Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pre-Release Thread

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Will we be getting our Kodex Kickstarter Kodes on the EA date, or on release? Just curious.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see Angthoron 's post.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/09...-2-hands-on-doubling-down-on-deep-roleplaying

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2 HANDS-ON - DOUBLING DOWN ON DEEP ROLEPLAYING
Racial traits, origin stories and more.

The fear I always have with huge, almost impenetrably deep RPGs like Divinity: Original Sin is that their developer will start making the assumption that they’d sell more copies if they just made their game simpler. Larian Studios’ amazing take on the Baldur’s Gate formula was one complex beast, and I would have bet the farm that they’d “streamline” Divinity: Original Sin 2 to make it more palatable to a broader audience.

I would have lost a lot of money.

In what seems like a bold, even brazen move, Larian has doubled down with Original Sin 2, providing more ways to mold your character, more ways to get into trouble, and more ways to fight your way out of it.

Building Character

Character creation and progression was one of the most satisfying elements of Original Sin, and the sequel only seems to strengthen it further. With the additions of different races and origin stories, you can now further specialize not only the stats and abilities that define your character, but their interactions and overall purpose within the world around them.

Races are mostly familiar Tolkien-isms, but with some neat twists. Elves, for instance, are capable of devouring the remains of their fallen foes so as to absorb some aspect of their abilities. This makes them somewhat ghoulish, even compared to characters of the Undead race, who come with the kinds of unique bonuses and penalties you might imagine. Breaking from the mold even more is a race of lizard men that start off with an impressively destructive fire-breathing ability. After being constrained to rolling human characters in Original Sin, these race options open up welcome new realms of possibility.

The other big new piece of the character puzzle is the ability to choose pre-made origin stories. These named, ready-to-play characters all have their own history and quirks that play a major role in their interactions with others. NPCs that are insignificant to one origin story might be a long-lost lover or a hated rival to another. Origin-specific dialogue options and quest lines abound, and they often intersect and even conflict with one another. Since these origin characters exist in the world as potential party members if you don’t choose to play as one, internal strife can tear your party apart if you don’t manage everyone’s priorities accordingly.

But the way the world and your party members react to you isn’t just limited to what race or origin you play. Another new, more granular element is the Tags system. Tags are like descriptors that get applied to your character. Some of these are inherent when you create your character like “female” or “lizard,” but there are many others that you earn or lose based on your actions and decisions. What’s interesting about these is that they don’t necessarily cancel one another out. You could be both a “leader” and “treacherous” for instance; your character isn’t just “good” or “evil.” By the end of your journey, you may have collected a variety of different tags, all of which impact your abilities and how different people and factions in the world react to you. The system is full of potential to change and evolve over time. The idea of my character becoming a different kind of person over time through my decisions is an enticing one.

Breaking the Law

Let’s just be honest: anyone who played Original Sin for real stole every painting and gold-plated piece of china and cutlery that wasn’t bolted down to make ends meet, especially in the early game when money was hard to earn.

You can still do that, but the world reacts in a much more dynamic way to theft and crime in general. When someone notices something of theirs is missing, they will grow suspicious and find the nearest guard to investigate, and if none are around, they’ll do so themselves. At one point, after “borrowing” a Rain Scroll from a local, two guards strolled through to ask me if they could search my pack. I could allow it, resist it, try to talk my way out of it, fess up and give the item back, or even just try and fight the guards to get out of my jail time. It’s a far cry from the binary situation of simply being caught or not, and it provides even more opportunities for roleplaying.

Settle It in the Arena

Combat was quite dynamic in Original Sin, thanks to a wide array of different ways that different abilities interacted with one another and with the environment. Not only have the number of possibilities in battle expanded, but you can now face off against human opponents in the new multiplayer Arena mode.

These tactical duels play out in the same exact way as the turn-based combat in the single-player campaign. As fun as it it was to set up traps and elemental chain reactions against NPCs, it feels even better when pulled off against another person, and Original Sin 2 invites you to outsmart and overpower foes in a few new ways to boot.

