Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[Belegarsson]

imo all the companions are rather unlikeable

I find Beast to be more bearable than other companions :totallynotbiasedtowardsdwarves:

 

[Grunker]

yes I would find it interesting if it wasn't delivered by some smug teenager who is just way to cool to even be in this video game let alone your party. it's like every single line of dialogue the writer has found a way to insert a comment about how he is surperior in every way to everybody and doesn't care about anything *Fane sits on the toilet seat, leafing through a magazine.* As he notices you, he says: "What? I'm taking a dump in the ancient eternal way you humans couldn't possibly understand the intricacies of an eternal turd."

I feel like every time he talks it's a euphimism for the writer masturbating into my eye-socket going "SEE THIS THIS IS SO COOL I AM THE FIRST MAN TO EVER HAVE PRODUCED THIS WHITE SUBSTANCE SURELY"

 

[Vibalist]

I like The Red Prince. They obviously based him on the 'uptight noble' stereotype, but managed to subdue that aspect of him enough that he doesn't become unbearable.

 

[Jimmious]

imo all the companions are rather unlikeable

I find Beast to be more bearable than other companions :totallynotbiasedtowardsdwarves:

I actually play "as" Beast. Great character although my inner Tolkien-nerd is triggered from the dwarf+sea combination. TRIGGERED

 

[Doktor Best]

I really dont get the hate on the soundtrack. I think its awesome. The main theme is way better even than the one of the first game.

Grunker what's the problem with Fane and you say to avoid him? I kinda enjoy him so far (but we're moving veeery slowly, the game has humongous amounts of content per area)

It's like having an 14-year-old in your party except this guy is actually written to have the awesome powers and ohmagahd so deep insights which makes him even more insufferable.

Isnt Fane the one Chris Avellone wrote?

 

[Lacrymas]

Fane might act like a 14-year-old edgelord, but he was entombed for thousands of years, so he has 0 social skills. Yeah, acting like a 14-year-old isn't what I picture an isolationist to be like, where is the deep psychological trauma inherent in such a long isolation? I dunno, it seems like what IS missing is more drama, but the good kind.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Aren't they all teen archetypes, if you squint your eyes? Or it's just this one in particular that annoys you?

Not really, they all have some basic stuff going for them. Ifan actually feels like an adult with a pretty human outlook on things and there's very little DRAMA with him. That in itself is a rare thing in a video game character.

They're not really all that amazing but besides Fane I don't hate any of them. Even Sebille who is certainly edgy is an interesting take on her stereotype

I thought Ifan was the "dark, brooding, edgy" representative, but I'm really just in the beginning of the story.

 

[Pope Amole II]

it's like every single line of dialogue the writer has found a way to insert a comment about how he is surperior in every way to everybody and doesn't care about anything

We need a simple mod that would rename him Cleve.

 

[Sjukob]

I like The Red Prince. They obviously based him on the 'uptight noble' stereotype, but managed to subdue that aspect of him enough that he doesn't become unbearable

I find that Red Prince is so into himself it's genuinely amusing . I thought I would hate him , but I love him now .

 

[AwesomeButton]

How is it apologism? I literally said that it seems like the deep psychological trauma is missing and acting like a 14-year-old isn't appropriate.

Second-guessing the writing: I think if they were aiming for a realistic portrayal of someone who was never socialized, little of what Fane says in dialogue would have been told in dialogue. Much of his impressions would have been inner speech. But I think the writers are going for a much more simple representation, so Fane is intentionally written the way he is.

I'm curious how the Prince would be as a companion, because I'm playing as him, and I'm naturally being much less self-deluded than what his tagged lines suggest.

 

[Lacrymas]

Do companions interact with each other?

 

[Mortmal]

I'm not surprised at how many people can't even play a simple game directed at adolescents, but I'm surprised at how many refuse to read the text or even look at the screen.

And this is supposed to be (have been?) an anti-popamole forum? Which year was that? People can't find an NPC in the center of the town, others are bitching for a "highlight all button" (btw the console controller interface - what a coincidence, huh - has just the thing for you, you press and hold A and it highlights all containers), and yet others need a quest compass to finish their quests and whine when quests are marked as failed.

Revelation for you: quests are not the self-contained fedex shit you are used to doing from your favorite game Skyrim. Get with the game's style already, ffs.

For example, I healed a sick guy, he gave me a playing card, then I went to a few guys playing cards and had the option to play that card, which had me win a big amount of gold from them. Nothing of this was ever hinted in quest log or anywhere. No quest compass either. Explore, improvise, experiment.

