Trine 2 Has A New Character Building System

Frozenbyte are following the don’t-fix-what-isn’t-broken mantra for Trine 2. As the original Trine was a well-crafted — and well-received — game in its own right, the goal with Trine 2 is that of refinement.

In an interview with Siliconera, Frozenbyte CEO and Trine series designer, Lauri Hyvärinen, gave us some insight to some of the improvements being made to Trine 2, with the main focus being a greater sense of freedom with regard to both the characters and puzzles.

“We haven’t removed anything from [the thief] Zoya (in fact the opposite) but we have added a great deal of new abilities to both Pontius and Amadeus,” Hyvärinen told us, with regard to the thief, wizard and knight characters.

For example, Zoya now has the ability to slow down time around her. While this skill’s effects only extend to Zoya in singleplayer, in co-op multiplayer — which is what all of Trine 2’s improvements ultimately tie into — they affect other players as well, making the entire team faster, relative to the world around them.

To accompany these new skills, Trine 2 also has a new, more flexible character-building system, doing away with the restricted skill system from the original game. “While all of the great abilities can still be found in the new system, there’s a bunch of new, cool abilities, and the skill progression system gives the player a lot more freedom and choices,” Hyvärinen explained.

As a result, Frozenbyte hope that players give Pontius, the wizard, a little more attention this time around. However, Hyvärinen warned, “It’s [now] possible to skill up the characters unevenly.”

The overhauled skill system isn’t all that’s new to Trine 2, however. Puzzles are designed with a vaster range of possible solutions in mind, and the game’s physics system has seen improvements as well. Look forward to these, as well as talk of a PC level editor, in our full Trine 2 interview, which will go up later this week.

Trine 2 is slated for digital download publishing by Atlus sometime in 2011 on PC, Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.