality: Aziraal and its minions are simply evil, but the "good" human nation has its fair share of corruption and internal conflict.
• Blow You Away: Air magic is used in the games and is combined with lightning magic, i.e. Shock and Awe.
• Bond One-Liner: The Hero says them at random after killing enemies. Very frequently.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
  • The groms are pretty much goblins, and in the first game their totem poles are even called "goblin totems".
  • Skeletons are found in both games, In the first game they're simply called "skeletons", but in the second one they're called "necris".
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "scorpions" are quadrupedal and have humanoid torsos.

• Dem Bones: Skeletons are common enemies in the game. They're called necris in the second game.

• Dual Wielding: The character can train to wield two weapons in combat.
• Evil Is Hammy: Aziraal, Sordahon, and Gandohar just can't resist Chewing the Scenery.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Not shown, but implied by the fact that fire-magic can literally summon creatures from Hell—fire-themed creatures.
• From Bad to Worse: Regardless of the ending you picked in the first game, it only got worse by the second.
• Götterdämmerung: The ancient war between Aziraal and the other gods left the world in a rather sorry state.
• Ice Magic Is Water: Water magic exists as a school, but it's actually just ice magic.

• Ms. Fanservice: Kyra, which is really weird because she is your character's sister. The second game adds Dar Fa, the very Stripperiffic Cassara, and the (purposefully) seductive Reesa.

• Non-Indicative Title: Two Worlds? There's Antaloor and... that's it. It might refer to the divide between the human and orc civilizations in the first game, but that doesn't end up being that important to the plot in the long run.
• Obviously Evil: The Orcs are obviously evil due to being, well, Orcs. Their human allies are obviously evil due to their eerie voices and face-concealing masks. The Orc part is subverted in the second game.

• Our Elves Are Different: Elves are the Precursors.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Tolkien Orcs in the first game, with hints of Proud Warrior Race Guys that become their defining characteristic in the second game.

• Pinball Spin-Off: There is a Two Worlds table included in the Dream Pinball 3D collection.
• Portal Network: The elves left one behind when they fled Antaloor, but the humans who then settled there did not know how to use it. A series of side-quests involves you helping a researcher reactivate the Portal Network. Completing said side-quest is its own reward, since you can then use it yourself.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: The Hero will sometimes let one loose when enemies appear.
  • "Reminds me of my in-laws."
  • "Interesting guests!"

• The Undead: Several undead enemies are present in the game, including skeletons, zombies, ghouls and ghosts.
• Warp Whistle: The elvish Portal Network serves this purpose in both games, allowing you to quickly revisit any portal you've previously activated.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Present in Two Worlds, emphasized in II. There are entire oceans you can cross by boat. The sequel really makes you feel that you're in a vast world, rather than just a small part of it. For better or worse, however, certain areas are barred off or completely empty as part of the Royal Edition, Pirates DLC, or the multiplayer sections.
• Wutai:
  • The first game features the city of Ashos, which has a clear East Asian influence. It's located near a bamboo forest, has Japanese-inspired architecture, and a lot of its population has East Asian looks and Japanese-sounding names. Its guards also wield katanas and wear samurai-inspired armor.
  • The second game has New Ashos, another Asian-influenced city, found on a separate island.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe:
  • The first game mixed modern English phrasing and mostly American accents with old-timey words such as "forsooth" and "verily" regularly thrown into the mix.
  • Parodied in the sequel where there is one person who speaks Olde Timey, and the hero basically walks away saying he has better things to do than figure out what he's saying.