For instance, some skills are now powered by Source energy, which (thanks to the events that closed Original Sin) is now a lot more prevalent in the world than before. Drops of source energy are spread across Arena maps, giving opponents specific areas to squabble over to secure as much of the valuable resource as possible. Source-powered skills are immensely powerful tide-turners, so securing this resource is a key to victory.

That said, strong positioning, and the frugal management of your action points can certainly win you fights, That, and of course, skillful manipulation of the elements, which was a hug part of Original Sin. New elements come into play now, such as bloody surfaces, and ability to either curse or bless any elemental surface to change its properties. Cursed fire, for instance, can’t be extinguished with water, whereas blessed fire actually heals those who stand in it over time. These are more than just tiny wrinkles: suddenly being engulfed in a field of fire is not only damaging, but highly disruptive to your party formation, so having the option to turn it into a boon with a single spell is a big deal. It should be interesting to see how these options play out, both in multiplayer, and during the main campaign.

It’s a little hard to tell how all of this will come together in the final product after playing a pre-alpha version, but the possibilities are all certainly there. More than anything, I’m just happy Larian is making a true sequel without any signs of watering it down. In a development climate in which everyone is seemingly obsessed with racing to the bottom to grab every sale they can, simply making a robust RPG strictly for RPG lovers is practically an act of protest. Viva la character sheet!

 

[Infinitron]

Here's an interview we missed: http://www.gamewatcher.com/intervie...sin-2 (divinityoriginalsin2) -interview/12666

DISCOVER THE SECRETS ABOUT LARIAN’S UPCOMING CRPG – DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2


After launching an incredibly successful Kickstarter back in 2015 that reached its $500,000 goal in less than twelve hours, Larian Studios have their fans eagerly anticipating their latest game – Divinity: Original Sin 2.

With the game’s Early Access release arriving in less than a month from now on Steam, it won’t be long until players get a taste of this massive CRPG. We had the chance to ask David Walgrave, a producer at Larian, some questions about their upcoming title.

GameWatcher: Could you introduce yourself and just give us a brief overview of the game, please?

David Walgrave: My name is David Walgrave, and I’ve been a producer at Larian Studios for over ten years. Original Sin 2 is very much like its predecessor; a top-down, party-based, turn-based RPG that supports multiplayer — but we have improved a lot of elements in the formula, and added many new features. There’s a lot of big changes that you’ll notice: the new player characters’ origin stories, the generic player characters you can create yourself, the races you can select from, the increased reactivity of the world, new combat rules, PvP storylines, adaptive music, and of course, the new engine.


GameWatcher: What is your favourite new feature in Divinity: Original Sin 2?

David Walgrave: Without a doubt the origin stories and how they impact the gameplay — both for how they really make you a part of the world in single player, and set you up against each other in multiplayer. You will always be working together to achieve your common goals, but you can sneak away and do your own personal thing, and we’ve added a lot of new support for that so that you can hide whatever you don’t want your co-player(s) to know. Because we now allow 4 players to play together!


GameWatcher: What difficulties have you encountered in development so far and how did you overcome them?

David Walgrave: We’ve been changing so many things in this engine, and we’ve changed the art direction, so we can barely re-use any of the assets of DOS1. We knew this would happen, but when we were prototyping everything, we obviously started out with what we had. One of the difficulties we have right now, is making sure all the “old stuff” is not in anymore. It’s just work. We try to structure this as best as we can, but there’s always something hiding away somewhere, in fear of the banhammer.


We took the time to make sure that all of us understood what PvP meant in this game. It really took a prototype to prove that it worked and that it was going to be fun. Then we got everyone playing it, so that they really got it — how it worked, and how much potential it had. At first, the theory seemed hard to translate to a system, but eventually everyone saw the light. Then a lot of the internals of the game had to be changed to allow a “neutral” party, to allow personal quests and personal inventories, and that’s just work.

