Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pre-Release Thread

[Bubbles]

Expeditions: Viking was also very good. Combat was tons of fun.

 

[Infinitron]

Remember we're talking about Bubbles here, evangelist for obscure indie titles with standout qualities like The Dwarf Run. It wasn't just a contest between the big guys!

 

[Roguey]

Remember we're talking about Bubbles here, evangelist for obscure indie titles with standout qualities like The Dwarf Run. It wasn't just a contest between the big guys!

I remember Bubbles as evangelist for Sword Coast Legends multiplayer.

 

[LESS T_T]

The Wolf and the Viper: Meet Ifan Ben-Mezd, a mercenary that tried to live a life of peace until his crimes returned to haunt his family, and Sebille Kaleran - scarred and beautiful, sweet but deadly, she carries the wounds from her life as a slave inside and out.

https://www.facebook.com/LarianStud...83318.57774.154072634652943/1187473701312826/

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[Infinitron]

Does Rivellon have Arabs

 

[V_K]

Well looking at http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-codex-gamescom-2016-lineup-is-here.110306/ what else would compare? Torment: Tides of Consolemania?

Star Trail HD, of course.

 

[Athelas]

The Wolf and the Viper: Meet Ifan Ben-Mezd, a mercenary that tried to live a life of peace until his crimes returned to haunt his family, and Sebille Kaleran - scarred and beautiful, sweet but deadly, she carries the wounds from her life as a slave inside and out.

Rivellon: Torment.

Looks like that Avellone collaboration is really paying off.

 

[Jimmious]

I've a feeling D:OS2 will be an equally amazing successor as BG2 was. Still in for the Codex 4-man party also

 

[Roguey]

Does Rivellon have Arabs

Jahan is the Rivellon equivalent of a Persian so sure why not.

 

[LESS T_T]

The Host and the Hammer:
Meet Lohse, a devoted woman whose body is home to more minds than just her own, and Dallis - holy retribution on the sins of the Sourcerers. She has sworn to rid the world of you and your kind.

https://www.facebook.com/LarianStud...83318.57774.154072634652943/1189229997803863/

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One and a half hour left.

 

[LESS T_T]

PCGames.de released their preview a bit early: http://www.pcgames.de/Divinity-Orig...orschau-RPG-Leckerbissen-aus-Belgien-1205392/

(screenshots: http://www.pcgames.de/Divinity-Orig...erbissen-aus-Belgien-1205392/galerie/2625710/)

They're aiming 2Q 2017 release.

 

[Bubbles]

2,100 words

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam store page is live: http://store.steampowered.com/app/435150

Early Access is coming in September 15th.

Coming to Early Access on September 15th 2016!

Choose your race and origin story and see how differently the world reacts. Gather your party and blast your opponents with different elements in deep tactical turn-based combat. Explore the vast and layered world of Rivellon alone or with up to 4 players in drop-in/drop-out cooperative play.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is an entirely new experience built on the next-gen Divinity Engine, with a new UI, an all-new art-style, and advanced roleplay systems. Everything that made the original great returns: Go anywhere you want, kill anyone, find endless ways to solve problems and gather your ultimate RPG party.

In a world where the Gods are dead, you play a wielder of forbidden magic, quarantined in the prison colony of Fort Joy. The Magisters of the Divine Order want to "cure" you of your powers. But the Order has secrets of its own. Secrets that threaten everyone. If the world remains godless, chaos will rule. It's time for a new Divinity.

Key Features

• Choose your origin story. Choose one of the unique origin stories that will define your character's background and your personal quests. For the first time in a Divinity game, play as a Human, Lizard, Elf, Dwarf, or Undead, each with unique racial skills. Watch the world and its inhabitants react to who you are and what you've done, unlocking new dialog options and quest lines. Or create your own story by building your character from the ground up.
  
  
• More freedom than ever. Go anywhere, talk to anyone, interact with everything and be anyone you want. You can kill any NPC in the game, destroy objects, and use the game's vast RPG systems to your advantage. Talk to animals and spirits to gain valuable information. Explore the huge , open world to find hours of hidden content, including entire new areas.
  
  
• New elemental interactions make turn-based combat even better. Combine elements like fire and poison for explosive combos. Bless and Curse surfaces to completely change their properties. Craft new skills and use elevation to your advantage.
  
  
• A darker and deeper story. Divinity: Original Sin 2 features a darker and more grounded narrative than its award-winning predecessor, while building on Larian's distinctive tone of voice. This is a godforsaken world. The Void approaches. And desperate times call for desperate measures...
  
