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Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
In Chapter 6...
I traded with Lord Kemm, and bought his own journal from him for 2 gold pieces. Working as intended :D!

You can do that with the assassin who tries to kill the red prince at Ft. Joy too.

So here's a thievin' thing. In Driftwood the fish warehouse/factory owner has some documentation about where he makes his shipments. I waited for him to sit down, went into sneak behind him outside his view cone, and used telekinesis to get the document -- read it -- then put it back. Once I leave sneak, he stops me and says stuff is missing and wants to check my inventory -- I let him, I'm clean -- then I just pick up the note (no longer in red) and leave.

Not sure how intended or not, but I'm happy I can do it.

I think that's the theme of this game, perhaps more so than in the first (which was already very rich in this department.) Many times the question "I wonder if I can..." is answered with "yes". Other cases, this doesn't happen (like with the face thing) but often enough it does.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
There's a mod released that allows you to play with all the companions in the same party, not sure how it meshes with the gameplay bits where the party is separated tho.
 

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,023
37180582186_674559a13e_o.jpg


Unrelated image:
37180586746_39344abaf2_o.jpg


I would really like to try a Warfare/Pyro or Scoundrel/Pyro combo: teleport and incinerate stuff.

Edit: Scoundrel/Pyro or Scoundrel/Geomancer would be better as both specializations depend on INT
 
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cannondwarf

Scholar
Joined
Apr 11, 2015
Messages
100
Location
Sørvesten
Does anyone know if there's any benefits to saving
Slane
?

I picked a cheeky conversation option that made him go hostile, but got some pretty sweet loot.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,404
Location
Djibouti
He instamurders all the shriekers that guard Alexandar and his mooks when you approach
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Does anyone know if there's any benefits to saving
Slane
?

I picked a cheeky conversation option that made him go hostile, but got some pretty sweet loot.

He supposedly helps you out later in Ft. Joy but it's way better to just kill him for the XP + loot, you also have to give up a purging wand I think.
 

Seethe

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 22, 2015
Messages
967
"Important artifacts". An obsidian knife doesn't sound like an important artifact. It sounds like an object you would find again in the game. Name one more game that pulls off this "you just found out you're fucked for what you did 50 hours ago" shit. I do this kind of inventory purging in every game, and it NEVER happened to me before.

As others have mentioned there's similar thing in Planescape as well as new Numenera: you can think that Bronze Sphere is useless and drop it or never get it. In original game it affected the ending, in the new game it potentially left you with a smaller party and therefore harder game.

You could also break some older games by dropping items and easily so. IIRC Wizardry 7 allowed you to miss important quest items. I think Fallout 1-2 lets you drop anything so you can leave important quest items in no longer accessible locations. I lost quest items in Arcanum, I think.

The difference is in those games there was also a way to go forward. I haven't played DOS2 yet and I don't know if it is so in your case. Larian says their main quest can be completed even if you behave like an idiot so there it seems they've missed a big thing.

Main Quest or not that's fucking irrelevant. I screwed up quests, and I am fine with that. Never cheesed with saves either. But this "...50 hours later" shtick is beyond retarded.

Here's a fun fact: the same shit happens with notes as well. Yes, if you don't carry hoards of notes with you, you will not be able to complete the quest, because for example in one quest you find out about an demon's name from a note, but if you don't have the note, the game insists that you do not actually know his name even though I fucking do, because I opened it and read it myself. Yeah thanks game, not like I have a journal anything. Feels more like an homage to old RPGs than an useful tool.
I'll give you that last one, because it's complete bullshit when games actually forces you to keep stuff like notes, when you really should be able to just note that down in the journal after getting the information, or even write it on a piece of paper outside of the game, but you're still a fucking retard for thinking that quest-items should be tagged as such and somehow kept for safe-keeping separately for you, even if you don't have the relevant quests yet.

People like you are responsible for the decline of the genre.