Tropes in the first game

• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Non-Hard difficulties just have the player teleport to the nearest shrine upon death with no penalty, and the shrines are quite plentiful across the world.
  • When you aim your cursor at a piece of armor or a weapon, the game automatically shows the stats of the corresponding item that you have already equipped, allowing you to easily compare the two.
  • The game will skip animations such as drawing and putting away your weapon if you start moving during them, removing the need to wait for them to finish playing.
• Armor Is Useless: Each piece of armor provides a different amount of protection against slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage. The Protect from Physical Damage enchantment provides protection against all three damage types. By constantly revisiting the magic vendor until he's selling some decent rings, robes, or even quivers with this enchantment, you can end up with a character that can wear mage's robes or even run around naked, and still have equal or better protection as a similarly leveled piece of armor, without all the armor's weight weighing down your inventory.
• Beef Gate: Enemies become progressively more powerful the further you go from the starting village, so if you try to explore in the wrong direction too early on you'll quickly find yourself being overwhelmed by enemies that are way out of your league.
• Bottomless Magazines: Quivers never run out of arrows.
• Captain Obvious: Some of the hero's remarks fall into this.
  (Starts raining)
  Hero: It's raining.
• Critical Annoyance: When your character's health is low, you hear heartbeat. If it's really low, you hear a gong sound in addition to the heartbeat.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: As long as the game's difficulty is not set to Hard, all that happens when you die is being teleported to the nearest shrine. No penalty of any kind involved.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The key to Aziraal's tomb, which is split into five pieces scattered across the kingdom.

• Epic Fail: The Big Bad Gandohar makes an Early-Bird Cameo in the starting village. And he's already killable. Not by you, mind you; he'll One-Hit Kill you if you go toe to toe with him. However, he can be kited into a group of NPCs in a nearby village, who he won't attack. They will eventually kill him, which will trigger the game's ending cutscene.
• Final Boss Preview: In the cutscene intro, the final boss kidnaps your hero, and in the early part of the main quest, he tries to gain your favor by being a member of an underground society. However, his early in-game appearance will backfire because he can be provoked into attacking, and one of his attacks inflicts splash damage that can anger invulnerable civilians, therefore allowing the game to be completed within a few minutes.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Katanas and other Eastern-style swords are among the most powerful two-handed swords in the game. You don't start finding them until you're near endgame character levels (about 35-40+).
• Lord British Postulate: It's possible, by exploiting certain aspects of the combat engine (or, in the unpatched version of the game, simply not starting the main quest until you've grinded your way to reaching endgame character level), to actually kill Gandohar at the beginning of the main quest. In fact, speed runs of the game exploit the fact that A) your character respawns, even if he is one-shot killed by the obvious final boss and B) that villagers can mob and kill said final boss. The game treats this as though you've beaten the final boss normally, even giving you the achievement for it.
• The Man Behind the Man: For most of the game, Reist Tungard is presented as the Big Bad and the leader of the secret organization attempting to revive Aziraal. It turns out he's just The Dragon to Gandohar, who spent most of the game pretending to be an Affably Evil Noble Demon mercenary in Reist's employ to manipulate the player.
• Minus World: The interior of Eikronas, the largest of the islands, is supposed to be inaccessible. It's blocked off by steep cliffs and, should you manage to make your ways onto those, a layer of invisible walls that teleport you back to the shoreline. There is, nevertheless, a gap in those that allows the player to slip through and explore the mostly barren landscape beyond and even make their way to the swampy area in the middle before being transported there in the proper course of the story.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The main quest line in both parts. It leads basically to unleashing the real Big Bad into the world. Not that the hero had much choice in Part One. In Part Two he just doesn't know the hidden agenda of the Prophet.
• No Ending: If you're lucky, beating the final boss will show you a short cutscene and then boot you back to the main menu. If you're not, then beating him will just bring you to the main menu.
• One-Hit Kill: Reist Tungard in his demonic form is fully capable of one-shotting your character even if both their HP and their resistances are in thousands.
• One-Winged Angel: Reist Tungard transforms into a massive demon for the second-to-last boss fight.