  
• Play with up to 4 players: No other RPG offers 4-player co-op like Divinity:Original Sin 2 does. Your Origin Stories will give you different, often conflicting objectives. Will you cooperate or compete? It's entirely up to you.
  
  
• Test your skills in the new PvP Arena Mode. Challenge your friends in fast, satisfying turn-based combat sessions. Take the battle to the multiplayer-tailored Arenas, packed with explosives, loot, and deadly traps.
  
  
• New technology. Powered by Divinity Engine 3.0, the game features physics-based rendering, cloth physics, and a new dynamic music system. It makes Divinity: Original Sin 2 the most atmospheric Divinity game ever.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

They seem to stress "the world is godless" a lot in those materials. With MCA on board, that might even foreshadow becoming a god.

 

[LESS T_T]

Official website just launched: http://www.divinity.game/

 

[Infinitron]

".game". Well that's something.

 

[Bubbles]

They seem to stress "the world is godless" a lot in those materials. With MCA on board, that might even foreshadow becoming a god.

Well, it's still taking place before Divinity 2.

 

[Bubbles]

Another preview from Giga.de:

http://www.giga.de/spiele/divinity-...2-vorschau-auf-das-rollenspiel-schwergewicht/

It mentions that "all texts" will be fully voiced.

 

[Infinitron]

Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...pses-in-single-player-divinity-original-sin-2

Chomping on corpses in single-player Divinity: Original Sin 2
It's good for your elf!

In Divinity: Original Sin 2, elves eat corpses. Eat that Legolas! I suppose in Divinity 2 an elf literally would. But anyway. Eating corpses is a racial ability, what elves in Divinity 2 just happen to do, and when they gobble an arm or a head or a leg they learn things about who it came from - discover secrets. It's another option in a game of options. Why go round the houses looking for the information you need to finish a quest when you can scoff a head and do it that way? It's Divinity: Original Sin 2 in a nutshell: a cheeky, subversive fantasy toy box that has an even bigger box of tools than the first game to play with.

I popped to the lovely city of Ghent in Belgium recently to see Divinity 2 developer Larian and play the game. Of all the things I wanted to see, single-player was top of the list, because so far all talk surrounding the game seems to be about cooperatively or competitively campaigning with three other people, or fighting them in a player versus player arena. I mean of course I have friends! A few. Sort of. But I'll probably play Divinity 2 alone. Does that mean I will be missing out?

Perhaps obviously: no. Just because Larian hasn't talked about or shown Divinity 2 single-player doesn't mean it isn't important, even fundamental, to the experience. For it is the bread and butter. And this time it comes with nifty origin stories, like Dragon Age: Origins, that lovely game, and with more races to play as. Lizard people with necks like giraffes! Elves that eat corpses! Undead (written by Chris Avellone) at some point! Dwarves! And the world reacts differently to them all.

I show and talk Chris Bratt through what I played.

The origin stories all begin in the same area, a kind of prison camp for Source-sensitive (the game's magic) people. A place to keep them under control. You've got to get out. But how you do that is up to you. The solutions are many, nearly a dozen, but they're not signposted. You will need to discover them and carry them out for yourself, which requires thought, memory and patience. It's like playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, prodding and poking your way around as you gradually reveal information, careful not to prod too hard in case the game quickly turns against you - and it can, and does. Larian isn't afraid to dish out a bit of punishment. It's an experience that takes a while to settle into, to slow down into, but it's rewarding when you do.

The embedded video edits my hours-long escape from the prison camp area into a more digestible 33 minutes. What you won't see in the video are the new Curse and Bless abilities that transform surfaces, like fire, into either holy fire that heals you or cursed fire that really roasts you. You also won't see the new super-powered Source abilities that consume Source Points. I played around with these in arena PvP, facing off against Rock, Paper, Shotgun's charming Adam Smith. Who I battered. Just saying. (It was very close really.) Lovely Larian boss Swen Vincke, who waltzed around in socks when I was there, demonstrated Divinity: Original Sin 2 PvP in a recent video (also embedded) if you want to see more.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is shaping up for an Early Access release on 15th September. Console versions (PS4, Xbox One) are apparently part of the plan but will follow the PC release by a couple of months - whenever that PC release eventually happens.

Incidentally, Richard Cobbett wrote a Divinity: Original Sin 2 preview last August that focused on the game's twisted four-player campaign multiplayer. It was Cobbett who wrote our Divinity: Original Sin review in 2014, too.

 

[Infinitron]

And PC Gamer: http://www.pcgamer.com/divinity-original-sin-2-launches-on-steam-early-access-next-month/

Divinity: Original Sin 2 launches on Steam Early Access next month
Like the first game, Original Sin 2 will spend some time in Early Access.