Don't be a fucking retard. I am not saying that the items should be tagged. I already have a lot of quest items saved in my inventory. The problem here is that it isn't mentioned in the journal that you need to do the ritual again, til it is too late. Also, I assumed that there's more than one crappy knife into the game. Because apparently you cannot slit your wrists with anything else.
Why the fuck should the journal tell you that you need to do the ritual again, before you know that you need to do the ritual again? Also, how fucking stupid do you have to be to throw away a fucking artifact after having used it previously in a fucking ritual? Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.

Because I didn't KNOW I had to do it again. Also, calling a shitty knife made out of obsidian an "artifact". It had a generic fucking name. You have to be a special breed of a retard to say that complaining for losing 50 hours of progress is "decline". Piss off.
 
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Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
Ooohhkay, thought it was going gud so far, until I went into the REKERS cave. Lvl 10 vs lvl 11 mobs, and I have 2x lone wolf, 1 melee guy and 1 caster.

KEK. Getting R.E.K.T, because they are split up.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
This is a totally minor point but it really bugs me.

I hate it when in a game like this, you kill a dude holding a sword, his body falls over, still holding the sword, you search his corpse and there's no fucking sword.

I blame Bioware ala Neverwinter Nights for letting developers think this is an acceptable design choice.

That is all.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton
 

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
Because I didn't KNOW I had to do it again. Also, calling a shitty knife made out of obsidian an "artifact". It had a generic fucking name. You have to be a special breed of a retard to say that complaining for losing 50 hours of progress is "decline". Piss off.
Why should you know? Why should the game tell you, beforehand, that you're going to need this later? Why must the game spoon-feed you and hold your hand because you're too fucking retarded to hold onto a unique artifact with a unique name with which you performed a (at that point) unique ritual? Now, the game shitting on you and not straight-up offering an alternative is questionable, because they usually retard-proof these things to avoid a situation like this, but you as a person is evidently decline personified and should be branded as a card-carrying member of the Retard Party. Jesus, I bet you'd make chairman within a year, I hear the biggest mouth-breathers are considered the best candidates because the membership is usually made up of people in a vegetative state.

Also, have you tried talking to Malady?
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton
I mean, it doesn't really upset me that much, but you're not wrong. It really is quite lazy, and the lack of choice in dialogues makes it all the worse.
 

Dwarvophile

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
1,427
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton

You've got some valid points here, but I think Larian is more in the Flemish speaking shit eating side of Belgium.

I don't even disagree with most of the complaints from people like Darth Roxor or others, but those problems don't actively ruin the experience for me so much as they stop it from being even better.

I feel the same. The more I play the more weaknesses I see. Liike the lack of reactivity of NPCs towards any big change in their environment (walked through Fort Joy's ghetto after I killed Griff's gang and every damn magisters to the last but it's like nobody there realized what happened and Nebora will keep her collar on even though she pergfectly knows how to remove it).But until now, nothing crippling enough to taint the pleasure or push me out of the game (fingers crossed).
 

Arkeus

Arcane
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
1,406
I feel the same. The more I play the more weaknesses I see. Liike the lack of reactivity of NPCs towards any big change in their environment (walked through Fort Joy's ghetto after I killed Griff's gang and every damn magisters to the last but it's like nobody there realized what happened and Nebora will keep her collar on even though she pergfectly knows how to remove it).But until now, nothing crippling enough to taint the pleasure or push me out of the game (fingers crossed).
Yeah, that part is rather sad. There is reactivity for things you directly affect in quests, but a lot of times something that should have some reactivity doesn't.
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton
If you want to play a edgelord you clearly need to have activated the edgelord tag.
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,466
Location
Lair of Despair
It seems Codex is coming to the same conclusion every time RPG is discussed.
That it has its flaws and pros.

That it is average.

Let's be honest, what does Divinity: Original Sin 2 add to genre or games in general?
NPCs looking for stolen items?
 