• Sequence Breaking: When the Final Boss dies, the game ends. In the initial release, it doesn't matter where or when this happens — so the Speed Run strategy is, during the Final Boss Preview, trick him into provoking a nearby village full of Invulnerable Civilians, who retaliate by mobbing him to death. The Final Boss is also about a minute walk away from the tutorial area, so it is easy to beat the game in under three minutes.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Many spawn points are located just outside towns. It's very easy for the soldiers - at the start of the game, strong enough to pretty much One-Hit KO you - to chase you until they're standing over the spawn point, and simply kill you over and over and over again.

Tropes in the second game

• Aborted Arc:
  • II seems to suffer heavily from this. The story goes on nicely until you finally make it out of the Goddamn Swamp, then you have to head out for the Big Bad's fortress only to end up being handed a Twist Ending the size of the castle you're infiltrating. It seems the game was originally planned to be significantly larger but the developers had to shorten it due to time and money constraints.
  • The first chapter is about recruiting a rebellion and building a massive army using the same mysterious Verita that Gandohar uses. This army is never heard from again, except in the form of a hidden quest wherein you slaughter the very same golems in the Verita Caves to apparently save the miners. This has no effect on the plot and is not hinted at unless you re-enter the caves sometime after the reveal of the golems. In gameplay terms, the golems are even overpowered compared to the rest of the enemies in the game and the weapons they drop require a staggering level 56 to wield when the game can completed at around level 46, hinting that they were slipped in as an afterthought or that they were originally intended as content for late-game arcs that were cut for time.

• Anvil on Head: Literally, in the sequel: the numerous schools of magic allow you to concoct and store potentially thousands of different spells - including ones that will rain dozens of huge anvils on the enemies' heads. Seen here.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Going with Dark Is Not Evil. Nalia is partly shunned by the villagers as a witch because of her wicked appearance. If you follow Nalia's side to the end, she will eventually return to her former beautiful appearance.

• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Patched in seven years after release. You can buy skill books and other consumable items.