I have not had a single bugged quest since the beginning of the game, and we are currently just out of the fort joy and in the wood to the west. I have never opened my quest log for more than to read the text. I have never been confused at what's expected of the party to do.

Also, I really like the music. "Bobby is not a real composer" -- don't make me laugh. Probably that's why he writes music for more and more popular games while you get to be a "critic" on the Codex.

You are too sane for this place it looks like you enjoy games .

 

[AwesomeButton]

Do companions interact with each other?

Haven't spotted such a thing yet, but I only have two actual companions, because I'm playing coop.

 

[Shadenuat]

All companions are boring and don't behave like normal or undead living beings. I wish I could just save bear cub and take it travel with me instead.

I would also take grandma commando with grenades.

I am playing witch summoner with black pigtails, noble and undead fetishist called Wednesday, and thought I would make Fane my eternal love slave but I took more liking with Red Prince instead. There is some edgy elegance in the way dialogie is written, as being better than thou noble he still manages to stay galant and honorabru. Fane otoh is just outright... dull. Sadly only Fane bed me so far so I bed him and dumped him. Or at least larped I did.

At least in DOS1 you had man and a waifu and could cautiously larp something between them picking different choices in dialogue.

 

[Vibalist]

I really dont get the hate on the soundtrack. I think its awesome. The main theme is way better even than the one of the first game.

Maybe, but that's about it. It's like the new composer put effort into that one track and then said "fuck it, we're done here, guys".

Most of the music is just sort of background-y and non-intrusive. It's not terrible, but it doesn't evoke any emotion either. It's the stuff you hear in every fantasy themed game these days, wheras Kirill's pieces begged you to stop what you were doing and just stand there and listen to them.

There are two things I like more about the music in D:OS 2. One, that it uses a leitmotif and two, that it doesn't change as much. In the first game you could barely walk two meters without a new track kicking in, they clearly added waaaay too many songs to each area. It's nice that the music flows more consistently this time around (which goes back to the leitmotif thing, as tracks that follow the same melody/pattern can easily transition into one another).

But with that being said, this new guy can't compare to Kirill Pokrovsky in any way. Pokrovsky's music was unique, for the lack of a better word, and I'm still amazed at how different the feel of each song was, while all of it still tied together. One minute the music is whimsical, the next it's somber, but you still feel like it all belongs in the same universe. This new guy knows how to do one style, which is 'ethereal background fantasy theme' and that's it. Kirill had a thousand different strings he could play on.

 

[Shadenuat]

Do companions interact with each other?

Nope. Only if their quests somehow manage to clash. Only happened to me in prologue when both Sebille & Prince had to talk to same guy.

 

[Vibalist]

Do companions interact with each other?

Nope. Only if their quests somehow manage to clash. Only happened to me in prologue when both Sebille & Prince had to talk to same guy.

They do participate in some group conversations, though.

Spoiler

When you're attacked by that void creature in the swamps in chapter one, they all chime in afterwards about the situation. But generally it's true that they don't speak to each other.

 

[Infinitron]

Isnt Fane the one Chris Avellone wrote?

To clarify - I didn’t design the undead race, only one undead’s backstory, not sure how much survived (not in a bad way).

The undead are too important to be solely left to me, is my feeling, so don't take that as a bad thing - Divinity 2 is amazing, and I admire Swen's force of will to make it Great (capitalized).

Give me a few months, happy to discuss spoilers once the game is out.

To clarify - I didn’t design the undead race, only one undead’s backstory, not sure how much survived

 

[Lacrymas]

All companions are boring and don't behave like normal or undead living beings. I wish I could just save bear cub and take it travel with me instead.

I would also take grandma commando with grenades.

I am playing witch summoner with black pigtails, noble and undead fetishist called Wednesday, and thought I would make Fane my eternal love slave but I took more liking with Red Prince instead. There is some edgy elegance in the way dialogie is written, as being better than thou noble he still manages to stay galant and honorabru. Fane otoh is just outright... dull. Sadly only Fane bed me so far so I bed him and dumped him. Or at least larped I did.

At least in DOS1 you had man and a waifu and could cautiously larp something between them picking different choices in dialogue.

Yes, why aren't there zany and wacky companions if that's what they were going for? Grandma commando with grenades sounds awesome! Your character would fit in nicely, too.

To clarify - I didn’t design the undead race, only one undead’s backstory, not sure how much survived

What does "only his backstory" mean?

 

[Vibalist]

Can you respec at some point?

 

[Daedalos]

'Kay so, I'm well into chapter 4 on classic mode and here's some impressions compared to D:OS 1.