Following in the footsteps of the first game, Divinity: Original Sin 2 will be launching into Steam Early Access on September 15th, less than a month away. The sequel will feature up to four-player co-op, a competitive mode, and five playable races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Lizard, and Undead.

It's Early Access launch will have also start with four origin stories, but more will be added over time. Origin stories are essentially pre-built backstories for your character, allowing you to choose their abilities and stats like normal, while heavily influencing your interactions with the game's NPCs. I got a chance to playthe first hour of the campaign as a character called The Red Prince, and it's safe to say that origin stories play a massive role.

I've actually played Divinity: Original Sin 2 a few times since its Kickstarter last year, and I'm incredibly excited that I'll finally be able to do so online with friends. The game makes a lot of smart changes to the original's formula, and the PvP mode is a surprisingly fun distraction from the main campaign as well.

 

[Infinitron]

RPGWatch! http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/divinity-original-sin-2-preview-381.html

 

[LESS T_T]

The floodgate opened:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...pses-in-single-player-divinity-original-sin-2
http://www.pcgamer.com/divinity-original-sin-2-launches-on-steam-early-access-next-month/
http://www.nisute.com/2016/08/22/explore-possibilities-divinity-original-sin-2/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3110...wn-reactive-gloriously-chaotic-adventure.html
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/divinity-original-sin-2s-new-features-deepen-playe/1100-6442634/

 

[Infinitron]

http://gamesquare.it/anteprima-divinity-original-sin-2-gamescom-2016/

 

[Infinitron]

RPS: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/08/22/divinity-original-sin-2-singleplayer-preview/

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Smartly Reinvents The RPG Party
Adam Smith on August 22nd, 2016 at 3:00 pm.

Divinity: Original Sin is one of my favourite games of recent years. It’s a systemic toybox with the skin of a fantasy RPG. I spent an evening playing the sequel [official site] a couple of weeks ago and it improves almost every area. At the foundations, there’s a more interesting world, with a stronger set of characters, but there are also improvements to combat, and the smartest twist on cooperative multiplayer that I’ve seen since Dark Souls.



The philosophy driving the original Original Sin was based around player freedom. It’s a game that allows you to do anything, though not in the way that a massive open world life-sim might promise. You can’t seamlessly travel from the planet’s sufrace to an orbital space station and then pilot a fighter into a black hole, or chop down every tree in the world in order to gather enough wood to build a bridge to the moon.

Instead, Divinity has a very clear set of rules and boundaries, and it allows you to explore every possibility within those boundaries. It’s a game in which you can kill people and might find it useful to do so from time to time, and therefore it’s a game in which you can kill all of the people because having some be invincible would be inconsistent. It’s a game in which you can move furniture and other objects, provided your character is strong enough to lift them, because you have to pick up items to solve quests from time to time, so the concept of carrying and moving things extends to EVERYTHING.

At its most basic level, the design demands that the player be allowed to complete the game, no matter which quests they choose to follow or how they choose to complete them. That leads to some quest-specific design decisions that extend throughout the game. Plot armour is out of bounds so an essential character might be killed, intentionally or not, so Divinity allows you to talk to that character’s ghost in order to get the information you need. And if you can murder one person and speak to their ghost, then maybe everybody should have some kind of post-life possibilities.

Original Sin 2 has the same premise. Everything is possible, anyone can be killed, the world is a series of simulated systems, from crime and punishment to elemental tactical combat. The difference, this time around, is that party members have their own goals and knowledge, and whether they’re controlled by other players or not, there will be conflict at some point.

In the opening section of the game, which I played, the goal is to escape from a prison colony. Bound with a device that nullifies your Source powers – which are considered a threat to the world given some deity-related shenanigans in the backstory – you’re free to help or hinder fellow prisoners as you seek one of several paths to freedom. While it’s possible to design a character from scratch, the companions that are available to join your party in the game’s first area are also available for selection as your party leader.

I chose to play as an elf, an ex-slave who is travelling the world with a hitlist of people responsible for the scars that criss-cross her body. Elves, in this world, can eat people to steal their memories. That, like almost everything else, plays into levelling systems (learn abilities by devouring the dead!) as well as questlines.

As I was sitting next to another journalist playing the game, I was treated to the rather horrifying image of his party killing my elf when they encountered her half an hour into the session. We were playing singleplayer rather than working together, and almost every time I glanced across at his screen, I saw a different approach to a problem I’d already encountered or an area that I hadn’t discovered. Whether intentional or not, having the two screens side by side was a perfect way to illustrate the ways in which a relatively small area can contain such a diversity of options and experiences.

