Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[anvi]

Any tl'dr on the patch? I am still waiting to play this game cuz I read it needs patches and mods.

 

[Lacrymas]

Any tl'dr on the patch? I am still waiting to play this game cuz I read it needs patches and mods.

I already posted the tl;dr -

Still no mention of the actual issues in those patch notes. I guess it's a lost cause.

 

[anvi]

Any tl'dr on the patch? I am still waiting to play this game cuz I read it needs patches and mods.

I already posted the tl;dr -

Still no mention of the actual issues in those patch notes. I guess it's a lost cause.

For todays patch?

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Things I don't get why are not in the game:
-day/night cycle;
-NPCs that have activities in the day and then go to sleep in the night;
-A world map and the ability to go where you want;
-bigger dialogue fonts;
-the game tries to be funny but I never laughed once;
- faster speed for that 90% percent of the game that is combat.

I have seen in different videos people calling it the best CRPG ever made.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[anvi]

Well it is still an indie game after all, they couldn't even afford to fund it themselves or get a publisher so it was crowdfunded again. Maybe next time they can grow the features a bit.

 

[Lacrymas]

Well, "indie" as in the most literal sense of independent, it's by no means a low-budget title.

 

[anvi]

Why retadred? Even Baldurs Gate and stuff had day/night cycles and the streets would empty at night. And a world map that gave a bit of freedom to where you went. DoS could use that. The other stuff seems pointless though. And like it or not but this series is never going to grow if they keep having to Kickstart it. But a million sales isn't bad, so maybe next time a publisher can take it on. Bigger budget = more features, bigger game, bigger advertising budget and more sales.

Well, "indie" as in the most literal sense of independent, it's by no means a low-budget title.

Yea but they can't do everything, especially while developing their own engine at the same time. They are working with a similar budget to what Baldurs Gate had almost 20 years ago, yet trying to do more.

 

[Iznaliu]

Well it is still an indie game after all, they couldn't even afford to fund it themselves or get a publisher so it was crowdfunded again

I believe the decision to crowdfund D:OS2 was for two main reasons: to incorporate player feedback about the new mechanics and design changes in D:OS2 and to help promote the game, as many sequels to crowdfunded games that weren't crowdfunded have sunk.

 

[LESS T_T]

Day 6 is about Larian's nightmare and zapping: http://divinity.game/en/zap

A DIVINE ADVENTURE: GMS WORST NIGHTMARE
A GM invests time to prepare your adventures. Sometimes this is being rightfully rewarded, sometimes... not so much.

Do you have it? Then click HERE to claim your reward, and use the code to unlock the file.

We hope you like it!

Spoiler

Under the elf's Elbow. Zoom in.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yea but they can't do everything, especially while developing their own engine at the same time. They are working with a similar budget to what Baldurs Gate had almost 20 years ago, yet trying to do more.

They can't do everything, yet hired 4 VO studios. D:OS2 is nowhere close to BG1's budget (estimated around 5 million), a more realistic budget is around 30 - 40 million (maybe, but it's definitely a lot more than BG1). Trust me, having day and night cycles is so trivial and shallow that nobody would've noticed. It wasn't due to lack of budget, Swen has said multiple times that he wants the cycles to matter in gameplay.

 

[anvi]

Well it is still an indie game after all, they couldn't even afford to fund it themselves or get a publisher so it was crowdfunded again

I believe the decision to crowdfund D:OS2 was for two main reasons: to incorporate player feedback about the new mechanics and design changes in D:OS2 and to help promote the game, as many sequels to crowdfunded games that weren't crowdfunded have sunk.

The article I read said it didn't sell well enough for them to fund it themselves, and no publishers wanted to take them on. So it was Kickstart again or nothing.

Yea but they can't do everything, especially while developing their own engine at the same time. They are working with a similar budget to what Baldurs Gate had almost 20 years ago, yet trying to do more.

They can't do everything, yet hired 4 VO studios. D:OS2 is nowhere close to BG1's budget (estimated around 5 million), a more realistic budget is around 30 - 40 million (maybe, but it's definitely a lot more than BG1). Trust me, having day and night cycles is so trivial and shallow that nobody would've noticed. It wasn't due to lack of budget, Swen has said multiple times that he wants the cycles to matter in gameplay.