Seethe

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 22, 2015
Messages
967
Because I didn't KNOW I had to do it again. Also, calling a shitty knife made out of obsidian an "artifact". It had a generic fucking name. You have to be a special breed of a retard to say that complaining for losing 50 hours of progress is "decline". Piss off.
Why should you know? Why should the game tell you, beforehand, that you're going to need this later? Why must the game spoon-feed you and hold your hand because you're too fucking retarded to hold onto a unique artifact with a unique name with which you performed a (at that point) unique ritual? Now, the game shitting on you and not straight-up offering an alternative is questionable, because they usually retard-proof these things to avoid a situation like this, but you as a person is evidently decline personified and should be branded as a card-carrying member of the Retard Party. Jesus, I bet you'd make chairman within a year, I hear the biggest mouth-breathers are considered the best candidates because the membership is usually made up of people in a vegetative state.

Why should it tell me? So I can not fill my inventory with useless junk, like most of the other quest related items.

Regardless, your accusations are full of shit, because I held unto literally every other quest item. This one, I probably threw away random junk from my inventory, and I threw that also by mistake. And losing that many hours of progress for the sake of "muh realism, you lost it, say goodbye" is batshit retarded. It's a fucking video game item, not my car keys.

P.S: Get laid to lose all that rage.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton

Who are you playing as? I've gotten options that were fairly evil or at least callous.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
I feel the same. The more I play the more weaknesses I see. Liike the lack of reactivity of NPCs towards any big change in their environment (walked through Fort Joy's ghetto after I killed Griff's gang and every damn magisters to the last but it's like nobody there realized what happened and Nebora will keep her collar on even though she pergfectly knows how to remove it).But until now, nothing crippling enough to taint the pleasure or push me out of the game (fingers crossed).
Yeah, that part is rather sad. There is reactivity for things you directly affect in quests, but a lot of times something that should have some reactivity doesn't.
Where the fuck are my evil choices in the dialogue menu,why can't I be an asshole to everyone,why can't I tell my companions to eat shit and die when they give me snarky comments,which is 90% of the time I speak with them.
Why can't I tell that bitch Sebille to go fuck herself,instead my usual dialogue choice is '' Tell her this cause you don't want to anger her'' boo fucking hoo,who the fuck is the pansy ass behind these dialogue choices?

How the fuck did you go from the perfectly fine dialogue style in Divine Divinity,Beyond Divinity and Divinity 2 to this mentaly retarded 3rd person ''Tell him that,tell him this,ask him this,ask him that,wonder here,wonder there'',what in the name of god were they thinking to change something that shouldn't be touched in the first place.

Why are you trying to ruin the normal course of the universe you stupid belgian second grade french speaking frog eating motherfuckers.

Whoever defends these changes should be flayed alive and locked in a room with a naked Hillary Clinton
If you want to play a edgelord you clearly need to have activated the edgelord tag.

Damn right I want to play as an edgelord,like in 90% of the fucking rpgs out there,but not in poor DoS 2,you don't want to hurt NPC's fee fees.

I want fucking Tyranny level of edgelord,where everyone would shut the fuck up and listen or they get five across the eyes.I want Dragon Age Origins level of edgelord,where gay ass Zevran gets executed the first moment I see his face

Where the fuck is the edgelord in this game,everyone keeps threatening me and my dialogue choices are pitiful and laughable.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/21/divinity-original-sin-2-review/

Wot I Think: Divinity Original Sin 2
Adam Smith on September 21st, 2017 at 5:00 pm.

divinityoriginalsin2reviewheader-620x341.jpg


We were supposed to be heroes. As you play through Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site], your character and companions will be many things to many people: thieves, killers, saviours, fugitives, outcasts, demons, nightmares, lovers, traitors, jackasses, adventurers, pranksters and fools. But heroes? You can play through the entire game, multiple times, and never feel like much of a hero.

There’s just so much to do in the world that doing good can feel just a little to obvious.


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If you’re not familiar with its predecessor, a glance at Original Sin 2 might make you think it’s a sibling to those other Kickstarted RPGs – Pillars of Eternity, Torment and the rest – that want to recapture the magic of the nineties. Sure enough, it’s isometric, party-based, and contains elves and dwarves aplenty. Spend even a little time with it and you’ll find something far weirder and more inventive than just about anything you might have encountered that features both dungeons and dragons.