• Darker and Edgier: The plot of the second game is somewhat darker than the first, which was fairly lighthearted by contrast.
• Dark Is Not Evil: In the third chapter, the single surviving town in the swamp is threatened by a witch who follows The Undead wherever it goes. When you later meet the witch and find her decrepit form, she outright saves you from the undead with a blast of green energy, and hints that she is not the evil they were looking to kill.
• Deadpan Snarker: In the sequel, the main character, very much so, albeit it's a cynical snarky.
• Flunky Boss: The second game's final boss summons increasing numbers of minions several times during the fight.
• Guide Dang It!: The labyrinths. They all look identical, with the same 2-3 wall/floor/ceiling textures repeating everywhere, with no unique markings to get your bearings, no map to slowly uncover the fog of war from like other caves/dungeons, and you no way to mark your own path. They're also pitch black apart from the final rooms and the entrances. The first few are simple enough that you could charge blindly and still reach your destination. But they get bigger and more complex with each one, and by the end of the quest chain you'll find yourself in a massive labyrinth◊ filled with dead ends and so many split paths that the "hug one side" trick will end up leading you in circles.
• Happy Ending Override: The original Two Worlds ends on a fairly conclusive note, with no real loose plot threads. In the second game, it turns out the Big Bad is still alive and you and your sister are his prisoners, almost as though the final battle of the first game never happened.
• Invisible Wall: In spite of being a Wide-Open Sandbox, II has its fair share of invisible walls. Sometimes it's justified by the plot, but most of the times you'll be just teleported back if you manage to set foot in a location you weren't meant to (i.e. the entire island of Elkronas outside of two areas, since the rest of the island is devoted to multiplayer adventures).
• Kick Them While They Are Down: The second game allows you to learn a skill that enables you to kick your opponents in the face, then stab them in the gut them while they're splayed helplessly on their back.
• Mugging the Monster: One character is revealed to have accepted a curse, out of love, that will afflict anyone she sleeps with except her husband. She hires you to discreetly remove what remains of a gang of rapists outside town.
• Omnicidal Maniac: In the first game, Aziraal's nature was left ambiguous, with several people making the credible argument that he was actually part of the necessary Balance Between Good and Evil, and the world may even need him to fight the Taint. In the second game, it turns out Aziraal was a straight-up God of Evil all along, who turns out to be perfectly fine with just letting the Taint wipe out the rest of the world, so he can rebuild it in his image afterwards.
• One-Winged Angel: The Final Boss of II transforms into a dragon before the final fight begins.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Depending on certain choices in the Hatmandor questline, one with Reesa.
• Playable Epilogue: After the credits, the player is able to free-roam and complete any remaining quests, though there's very little story to justify it as an epilogue despite being titled as such.
• Puzzle Boss: The final boss can't really be hurt by conventional weapons because of flight (melee is obviously a bad idea, and ranged attacks require fast projectile speed to catch up to it except when its stopped to use one of its attacks), leaving the use of convenient ballista the primary form of damage. In fact, the first phase of the boss can't even be damaged except by using the ballistas, leading to some Trial-and-Error Gameplay since they aren't explicitly pointed out and a player may flail about until he realizes their existence.
• Save-Game Limits: You can save at any time in II... except during the final boss battle.
• Shout-Out: In the sequel, there's tons.
  • "Are you a God?" "No." "Then DIE." "I'd like to change my answer."
  • There's an entire questline that is a shoutout/homage to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, complete with the holy grail being your reward. And during the quest, you also meet the Black Knight, who speaks, word for word, the same lines that he did to King Arthur. This ends with the protagonist saying "Dear God, I hope this doesn't mean a lawsuit."
  • There's another sidequest that involves getting rid of the ghosts of some annoying imperial toll collectors... who happen to be medieval Expies of the Marx Brothers. It also contains mild Ghostbusters references - the Groucho Expy says "If you don't pay the toll, you can't cross the stream" (to which your character replies "What stream?" - the area you're in is almost bone dry), and when you talk to them before enacting your plan to exorcise them (trick them into following you into a nearby room with a mirror so that they look into it, realize they're dead and pass on), they refer to themselves as the Scoleri brothers, after the ghostly gangster brothers from Ghostbusters II. And upon going back to Scythe to complete the quest, she gives you a special dagger, and says the exact same line (in the same tone) Venkman said to Egon when he gave him a candy bar.
  Scythe: Take this. You... You've earned it.
  • When confronted by the ghost of a formerly defeated foe, you make a comment to the effect of "I thought I'd try cutting off your head, see if that works."
  • Valarin, the captain of the guard in Hatmandor, has Narsil mounted on his office wall.
  • "All work and no play makes Gorlag a dull boy."
  • One of the quests you can do is called Drakonai Park; it requires you to kill a group of raptors on an island.
  • One quest is called Magic The Gardening.
  • You can find a ship's log in a wrecked pirate ship. According to the log the captain's name was Jack and the first words recorded in the log are "the rum's gone".
• The Sleepless: There's no way to sleep in II; this is lampshaded when someone, giving you a quest involving bedsore cream, adds, "...but who sleeps anymore?"
• Stab the Scorpion: After fighting your way through seemingly never-ending undead in the swamp of Chapter III, you face a cutscene where you are surrounded by undead as an obvious lich emerges ahead of you, hands crackling with forbidding magic. Once the spell is cast, the "lich" walks up and asks in a woman's voice if you're lost. Protecting the swamps has taken its toll on her.

• Turns Red: The final battle of II starts with easy to dodge fireballs and proceeds to attacks that instakill you if you don't know how to dodge them. Which you don't on your first attempt.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between the main character and Reesa, who flirts with him more as he becomes involved in her storyline in Hatmandor.

• What Happened to the Mouse?: The final fate of your orc allies is never discovered, and the Final Boss features Dar Pha randomly phasing in and out of gameplay existence and appearing almost solely in cutscenes before vanishing. This is likely a result of a rushed plot ending.

• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: After your arena battle with a giant spider, the arena master confesses that he can't even stand the little ones.

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