So why not do more with DoS2?

 

[Lacrymas]

So why not do more with DoS2?

Do what? People are already complaining it feels too long, which is never a good sign. Adding more stuff on top isn't the way to go.

 

[imweasel]

There is no way that D:OS 2 had a budget of 30 - 40 million dollars. Not even close. That is upper AAA territory.

 

[Infinitron]

There is no way that D:OS 2 had a budget of 30 - 40 million dollars. Not even close. That is upper AAA territory.

Upper? These days closer to lower.

I don't think it was that high but IMO 10-20 million is a possibility.

But anyway the reason anvi's posts are dumb is because the features he thinks are missing have nothing to do with budget. Larian have all the money they need and the reason they made the game this way is because they wanted to.

 

[LESS T_T]

Speaking of... new Swen Vincke interview about the future of Larian: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-12-06-people-of-the-year-2017-larian-studios

- He values negative opinions. "'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good review, but, did you see they pointed out that?' It's all about how to do better for the next game."

- He doesn't think D:OS 2 to be the best RPG of the decade. He expects that to be the next one.

- The next game (Original Sin III?) may be the first game which Larian doesn't need to bet everything.

- He thinks he can grow their audience further than right now.

- "But we have a budget for our next game, and we're going to stick to it. At the same time, we're going to try and learn from our mistakes, because there's a whole bunch of things that we could have done differently and better, and avoided wastage in development."

People of the Year 2017: Larian Studios
With Divinity: Original Sin II, the Belgian studio combined both commercial performance with creative excellence - and it did so on its own terms


For Larian Studios, it could all have been so different.

When we last spoke to the Belgian developer in 2015, CEO Swen Vincke was fresh from a revealing GDC talk about the production of Divinity: Original Sin; the sixth game in a series that had started 13 years before, and also a bid to break free from publishers by using platforms like Kickstarter and Early Access.

"You spend two or three years on something, and you know it can be good, and then it's released before it's finished. It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible," Vincke said. "This was the last time we were going to do it. It was our way or it was over."

It very nearly ended anyway. Larian invested every last cent in Original Sin, going "beyond make or break" to ensure the game that was released was the same one it set out to make. Vincke "sold my soul and my body to the bank" to avoid compromise, and Larian ultimately stopped paying VAT, it was blacklisted by the government, and the debtors came calling.

"All of that happened in the last months [of development], and even then we refused to release the game. It wasn't ready," Vincke continued. "That was the one thing that went wrong every time in the past. The game was released before it was ready, and that costs you so much more."

Ultimately, that chapter of Larian's story ended well. Divinity: Original Sin was a hit, selling 500,000 units in less than three months, with the studio collecting a larger share of the revenue than with any previous entry in the series. With Divinity: Original Sin II, though, in its 20th year as a studio, Larian achieved an entirely different level of commercial success, hitting that same 500,000 unit milestone in just four days after it launched in September, and passing 1 million sold just over a week ago.

"We had a bumpy ride in our history, and you need to have a bit of luck," Vincke says, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz about the company's selection for People of the Year 2017. "We had a bit with Original Sin, and we had a bit with Original Sin II also.

"Original Sin was a hit, and Original Sin II has sold a lot faster than the first one. But you never know what your competitors are doing. There could have been somebody that came out with the same genre of game, the same type of mechanics, but executed a lot better. You never know about that."

At this point, it's worth highlighting Vincke's modesty regarding Original Sin II's execution. Larian would have merited commendation for successfully taking charge of its own destiny, but we write about it here for doing so with one of the very best games of the year; behind only Zelda and Mario in terms of Metacritic score. For Vincke, though, the only opinions that truly matter are negative.

"I wake up reading reviews, and then once I'm really woken up I click on the red reviews," he says. "It's strange, because it's the dominant topic of discussion: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good review, but, did you see they pointed out that?' It's all about how to do better for the next game."

And Vincke is not shy about discussing Original Sin III, which may prove to be the first entry in the Original Sin series on which Larian doesn't need to "bet everything" to realise its vision. Not only that, but Vincke believes it can grow the game's audience further still, improving the way traditional RPG systems and stats are presented to make than more palatable to a wider pool of players.