What we’re currently still working on is improving the AI and making sure it can work with the new combat systems, such as the verticality of the battlefield. We needed further insight as to how this would all come together, so we did the following: All the combat designers and QA people designed small levels, and then we had them play these levels together. This allowed us to recognize patterns in how they were thinking. The goal was to capture those thinking patterns and translate them to our AI. The funny thing is, without realising it ourselves at first, all of a sudden, we had an Arena mode!


GameWatcher: You’ve used Kickstarter in the past and decided to use it again for this game. How has Kickstarter impacted development this time round?

David Walgrave: In short, Kickstarter is a good reality check. You get to know your audience, the early adopters, the fans.


For instance, a lot of fans wanted races so we thought about how we would do races — do they have the same weapons? Do they wear the same clothes? How will they react to one another? We took all this into account, then made it part of our proposal during the Kickstarter campaign for DOS2. We approach these matters in the Larian style. This means that choices like race need to matter — it shouldn’t just change the way you look.

We also like to keep our backers up to date, which not only gives us feedback, but it also gives us an audience for our deadlines and sprints. That’s a good goal to have.


GameWatcher: Do you think that it’s likely that you’ll use Kickstarter for your future titles?

David Walgrave: I can´t say for sure. There are some factors that might make that difficult, but normally, yes.


GameWatcher: How accessible would you say this game is for people that didn’t play the first game? Is this a convenient time to jump into the series?

David Walgrave: We always make our games independent from each other story-wise. You will be able to jump into DOS2 and have a complete and rewarding experience. There will be some inside jokes and typical Divinity stuff that you’ll get to know along the way, but we don’t assume you know all the lore and the characters.


GameWatcher: So, there’s co-op and competitive sides to the game and it’s up to the player when they want to work with or attack their friends. Are there any quests that require players to play cooperatively? If so, how does the game ensure that people are in the right place together, at the right time?

David Walgrave: The competitive quests are those that advance your personal story, not the main story. You can try to argue, beg, fight, negotiate, or just go and do them while the other ones are not looking. They are more “along the way”. The main story is the stuff you should do together. As soon as a party member triggers something that will affect your entire party, they will simply get a message that urges them to… “gather their party”… But this will not happen that often in the game and of course, it is always possible to stay together the entire time if you want. At the end of the day, the player decides how to play the game.


GameWatcher: One of the more interesting additions to the first Original Sin game was the RPG editor. Will it be returning in this game?

David Walgrave: Yes, it will return. We are doing everything we can to make it more user-friendly. We also want to see what people want to use it for, so that the most requested features are more intuitive. Because in the end, this is our own editor. It’s a developer’s tool, and a complex one at that, but it’s the right tool for us to create a game as ambitious as this.


GameWatcher: Speaking of the RPG Editor, did you guys ever see some of your fans’ creations? What did you think of their work?

David Walgrave: We are always looking at the efforts of our community. Feedback is really important for us, and we are also interested in the ways how people interact with certain features. We even contacted one of the modders because of his exceptional skills, but unfortunately, he was not able to relocate.


GameWatcher: What do you think makes this game stand out, compared to other games in the genre?

David Walgrave: I’m usually not very into graphics, but I do think our engine (built in-house) is doing extremely well. It’s fully 3D, supports an insane amount of interactive items, and has all sorts of fancy, state-of-the-art things going on. For instance, in our new engine, we use PBR and we have cloth simulation; everything looks so detailed and sharp from up close and any angle. I think our programming team deserves a huge ovation for a change!

Other than that, I love our combat system; it’s easy to understand, but it has so many different possibilities, abilities, skills, and talents. It becomes more complex, chaotic, and fun the deeper into it that you go.

I also think a Divinity game stands out because of our design philosophies: Everything can be moved, used, and destroyed if you like. You can talk to anyone, trade with them, kill them. Systemic reactivity forces us to design the world in such a way that it really comes to life. This world that we’ve created is full of memorable experiences that are really going to get people talking.

