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Tags: Divinity: Original Sin 2; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke
Larian revealed details about the upcoming Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition to the press last month. Today they finally got around to publishing a Kickstarter update with a more comprehensive account of the many changes it introduces. In the accompanying video, Swen Vincke goes on a magical journey throughout Larian, speaking with his developers about the Definitive Edition's balance improvements, new and improved combat encounters, new late game content, performance improvements, new music and more. The game has the obligatory Story Mode now, and a silly pre-order bonus, Sir Lora the Squirrel Knight - free for existing owners, of course. As always, if you don't want to watch the video, you can just read about it in the update.
Narrative
We received some criticism on the last part of the game and so we took that to heart. We had a long look at how we could improve it and came up with quite a list.
Almost 150k words of text have been changed and we've recorded over 130k new words, fixing some voices and text that weren't quite perfect in the original game. We've created new situations and dialogues to give you a greater sense of reactivity across the world, and have bumped up our use of the tag system across most conversations. Finally, we’ve worked on the personal journeys of the origin characters, polishing their quests and situations to better communicate how your decisions impact their story.
Combat
Combat is an integral part of your adventure in Divinity: Original Sin 2, so we’ve worked on rebalancing some of the fights in the game to make the challenge curve flow better and avoid harsher spikes of difficulty. The overall experience will now be smoother and make you feel like your experience in earlier fights has prepared you for what comes later, while still offering you new challenges. We’ve also added some brand new fights (be careful of Edouard's surprise in Kemm's garden) as well as reworking the Kraken in the Harbour scene. Because we all want to see a showdown with that big, tentacled bully!
Balance
Here are some specific balance changes you can expect to see in the Definitive Edition:
Of course, not everything in the Definitive Edition is an improvement. There are rumours that an apocalyptic cult of squirrels, the Knights of Drey, are trying to bring about the end of the world by summoning the Great Acorn, which will be the doom of all tall peoples! (Yes, even dwarves.) At least, that's what we've been told by Sir Lora, the Squirrel Knight. The coming of the Acorn was foreshadowed in the original version of Divinity: Original Sin 2 and now it appears to be imminent. Sir Lora arrives with his own small story arc, and will be a mini companion you can recruit in your game. He's there as a pre-order bonus for Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition, but if you own Original Sin 2 on PC before the launch of the Definitive Edition, then you will receive Sir Lora for free as soon as the Definitive Edition goes live!
The next Kickstarter update will be released close to the Definitive Edition's launch on August 31st. Swen hints that at that point we might finally learn something about Larian's next project. They've been doing a lot of hiring.
Larian revealed details about the upcoming Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition to the press last month. Today they finally got around to publishing a Kickstarter update with a more comprehensive account of the many changes it introduces. In the accompanying video, Swen Vincke goes on a magical journey throughout Larian, speaking with his developers about the Definitive Edition's balance improvements, new and improved combat encounters, new late game content, performance improvements, new music and more. The game has the obligatory Story Mode now, and a silly pre-order bonus, Sir Lora the Squirrel Knight - free for existing owners, of course. As always, if you don't want to watch the video, you can just read about it in the update.
Narrative
We received some criticism on the last part of the game and so we took that to heart. We had a long look at how we could improve it and came up with quite a list.
Almost 150k words of text have been changed and we've recorded over 130k new words, fixing some voices and text that weren't quite perfect in the original game. We've created new situations and dialogues to give you a greater sense of reactivity across the world, and have bumped up our use of the tag system across most conversations. Finally, we’ve worked on the personal journeys of the origin characters, polishing their quests and situations to better communicate how your decisions impact their story.
Combat
Combat is an integral part of your adventure in Divinity: Original Sin 2, so we’ve worked on rebalancing some of the fights in the game to make the challenge curve flow better and avoid harsher spikes of difficulty. The overall experience will now be smoother and make you feel like your experience in earlier fights has prepared you for what comes later, while still offering you new challenges. We’ve also added some brand new fights (be careful of Edouard's surprise in Kemm's garden) as well as reworking the Kraken in the Harbour scene. Because we all want to see a showdown with that big, tentacled bully!
Balance
Here are some specific balance changes you can expect to see in the Definitive Edition:
- Economy changes - We’ve updated the prices of many items in the game. Unique items were usually too valuable, while armor prices now better reflect their utility in combat and the cost won’t vary so heavily.
- We slightly reduced the damage on some of the three Source point skills. (Skills like Arrow Storm and Meteor Shower will still be super cool, but not an 'I win' button.)
- Totems will now gain intelligence as they grow in levels. This will help their damage output scale better towards the end game.
- Lone Wolf abilities and attributes will now be capped at the normal cap levels. Currently, Lone Wolves can increase their abilities and attributes past the soft caps of 40 and 10 respectively. In Definitive Edition, this will no longer be possible - you will only be able to double your points to the cap and not beyond.
- The Torturer talent will allow you to apply status effects through magic or physical armor.
- The difficulty of persuasion encounters across Arx have changed. Most of these encounters were unproportionally hard compared to the result.
- We buffed some underused skills. Petrifying Touch, Sucker Punch, and Infect are getting increased damage. Mosquito Swarm will have a shorter cooldown and and Door to Eternity will last longer.
- AI will be more likely to attack players with Damage Reduction abilities. These abilities usually resulted in the AI avoiding you rather than ever doing damage to the AI.
- High quality wands will create surfaces.
Of course, not everything in the Definitive Edition is an improvement. There are rumours that an apocalyptic cult of squirrels, the Knights of Drey, are trying to bring about the end of the world by summoning the Great Acorn, which will be the doom of all tall peoples! (Yes, even dwarves.) At least, that's what we've been told by Sir Lora, the Squirrel Knight. The coming of the Acorn was foreshadowed in the original version of Divinity: Original Sin 2 and now it appears to be imminent. Sir Lora arrives with his own small story arc, and will be a mini companion you can recruit in your game. He's there as a pre-order bonus for Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition, but if you own Original Sin 2 on PC before the launch of the Definitive Edition, then you will receive Sir Lora for free as soon as the Definitive Edition goes live!
The next Kickstarter update will be released close to the Definitive Edition's launch on August 31st. Swen hints that at that point we might finally learn something about Larian's next project. They've been doing a lot of hiring.