Here’s just one example of how strange things can quickly become from an early part of the game. I am a skeleton, animated and alive in some sense, but a skeleton nonetheless. I’ve been having a rough time trying to socialise with the living, who are understandably frightened when they see me approaching. That’s why I steal peoples’ faces. It’s also why I prefer spending time in dank caves rather than propping up the bar at the local tavern.

That’s why I was delighted when I found one particular cave that stood out from all the rest. Trails of fire, like slow motion subterranean comets, lit the place and sent fans of flame flickering across the rock-face. Stunning, I chattered, my skull rattling out the words through some uncanny mechanism of speech that I’ll never understand. And then I saw the comets for what they truly were: giant flaming slugs.

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Ewww. I readied the water and salt and prepared to clean out the cave. And that’s how it could have gone down, with the entire population of the cave reduced to raisin-like shriveled specks. Instead, I sat down and had a chat with one particular slug and half an hour later one of my companions is (I think) due to be wed to that slug.

You might not even meet that slug, let alone plan any nuptials with it, because Original Sin 2 has many stories that you can listen to or disrupt and rewrite as you go. So many, in fact, that it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s OK. There will be reminders and there will be recaps along the way. And the truth is that even though the big picture here is much more attractive than in Original Sin 1, where some of the details had been sketched in too hastily, it’s still the little stories that really matter.

For now, let’s forget that single, central story though, with all of its celestial ascensions and world-shaking choices. Instead, let’s focus on the tales that happen in between the big moments. There are memories to pick from between the teeth of dying sharks, beasts of burden with dire prophesies to relate, cunning and depraved murders to solve, and oh so many wrongs to right (and rights to wrong).

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With its face-stealing skellingtons and limb-munching elves, Divinity has more in common with an anthology of weird and witty macabre tales than a fantasy epic. There are legendary armour sets, bandits and hordes of loot for anyone craving that sort of thing, but I find the overall tone is more Discworld than D&D. That’s a compliment to the world-building and strange internal logic of the mechanics as well as to the humour. It’s not a comedy game, though, but rather a game that recognises the absurdity of life and death, and has found a setting that allows its writers to enjoy their cruel and kind streaks alike.

Right from the start there are so many stories that it can be overwhelming trying to keep track of exactly what is happening where, and who said what, and why that person deserves to be chopped into bits. With all the voices and distractions clamouring for your attention, it’s important to tune into whatever is most interesting at any one moment rather than trying to take in everything at once. You might want to pick a pocket or two and that might land you in a cell or in a scrap with some guards, and from there you’ll find new adventures. Or you might flirt with that unpredictable enchantress who joined your party and find yourself falling for her, then wonder just what to do when a couple of gods question your taste in romantic partners by suggesting she might kill you and your friends while you’re sleeping. Maybe the solution is to turn her into a chicken, though that could certainly present new problems.

For every problem there are all manner of solutions and most of those solutions lead to a whole new set of problems. Though so much of my love for Divinity relates to the intricate interlocking systems that underpin everything, the true genius of Larian’s stonking great game is in recognising that the players are the agents of chaos in an otherwise orderly world. The sheer amount of movable and interactive objects can make the whole of Original Sin 2 feel like a perpetual motion machine that’ll keep on ticking long after you close the window. In reality, it’s more like a big toybox full of fantastical, weird, wonderful and grotesque possibilities. It might not feel like it, but most of the time you can choose which toys to play with at any given moment.

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Divinity might convince you that its NPCs are continuing with their lives behind your back, but play at your own pace and you won’t miss anything. Not in singleplayer at least. If you bring some friends along for the adventure, all bets are off and that’s precisely as it should be.