My route out of the colony took me through a cavern full of intelligent, flaming slugs and into a prison torture-basement, where I had a prolonged and tense fight against a gang of bastards who came very close to killing my elf and the three friends she’d made along the way. I say ‘friends’ but that might not be the right word. They’re companions, with the same ultimate objective in mind (in this case – escape) but with their own motivations and secrets.

When we first arrived in the colony, we saw a man being threatened and then killed by two thugs who had accused him of a petty crime. The penal colony has its own laws and the person in charge of dishing out brutal justice was in charge of the kitchen area. Food is power in the land of the starving.

I could have intervened during the assault but I didn’t want to start trouble. Not yet. Instead, I decided to build up my strength and learn as much as I could about the guy running the show.

That’s how RPGs work, right? You decide that you, or your character, would like to deal with a situation in a certain way and then you go ahead and deal with that situation. That’s not how things worked out for me.

When I met the cook/overseer (I can’t remember his name, so let’s go with Kitchen Bastard), he had a prisoner. Being locked in a cage that is itself inside a penal colony is harsh and I felt sorry for the poor soul, especially when I found out he had been locked up for stealing some citrus fruits. Hardly the crime of the century, even though they probably come in handy for overcoming the kind of vitamin deficiencies that are no doubt rife in the awful conditions I could see all around me.

Matters were made worse by the fact that the prisoner claimed to be innocent. That didn’t mean he was innocent, of course, but I made a deal with Kitchen Bastard, arranging to deliver the actual thief in exchange for the prisoner’s life. I was going to break my promise though – Kitchen Bastard planned to execute the thief and I wasn’t going to hand someone over to that kind of fate. And so I hoped to find the thief, ensure that the prisoner was freed, and then save BOTH of their lives by pushing Kitchen Bastard into his own cauldron of boiling stew.

In the end, I found the thief and killed him myself. Remember my character’s backstory, with the scars and the pain and the list of names? Turns out the lizard who had been stealing the fruit was on that list. No other character knows that he has such a horrific past and he seems fairly harmless – a prophetic junkie lost in a hazy dream – but I’ve seen the scars and I’ll be damned if I leave him to his reveries.

With the thief dead, Kitchen Bastard agreed to free his prisoner and I found that I’d earned what little respect he has to spare. I’d wanted to kill him since the moment I arrived and instead I’d ended up doing his dirty work. Funny how things work out when you’re roleplaying a character rather than a set of numbers with a sword or a staff.

And what characters there are in this game. From the superbly pompous Red Prince, an aristocratic reptile, to the rambling host of a hundred demons, a possessed lady who explains her attractiveness to demons by comparing her mind/soul to a pleasant inn that they’re all spending their vacation time in. The writing for all of them is fantastic, skipping between world-building and witticisms with ease, and sometimes within a single sentence. I played Original Sin for the systems rather than the story, but this time around, provided the quality is consistent, the characters and subplots will be a draw in their own right.

It helps that the most attractive of the new systems – those conflicts of interest that can lead to the death of the party – is a storytelling device. Perhaps all systems are but this one is impossible to separate from the writing and the characters that enable it. It sounds enormously complicated in concept: multiple characters who have reasons to cooperate AND compete, within a world that reacts and is fundamentally changed by their actions. The brilliance of the opening area is that you don’t notice the complications; you just play as you want to play, revealing stories and situations through your choices and the traits of your characters.

I’ve already written about how the game is supposed to work and in playing it for a few hours, it’s incredibly pleasing to report that it does work. As intended. On this evidence, it’s a smarter, funnier, stranger game than its immediate predecessor that neatly answers the question, “how do you expand a game where you can do anything?”

Because Original Sin’s design is to create systems and rules that form the boundaries in which to play rather than to present a blank canvas, the sequel works as a refinement of existing features with the addition of stronger characters and world-building, and a re-examination of how an RPG party behaves. Other games have introduced relationships and sidequests related to companions, but here, Larian are exploring rivalries, secrecy, deception and the pursuit of objectives that can deny other players their goals.

If the foundation of Original Sin’s design philosophy was to provide freedom but ensure that the game could be completed no matter how much the player diverged from the ‘correct’ path, Original Sin 2 explores the idea that the party can always succeed, but that individual members can fail. That central idea sits alongside much-improved combat (there’s a multiplayer arena mode and it is excellent), a superb spell-crafting system and a world that’s more convincing and beautiful than anything Larian have produced before. And I’ve only scratched the surface – there’s an undead race to play with, polymorphing, a city to visit, and lots of other things that I’ll gladly be surprised by. I can’t wait to explore.