Whether you are completely new to the series or a seasoned veteran, you’ll have your chance to explore Rivellon in less than a month from now. The Steam Early Access version of Divinity: Original Sin 2 launches on September 15th.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.hookedgamers.com/pc/divinity_original_sin_2/preview/article-1403.html

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN 2

ENTIRELY NEW GAME

Even from the half hour demo I saw of Divinity: Original Sin 2 at Gamescom this year, I can tell that fans of the original game will not be disappointed by the sequel. That’s not to say this is just the same game repeated, though. Developers Larian Studios assured us they are not just using the same engine to tell a new story, they are building an entirely new game. Features are being added, new things are being experimented with, but you will still be getting a similar core experience which made Original Sina great RPG.

RACES

Character creation has received an overhaul, with the most important change being you can now select your race, while previously you were forced to play as a human. Your race will affect how people react to you in the world, and right now there are a handful to choose from, including Lizards, Dwarves, Elves, and Undead. You will also get a racial skill unique to that race, and a couple of talents. The developers are going outside the norm with Divinity, as Elves have a talent called corpse eater. It’s not as sinister as it sounds though, as this is how people are remembered in their culture. If you are an elf and eat a corpse out in the world, you might remember something from that person’s history. In character creation you can even choose your own personal musical instrument, which will change some of the audio cues during the game.

The tag system which has been talked about before in relation to Divinity games has finally been implemented for Original Sin 2. There are nine writers for the game, and they have the job of making sure a certain tag assigned to them is used in all the dialogue. In this way, it really feels like you have made a difference to the world by selecting a certain character and traits, and Larian hopes this will provide truly unique playthroughs for everyone. You automatically get the tags “female” and “elf” if you select a female elf, but you can add a couple of your choosing. Maybe you will choose “outlaw” and “hero” and become sort of a Robin Hood character. The game will start reacting to these tags as you play. There are dynamic tags which you may gain and lose throughout the game too. You might become “champion of the arena,” but if you lose that title, you will also lose the tag.

ORIGIN STORY

Class selection doesn’t really bind you to any specific set of skills, so you can still do whatever you want in the game, within reason. There are presets which are made for you, but if you are familiar with the intricacies of all the stats and attributes and talents, you can customise them to your heart’s content. Another new addition is the origin story. You can choose not to take one, but if you do, it adds a personal goal to the game for that specific premade character. For example, Lohse is a fun girl, but she also has a demon in her head which forces her to do or say something. It’s her personal quest to get rid of the demon. The characters you don’t select will turn up in the world, and they will be progressing their own stories, so they will change each time you meet them. They might even be conflicting with your own, even if they end up joining your party, so the only way to see an origin story through to the end is to play as that character.

As for the gameplay, Divinity: Original Sin players will feel at home, although there are some slight tweaks. The dialogue will now be tailored to your various tags, and you will still need to select the right option for how you want to play the game. The characters in your party aren’t safe in dialogue either, as we were shown instances where characters just straight up got killed if they chose the wrong dialogue option. You can still interact with just about anything in the game, as long as it’s not too heavy. You can interact with anyone, and you can kill anyone, even quest givers. Combat is still turn based, but there is a bit more surface interaction in combat. You might paint an area with a certain element, and blow it up with a different element. Turning a surface red with blood can be combined with a contamination spell to turn it into an acid, making short work of enemies. There are also cursed and blessed surface interactions. Standing in fire is bad, but if you bless it, it turns it into a good fire which will heal you.

EARLY ACCESS SOON

Larian understand how important the story is to an RPG, so although the tongue-in-cheek humour the series is known for is still there, the developer claims to be telling a more “gripping” story with Original Sin 2. The new game looks to be more of the same, but with extra improvements across the board. The game is going into Steam’s Early Access program on September 15, with an eye on an eventual full release later this year.

 

[AwesomeButton]

with an eye on an eventual full release later this year.

Really? Has this been confirmed? I thought they were still avoiding answer to that question.

 

[Bubbles]

with an eye on an eventual full release later this year.