Early in development, Original Sin 2 was described to me as a “competitive cooperative game” and that’s certainly part of the appeal. Up to four people can play together and rather than healing and buffing one another as good party members should, they can go off on an adventure of their own, trying to solve quests and conundrums in ways that contradict the choices of their friends. You can kill an NPC that they’re trying to work with, preferably behind their back so that they get very confused about what’s happening, or you can plant contraband goods in their inventory and watch as they come a cropper when they try to go through customs.

My favourite trick is a simple one: you can dye a poisonous green potion red and pass it off as a health potion. If you’re pranking an undead character you’d do that the other way around, of course, because poison heals them and healing magic hurts them.

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That sort of switcheroo trickery plays into the elements ‘n’ fluids turn-based combat, which has been improved since the first game. It was good then and it’s better now, although sometimes a little too challenging and complex even on the easiest difficulty setting. Fighting requires thinking due to the number of skills character can apply in any situation, and the ways in which battlefields change as gases, fires and corruption spill across them. There’s usually a way to turn the tide in your favour, given that water will kill fires, toxins can be blessed, and splashing through spilled blood can save your life if you play your cards right.

The clever tactical combat and brilliant storytelling are in place whether you’re playing solo or as part of a group. Multiplayer is superbly implemented, allowing people to drop in and out at will, but it’s not necessary. Think of playing solo as managing an entire party rather than just playing the leader though – you can treat your companions as NPCs but I’ve had much more fun playing them all off against one another, stepping in to make them behave as I reckon they would in any given situation.

Where I fall out with the game slightly, the structure is usually to blame. It’s divided into acts and they are very discrete portions of a bigger world. There’s so much separation between them, in fact, that by the time one has ended and the next has begun I feel like I’ve closed one book and moved onto the next in the series. I take lots of baggage with me, and leave plenty of things behind, but there is actual closure and when an area is done, as a rule, it really is done.

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Because of this, I was initially tempted to squeeze every last experience (and experience point) out of one act before moving to the next, but that’s folly. Original Sin 2 is a role-playing game in the truest sense; it is at its most rewarding when you select or create a character and then get ready to put on a performance.

Any complaints about the overall structure don’t apply to the individual acts though. The first, which takes place in and around a not particularly joyous place called Fort Joy, offers a perfect dilemma for the kind of branching questlines that are the scaffolding for the game’s weighty ambitions: you are on a prison island and you must escape. It’s a perfect dilemma because the ultimate objective – LEAVE THE ISLAND – is so simple that the increasingly complex chains of events that lead to it always seem manageable, even at their most preposterous.

You might take an aggressive approach that finds you lost underground and knee-deep in blood, hacking lumps off an aggressive meat golem, or you might seek out people who will involve you in their own escape plans if you do them a favour or two. Chances are, you’ll dip your toes into several different possible escape routes without even realising you’re tugging at threads that can make the whole area unravel. Within each act, Divinity rarely draws attention to the spiderweb of possibilities you’re caught in, preferring to trust you have the patience and intelligence to pick your way through.

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There is some tension between the generosity with which everything from character creation to the handling of NPC deaths (no plot armour here; you can kill ’em all without breaking the game) allows freedom of approach, and yet every player is moving toward a conclusion that is mostly set in place. You are, whether you want to be or not, a very special person and no matter how much the game allows you to wriggle on the hook, you can’t escape your destiny.

And I should restate that on the whole the game gives you a lot of wriggle room. From the second act onwards you’re given plenty of flexibility to respec and switch around character builds, so you can approach quests with a full set of options rather than locking yourself into a particular playstyle.

That said, because freedom and flexibility define the game so strongly I do find the occasional restrictions frustrating. Source points, which are at the heart of the story and power the most dramatic and devastating abilities in the game, sometimes seem too scarce, but then with the right skillset they’re too readily available to feel special. And there are times that I’ve missed out on a branch in a side-story because it was obscured by some illogical logic rather than intelligently obscure.

divinitydm23.jpg


It’s no surprise that a construction as vast and complex as this would have some balance issues, and even though I found my interest in the story waning toward the end, I’m already planning to restart a game I’ve just spent sixty hours playing. Maybe next time I’ll actually feel like a hero come the final curtain. Whatever the case, the destination doesn’t really matter – it’s about the journey, and all those little stories that happen along the way. From its origin stories to its brief emergent narratives, few games let you take part in better tales than this one.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is available now for Windows via GOG and Steam for £29.99. Other platforms may follow.