"I think there's a larger market than what we're achieving right now, so I think there's still room to expand," he says. "I disagree with everybody that says this is for a very hardcore niche. I don't think that's right. A lot of that is down to presentation, and just getting people to try it for the first time. You won't reach everybody with that, but I think there is a larger group of people that could enjoy this.

"But we have a budget for our next game, and we're going to stick to it. At the same time, we're going to try and learn from our mistakes, because there's a whole bunch of things that we could have done differently and better, and avoided wastage in development.

"There's more than just finances to making a game. There's how you can improve your processes, how you can get more output from the same amount of work. It just gives you more time to make things fantastic."

And fantastic is now the standard. More than just being third to two of gaming's true icons, Original Sin II has been hailed as not just the best CRPG of this year, but perhaps the best of the decade so far. When faced with such praise, Vincke's modesty kicks in once more.

"No, no," he says, chuckling. "I expect that to be the next one."

 

[Infinitron]

- He doesn't think D:OS 2 to be the best RPG of the decade. He expects that to be the next one.

I think that was said in a tongue-in-cheek spirit.

Although who knows, maybe that'll be Swen's Ultimate Big RPG.

 

[Elex]

i bet is going to be “divinity original sin III- totally not the witcher 3”
direct sequel of divine divinity and prequel of divinity original sin 2

lucian the divine and damian as playable characters.

 

[imweasel]

Either that or Call of Divinity: Space Warfare 9000

 

[Infinitron]

Prediction - Divinity 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 3 will be the same game, uniting the two series.

Sequel to Divinity 2: DKS.

 

[Kem0sabe]

And they will still be making rpg's devoid of a good story, interesting characters and dialogue. I think Sven is to blame, they hire new people to write, to voice, and still it ends up being shit, i bet he goes around with his quirky sense of humor, trying to be funny, trying to finally make a game that he thinks is as funny as himself, never realizing that neither he or his games are particularly funny.

 

[Darth Roxor]

And they will still be making rpg's devoid of a good story, interesting characters and dialogue. I think Sven is to blame, they hire new people to write, to voice, and still it ends up being shit, i bet he goes around with his quirky sense of humor, trying to be funny, trying to finally make a game that he thinks is as funny as himself, never realizing that neither he or his games are particularly funny.

stop the lies, start the truths, the above was all perfectly fine in larian games up until dos1

 

[Lacrymas]

Each game after DivDiv had more and more humour crammed in. The culmination was D:OS, a game which didn't know what tone it wants to convey, and the humour was very childish, like it was literally written for children. I don't understand what they are going for or why they are doing whatever it is they are doing.

The humour isn't the problem, the problem is that it comes at the expense of coherent characters, understandable motivations and an interesting plot.

 

[Elex]

Each game after DivDiv had more and more humour crammed in. The culmination was D:OS, a game which didn't know what tone it wants to convey, and the humour was very childish, like it was literally written for children. I don't understand what they are going for or why they are doing whatever it is they are doing.

The humour isn't the problem, the problem is that it comes at the expense of coherent characters, understandable motivations and an interesting plot.

HAHA LE FUNNY dog npc for the children and 5 minutes later your character is in flame on pool of elettrified blood.

 

[anvi]

There is no way that D:OS 2 had a budget of 30 - 40 million dollars. Not even close. That is upper AAA territory.

Upper? These days closer to lower.

I don't think it was that high but IMO 10-20 million is a possibility.

But anyway the reason anvi's posts are dumb is because the features he thinks are missing have nothing to do with budget. Larian have all the money they need and the reason they made the game this way is because they wanted to.

The features list was not mine, it was someone else, dummy. The only ones I said would be worth having are day night cycle and world map, both of which most classic RPGs had and for good reason. And every feature requires more budget, otherwise it is taking away from something else. If Larian had all the money they need, they would have made it look like Witcher 3. The only reason you vote my posts dumb is because you vote all my posts dumb, because you and Jaeson are morons who got butthurt so deeply at something I called you out on about 10 months ago.

 

[Iznaliu]

The article I read said it didn't sell well enough for them to fund it themselves, and no publishers wanted to take them on. So it was Kickstart again or nothing.

They could've scaled down their ambitions to produce a near-AAA level game and worked on something smaller; a Kickstarter wasn't really that necessary for anything other than containing Swen's excessive ambition.