Really? Has this been confirmed? I thought they were still avoiding answer to that question.

Bubbles: So it's basically in flux… you probably not anticipating a final release very soon then?

Swen: Well, it'll take as long as it takes, but I think it'll slip for sure into the next year.

 

[Infinitron]

So, PAX West has quietly begun, and Larian are there (as are Obsidian). Bit weird to start on a weekend, but I guess there'll be new stuff starting from Monday. Plenty of photos on their Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/larianstudios

 

[Bubbles]

No signs of a Torment presence though. Maybe inXile is only Tier 2 after all.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/d...-your-friends-in-divinity-original-sin-2.aspx

Divinity: Original Sin 2
Take On Your Friends In Divinity: Original Sin 2

While the first Divinity: Original Sin surprised me as an awesome throwback to the glory days of PC RPGs,the upcoming Divinity: Original Sin 2 is bringing even more to the table on top of the single player experience. Players can form special groups and actually take on their friends (or enemies, or random people) in turn-based arena combat, letting players engage with the elemental combinations, knockdowns, blessings and curses in whole new ways, far from the beach critters and swarms of spiders, undead, and NPCs. At PAX West 2016, I had my first opportunity to take on another player with all of the cool skills and abilities that make up the turn-based combat of Divinity: Original Sin.

In the demo, players can only select from some pre-rolled core archetypes, like warriors, mages, rogues, and rangers. They come with full suites of everything you need to destroy other players, including the powerful source abilities that need to be "charged up" before use. To get source power, you have to move to certain points in the arena, which can be a risky proposition. You can go right for the power, but your opponent will see you going for it and set up a plan to stop you. If my demo was any indicator, this plan will likely involve poison, fire, and knockdowns before an untimely demise. While I was absolutely annihilated, it was an excellent way to demonstrate the risk-reward factor of source acquisition in arena.

Verticality is incredibly important in the arena as well. Not only does it make you harder to hit when you're up on a platform, but you also enjoy some additional range and damage bonuses. Planting a ranger or mage up on a tower is a great way to rain death down on your opponents.

Explosive elemental barrels litter the arena, so from the first turn you should begin to plan around these. Stepping near these barrels is an incredibly risky proposition, as they can be hit to lay out fields of fire or poison, or even set up a wet and wild area to add some electric doom to. As always when it comes to Divinity: Original Sin, being aware of your environment - and being able to manipulate it - is critical to success.

While the core draw for me will likely always be the single player RPG elements and campaign when it comes to Divinity: Original Sin 2, but arena seems like a fun way to showcase the myriad abilities available in the game in a fast and furious format. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it when Divinity: Original Sin 2 launches next year.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Is the game already available to download thorough steam early access?

 

[Jedi Exile]

Not yet.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

An inspiring presence energised Swen...!



Sadly, soon afterwards he mysteriously collapsed into a deep depression

 

[Infinitron]

Your mechanics have been assimilated

 

[Infinitron]

WAIT!

 

[Jedi Exile]

Josh looks like he is having fun.

 

[Rahdulan]

I love the expression on Sawyer's face.

So this... is true balance.

 

[vortex]

When does Swen sleep?

 

[pbdt]

Id bet a few bucks that Balanceman doesnt play any computer games and actually sucks at them preetty much. He loves to theorize though! He is like a pleb academic.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

When does Swen sleep?

Sleep is for the dead.

 

[imweasel]

OMG that jaw dropping good balance in Arena Mode

 

[Jaesun]

I wish someone would have notified me, and I would have gone to Pax West as a Codex representative....

 

[Makabb]

 

[Rivmusique]

"singleplayer"

No.

 

[Infinitron]

Also wasn't one of the complaints about D:OS EE that they overbalanced it

 

[J_C]

Id bet a few bucks that Balanceman doesnt play any computer games and actually sucks at them preetty much. He loves to theorize though! He is like a pleb academic.

Didn't he play Icewind Dale on a stream and he pretty much owned the game? So he is actually a pretty good player when it comes to cRPGs.