Pro's

- The writing and overall story seems improved from D:OS 1, but overall still shit compared to many many other cRPGs. Still, I feel abit more engaged in the story, and I guess that's a plus. The writing tries to be serious and it shows, but it just doesn't really strike a nerve, it's still too goofy and whimsical. The story kind of apes some of the classical fantasy clichés, and even borrows alot from PoE. The Chosen one stories get boring in the end, and D:OS 2 in so different in that regard. It's so hard to care about the story, but at least Larian tried this time.

- The music has been improved, and is actually quite nice all throughout.
- Itemization is a bit better than D:OS 1, but overall still bad compared to other cRPGs
- Graphics have been touched up, and look ok/decent for the most part, tho not really that much different from D:OS 1
- The sounds have been improved, and alot of the ambience, skill sounds and so on are nice.
- The combat is still great. It was great in D:OS 1, and it hasn't really changed much. It's definitely one of the core strengths of the games, and it continues to be so. It has alot of variety in terms of builds and skills and that's fun.


Con's

- The Combat system: I don't have as big a problem with the new combat system as most here, but I still find it kind of limiting and annoying, how the armour and magic armour has been
implemented. I get that D:OS 1 was too cheesey, but there's gotta be a middle way, rather than the implementation in D:OS 2.
- The dialogue system is generally retarded. Why 3rd person? Very very uncessecary and kills the experience somewhat.
- Not really any apparent C&C or reactivity so far, perhaps I'm missing it from the quests.
- The voice acting is, for the most part, annoying and boring. Actors sound very much alike, and not many NPC's truly stand out as something else. I feel they should have just gone with voices for important characters, and then made them more impactful... which leads to
- The narrator. P. annoying, especially voiced. I mean, I kind of like it at times, but mostly it's an annoyance the way it's structured in the dialogue system
- The UI is simply a fucking clusterfuck. Nothing from the problems of D:OS 1 seems to be absolved. The UI is very clunky, it's annoying because there's alot of drag drop, not
enough quality of life buttons and features. There's no highlight button for interactables (only on controller) and I hate the camera work, because it requires alot of uneeedy
panning and turning all the time, which takes from the experience. There's tons of micromanagement issues with items and interactables that gets very nitty gritty and very timeconsuming.
- Crafting still sucks and I never used it because of all the items you get, and there's an incomplete amount of recipes, not in the game.
- Not enough new skills, and some skill trees have very few cool skills. Especially necromancy, doesn't really feel like a true necro build. I expected D:OS 2 to have alot more new spells n shit compared to D:OS 1
- It seems the game does have quite a few bugs, mostly to do with quests. I had several quests that I couldn't finish, and some where just straight up bugged and didn't go further. I've also managed to bug the game when talking to NPC's, and couldnt interact with anybody after that.

So far, the game plays like an expansion, it really does. A nice expansion, but an expansion nontheless. Or what the D:OS 1 EE should have been, but wasn't. I feel like this game needed more UMPF - more value for the money, to truly call itself a sequel. Too bad, maybe next time, Larian.

6,5/10

 

[Reapa]

It's a turn-based game. You can't expect it to have insane tactical approach.
Larian Forums

 

[dragonul09]

Can you respec at some point?

Yes,in Act 2 on the ship you can pretty much change everything abour your char and your companions,anything but race.

 

[fantadomat]

Fane might act like a 14-year-old edgelord, but he was entombed for thousands of years, so he has 0 social skills. Yeah, acting like a 14-year-old isn't what I picture an isolationist to be like, where is the deep psychological trauma inherent in such a long isolation? I dunno, it seems like what IS missing is more drama, but the good kind.

Yeah Larian love to throw idiotic numbers of years and people ackt as if it was yesterday.Everyone knows who asshole Rex was and he is dead for more than a 1000 years.There is a small amount of people who know events from a 1000 years let alone such details.It is like every peasant during the medieval times knew about the Caesar and his military campaigns in details.The writing in the game is a mess at best.It feels like a person with multiple personality disorder wrote it.

 

[Roguey]

yes I would find it interesting if it wasn't delivered by some smug teenager who is just way to cool to even be in this video game let alone your party. it's like every single line of dialogue the writer has found a way to insert a comment about how he is surperior in every way to everybody and doesn't care about anything *Fane sits on the toilet seat, leafing through a magazine.* As he notices you, he says: "What? I'm taking a dump in the ancient eternal way you humans couldn't possibly understand the intricacies of an eternal turd."

I feel like every time he talks it's a euphimism for the writer masturbating into my eye-socket going "SEE THIS THIS IS SO COOL I AM THE FIRST MAN TO EVER HAVE PRODUCED THIS WHITE SUBSTANCE SURELY"

Sounds like Phone-it-in Chris delivered a self-insert.