This review doesn’t mention the GM Mode, which let’s you build your own pen and paper style campaigns to play with friends; we’ve written about GM Mode here.
 
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Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
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http://www.pcgamer.com/divinity-original-sin-2-review/

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2 REVIEW

Playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 is uncannily like playing a tabletop RPG. The way that Larian’s sequel embraces player creativity immediately conjures up memories of days spent sitting around a table, asking the Dungeon Master if I can attempt the last stupid idea that floated into my head. And like a good DM, Original Sin 2 usually answers that question with “Yes, you can attempt it.”

My plans don’t always succeed, of course, but embarrassing failures, like the time I froze my entire party during a fight with some demons, can be just as entertaining. That freedom to experiment and to make mistakes is present right from the get-go, when you make your would-be hero. Or villain.

You can play everything from an undead Dwarf who loves nothing more than swinging his two-handed axe and throwing rocks to a sneaky Elven wizard who can talk to animals and get visions by chowing on corpses. There are pre-made classes and characters with rich backgrounds and personal quests, but it’s also possible to create something that’s entirely your own, constructing a persona and custom class out of a series of origin tags, attributes and skills.

I do recommend picking a pre-made origin character, though. You can still customise their appearance and skills, but it’s their quests that are important. Each is blessed with a long mission that runs parallel to the main quest, fleshing it out and making the stakes all the more personal. They also tend to get the best lines, especially the undead Eternal, Fane, whose biting sarcasm keeps me warm at night. The origin characters you don’t pick, however, become companions that you can recruit, letting you still experience their stories.

With so many different potential paths, it’s handy to have a party that covers all the bases. Conveniently, companions—you can bring three along with you—can be customised the moment you meet them, and any mistakes made can be undone by respeccing via a mirror you’ll get access to around 15 to 20 hours in. Given the broad range of skills and multitude of opportunities to mess up, it’s a major boon.

When there are limitations, they’re always hidden well, and Larian has done a phenomenal job at anticipating what players might want to do, even how they might try to break the game. Take the teleport skill. You can get your hands on this early on, and it essentially provides a shortcut through a lot of obstacles and quests. It almost feels like cheating, using it, but not only does Original Sin 2 support it, it offers up the idea in the first place.

These neat tricks don’t mean the quests are simple. Larian loves its headscratchers, populating Rivellon with riddles, moral conundrums and ancient mysteries. They’re great, fat with unexpected turns and rewarding character moments, but keeping track of them is hard work. The journal quickly becomes impossible to parse, and directions from NPCs can be vague, but it’s another otherwise welcome feature that really complicates things: the connected nature of the world.

Many of the NPCs you’ll meet have relationships and allegiances that affect more than one quest, and seemingly unrelated events can collide, cutting adventures short. These ripples of consequence result in a world that feels alive, and even give NPCs agency, but they also inspire hesitation when decisiveness is required out of the fear that one or more of these choices will kill another quest. It’s daunting, but it’s also a fair price to pay for the weight it gives to decisions.

One of the first places I hit up in any new RPG village is the local watering hole, so when I arrived in Driftwood during the game’s third chapter, I immediately headed to the Black Bull. Its owner was an affable, chatty woman and proud mother. As she gushed about her son, it dawned on me, I knew this guy. He was a monster of a man I’d met hours ago. I’d killed him. And there was his mother, boasting about how good he is, how clever he is, and how much she loves him. I never told her, though I could have, and nothing came of the conversation, but it did matter, making the fight retroactively more memorable. And there are more of these moments than I could reasonably count.

