There is one thing to take into consideration when comparing achievements between the two. I started D:OS on Steam because Larian, being bros, opened up the game for early access to all Kickstarter and early access customers on Steam. I played the game a lot there until final release, at which point I switched to my GOG copy that became available. If you look at my Steam achievements, everything will be limited to Cyseal since that is where the game stopped prior to release. It isn't because I didn't finish the game, it's because I played it during early access and switched distributions at release (well, as soon as GOG got their shit together). One of my friends did the same. Anecdotal evidence for sure, and in the end may be statistically irrelevant, but who knows.
I do play on Steam (bought physical disk), but I generally play offline, so I generally don't get achievements, or get isolated few when I happen to be online to get updates.
Another thing here is that I wonder how many players didn't even reach Cyseal or quit shortly after reaching it.
Among the things good people at Larian consistently fail at beginnings seem to be a biggie - Divinity II had fairly dreadful inner Broken Valley segment it confined you to early in game, where you got mired in inconsequential combat with inconsequential goblins and where I actually borequit the game on my first attempted playthrough, Original Sin has you wandering aimlessly around the beach and optional-but-worthwhile starter dungeon - in both cases the pattern is the same - the section before you get to the meat of the game and before the game opens up somewhat is padded with boring content.
That's bad practice because whatever interest the intro can inspire in player is limited and fleeting (especially if, like with DOS intro, it actually accomplishes the opposite) and it's crucial to quickly stoke up the fire as soon as possible by throwing player something to focus on:
- PS:T hit you immediately and effectively with a very strong hook - a desire to find out WTF is going on, then upped it with weird and atmospheric environment.
- Morrowind gave you a kick in the right direction, then immediately opened up as an explorable and weird world, the hook it gave you was also fairly promising.
- Wizardry 8 - a game more on par with Larian's Divnity series, all things considered (including both focus on gameplay rather than story and embracing the goofiness) - still opened up with party crashing near a curiously and abruptly abandoned monastery.
- Even Skyrim at least offered engagement on a visceral level - with near beheading interrupted by dragon burninating everything and escape while hacking your way out through the side opposing whomever you chose to follow - establishing initial attitude player may have towards main factions operating in the gameworld
In general, the more player feels fish out of the water and the more they are kept on their toes at the beginning, the better. It helps opening their senses and piquing their interest, managing to get them to establish some attitude towards elements of your gameworld is also helpful, because it makes player care, and during the initial period of the gameplay making player care is your most important task.
Now, let's see Larian's games:
- Divinity 2 - you probably want to play this game to pursue a desire Bioware paid only a lip service to? No, fuck you, go fight some boring goblins before anything happens, then go fight some more goblins (at least you got some fairly purty intro so maybe you'll persevere until the game actually gets interesting thanks to sheer force of will and/or scarcity of games allowing you to become a dragon). The ball generally starts rolling once you meet Talana and from this moment game has no problem sustaining player's interest.
- Divinity: Original Sin - you want to play this game why exactly? And didn't quit before the blahblah sourcery stopped scrolling? Astounding. You're even still interested in seemingly rather mundane murder plot that's the main questhook? Now, go wander a beach, fight some shit, fight some more shit in the tutorial dungeons, do a bunch of mini-sidequests, participate in (actually fun, for a change) beach battle and then (if you don't get sidetracked) proceed with the actual investigation, which seems nicely done in terms of overall design, but still not very exciting. The ball only starts really rolling once you encounter your first starstone, because that's the first event that throws player off.
Even if your main focus is gameplay, you need to hook the player on something before you can successfully sell it, if only because selling the gameplay usually takes time regardless of the genre because the progression generally follows some sort of learning curve - you won't get player enamored with your gameplay right away, because right away the player will be limited to fighting limited array of shit tier enemies with limited array of shit tier weapons and, if game is an RPG, with lvl 1 character with limited array of shit tier skills.
I'm currently playing DOS (haven't got PE yet) and I'm enjoying it considerably (mostly for elemental mechanics), but if I wasn't already familiar with Divinity 2, my first and only playthrough of DOS would have ended before the second part of intro.
Compared to Divinity 2 the game has vastly inferior art direction, visuals, atmosphere and storytelling elements, while sharing itemization and level inflation flaws.
Not even humor works as well as in Div 2. The thing isn't whether or not it's goofy, because as much as I prefer more serious settings, tongue-in-cheek moments really worked in Divinity 2's favour. The thing is that humour in Dvinity 2, although abundant wasn't actually all-permeating - this had two advantages. First it allowed the humor to catch player off guard making it work much better. Second, it allowed player to care which is important in a game where player can make choices.
Lastly, the area design, although rich and competent is rather mundane so far, without anything comparable to Divinity 2.
So, to sum it up - so far the combat mechanics (in particular the use of elements and stuff like teleportation) is the only thing keeping DOS afloat for me, although I must admit it's doing a really good job at that.