Original Sin 2’s main quest calls to mind Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, both being races to godhood. The world’s a mess, you see, with monstrous beasties rampaging wherever there’s source magic. And you just so happen you be a sourcerer with a divine calling, born with the ability to wield this powerful magic, talk to the dead and feast on souls. So of course you’ve been hauled off to jail by the corrupt Magisters—the game’s fanatical villains—ostensibly to stop you from ruining the world. What starts off as mission to escape prison spirals into an quest involving gods competing for survival and an evil poised to swallow up the world.

What could have been your typical, high-stakes fantasy quest is elevated by strong writing and voice acting that effortlessly jumps between whimsical and brutally grim. It can be surprisingly touching, too. As tempting as it can be to play the evil arsehole in a game that offers this much freedom, there are a lot of heartfelt moments that you’ll only see if you’re not an arse. That’s why I keep Lohse around. Out of my three companions, she’s the good cop, talking to people like a thoughtful human being instead of an evil undead necromancer.

Larian has also subverted the party dynamic quite a bit. Companions not only assist you while undertaking their own personal quests, they are ultimately your competition, each the chosen hero for their respective divine sponsor. This has an even greater impact in co-op, with each player capable of screwing over their three allies. While you’re shopping or fighting, they might be growing in power, waiting to betray you.

In my own co-op campaign, I’ve been mostly content with blowing everything up. Literally and figuratively. My pal wants to chat to an NPC? I throw a massive boulder at them. He wants to avoid what will clearly be a fatal fight with some teleporting crocodiles? I run up to them and set them on fire. Obviously you should never play with me, but I’m having a blast.

Beyond the co-op, there’s a Game Master mode, letting you use the game’s assets (or your own) to craft tabletop-style adventures. The tools are simple enough to use, but flexible enough so that you can create brief 20 minute campaigns or massive roleplaying romps that will take your group days to finish. Unfortunately I’m still yet to make something as impressive as Larian CEO Swen Vincke’s recreation of the start of UItima 7.

When you want to blow off some steam, there’s also the Arena mode, pitting players against each other in structured PvP. What might have been a simple diversion is instead a really great reason to keep playing once you’re finished the campaign. The deep and often chaotic tactical combat is a high point, and the opportunity to get into more scraps is very welcome.

Rivellon is a violent world, and while many of the turn-based fights can be avoided, you’re still going to spend a lot of time brawling. These battles consistently take place in tactically interesting places, filled with choke points, explosive barrels and multiple levels, which is especially impressive considering you can start a fight with any NPC. But like the rest of the game, it’s the vast number of choices you can make in each encounter that make them so compelling.

A classless system means that you can create a mind-boggling array of weird heroes, from warriors who can sprout wings, horns and spider legs, to preternaturally gifted archers who can command the weather. Some skills confer flight. Others make enemies bleed fire. Battlefields are really laboratories primed for madcap experiments, where magical and martial skills can be combined with the environment to create anything from a wall of fire that heals to demonic imps made out of pools of blood.

They’re tough, though. Fights are brutal and the broad range of skills makes it hard to create plans until after you’ve already lost once. They’re puzzles that you need to keep working at, attempting to come at them from different angles, learning enemy patterns, pinpointing the major threats. You can lose yourself in these burning, bloodsoaked arenas. It’s easily one of the best RPG combat systems, but there’s no denying that it requires more patience and practice than most.

That’s true of the game in general. Its scope can be intimidating, but not overwhelming, and there’s usually a way to fix a mistake. If you murder someone you need to talk to for a quest, for instance, there’s a good chance that looting their corpse will send you in the right direction. So it can be punishing, certainly, but never cruel.

And it’s that intimidating, ambitious scope, that dedication to player freedom, that makes Divinity: Original Sin 2 so impressive. There isn’t another RPG that lets you do so much. Larian promised a lot, and it has absolutely followed through, crafting a singular game that juggles a bounty of complex, immersive systems, and never drops them.

THE VERDICT
92

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a sprawling, inventive adventure and one of the best RPGs ever made.
 

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