Divinity: Original Sin Pre-Release Thread

[Gragt]

Co-op feels very natural and elegant. I'm writing about it but right now I'll say to those who are wary of it that it is entirely optional and the game can be played as a proper single player CRPG where you control 2 characters at the start and add more to your party (think Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Nevewinter Nights 2, and many others). If you want to entirely ignore the co-op aspect, then go for it. That said, the co-op feels great in D:OS since you are in no way tied together and you can explore together if you want or just go on your own separate ways but still have ways to interact with each other (spoilers ).

Combat feels especially nice because of the combos system. Yes, you could play it all alone and control each character but there is something genuinely fun about talking with your partner about the strategy you could use to clear an encounter and then make it happen. Turn-based makes it especially possible.

 

[evdk]

Co-op feels very natural and elegant. I'm writing about it but right now I'll say to those who are wary of it that it is entirely optional and the game can be played as a proper single player CRPG where you control 2 characters at the start and add more to your party (think Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Nevewinter Nights 2, and many others). If you want to entirely ignore the co-op aspect, then go for it. That said, the co-op feels great in D:OS since you are in no way tied together and you can explore together if you want or just go on your own separate ways but still have ways to interact with each other (spoilers ).

Combat feels especially nice because of the combos system. Yes, you could play it all alone and control each character but there is something genuinely fun about talking with your partner about the strategy you could use to clear an encounter and then make it happen. Turn-based makes it especially possible.

I don't like you.

Spoiler

so jealous

 

[felipepepe]

Gragt, does the combat feels too much combo/elemental based? I say this because every trailer and video showed people casting elemntal spells to display the possibilities, but I never saw someone just hitting stuff with a sword...

 

[Gragt]

Gragt, does the combat feels too much combo/elemental based? I say this because every trailer and video showed people casting elemntal spells to display the possibilities, but I never saw someone just hitting stuff with a sword...

Well, it's a big part of combat because it can be incredibly useful to stun a couple of orcs who walked into that puddle with a lightning spells, but at the same time you are limited in the amount of spells you can cast by your mana pool. So far your health and mana do not regenerate at all, even outside of combat — it might change but they seemed rather pleased with that aspect of things. That means that you need to be careful with your potions and casting spells might not be the best way to deal with each encounter. Sometimes you even need to create the situation to make a combo, like throw that oil barrel you've been carrying and hope that enemies will clump around it, because it doesn't exist by default. So yes, sometimes the most efficient way to do things is to go in melee and hit stuff with your sword or mace, actually some enemies are weak to some kind of physical damage (skeletons and crushing) so that might be a good idea. Plus enemies caught in melee between two enemies will get the "flanked" status which decreases their defense and makes it easier for everyone to cause more damage. Oh and then there are the attacks of opportunity, just like TOEE (not present in the alpha I played but it'll definitely be there when it ships and I was shown as working exemple on another computer, specifically so I could report to the Codex that AOO will be in)!

So yes, it's not all about magic. It can help you manipulate and control the battlefield but using it can be very costly. Of course that would be nullified if you are drowned in potions but I trust Larian to not commit that mistake. That said, using a potion takes some of your action points away, so sometimes the best and easiest way to do it is get closer and hit them with your sword. Also they plan to do some combos with spells and physical attacks, like how a frozen enemy can be shattered with hits in melee.

 

[evdk]

Is there a lot of those conveniently positioned pools of water / exploding barrels and the like?

 

[Gragt]

Is there a lot of those conveniently positioned pools of water / exploding barrels and the like?

There are some but I didn't see many. But you can create them! One way would be to summon an ice elemental and try to have it draw the attention of the enemies. Besides the obvious advantages, it will leave a patch of ice behind when it dies, which will give a chance to make enemies slip on it and fall, losing a turn. Use a fireball on it and it'll damage the enemies and turn the ice into water, which can then be electrified to stun the enemies caught in it for a few turns.

Oil barrels aren't exactly explosive. First there weren't too many of them and they were usually placed without enemies around, so to use them one of us had to grab one and carry it, just like in Divine Divinity. Then when you shoot it, it breaks and drops poison on the floor. That poison can then be ignited with fire, poisoning and putting those too close to it on fire.

There was an area with conveniently placed puddles of poison which could be set on fire to fight zombies (weak to fire but immune to poison) but there was also a big bad thing that got healed by fire so as you can see, it wasn't exactly a clear "i win!" option and in fact could easily make the fight harder.

 

[hiver]

Is there any other kinds of spells except elemental ones?

 

[SCO]

I hope they playtest enough so that the ice-sword fiasco from divine divinity doesn't repeat itself. Is loot location randomization in (by location difficulty tiers obviously, not level scaled)?

 

[MicoSelva]

Is there a lot of those conveniently positioned pools of water / exploding barrels and the like?

I was instantly reminded of that Dark Messiah review which called the game The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot Deathboot In the Land of Conveneniently Placed Spikes.

EDIT:
Found this interview with Swen (over some stock footage of Original Sin and Dragon Commander). I especially like the part when he says that previous Larian games have fans despite their combat systems, not because of them. So true.

 

[hiver]

ah, there are also curses:

There are six primary stats and manipulating them in combat can lead to surprising results.
For instance, lowering the intelligence of an enemy with a curse spell, will cause it to walk into pools of lava (uttering words like "look, how shiny"). Or if you lower an enemy's dexterity, it has a much higher chance of falling down when it crosses an ice surface, forcing it to skip its next turn. Or...

cool.

 

[Jestai]

Launched the video at a random point "C&C, things that many RPG players enjoy, recent games like The Witcher and Dragon Age have made you make odd choices, what kind of things can we expect here ?"
THE WORLD IS PLAGUED.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Personally, I consider the immense trolling potential of the co-op dialogues to be the main selling point of this game. I mean, turn-based combat, Ultima 7 item combination, all of that would make the game really cool on their own, but a game system that not only facilitates fucking with people, but encourages it? The moment I showed that to friends, everyone went into "MUST BUY" mode.

Yup, a bro of mine and I had the same reaction way back when it was announced. Our favourite pastime activity is to coop Serious Sam and blow up eachother just as often as the enemies, all to satisfy the friendly spirits of coop. A game where we can trorr one another in every dialogue that pops up understands the spirit of coop very well

 

[Spectacle]

Also, if both players put a heavy emphasis on diplomacy skills in order to be competitive in the co-op dialogues, they'll be weaker as a team since they could have put those skillpoints into something more useful, at most one "face" character is needed.
I expect most players will ignore the co-op dialogue system and make joint decisions the old-fashioned way over chat etc.

As I wrote, your social skills increase with the stats that you also use for combat. The whole thing is designed so that the various stats interact a lot with each other.

So then what decides who is better at diplomacy?

Jestai, I'm not saying how the game should be played bro, just how it will be played by 95% of the players, if the co-op system in place is how it appears to be.

 

[Jestai]

Aye aye, maybe it's my competitive side who speaks too loud anyway. I don't know, the idea to tell your friend "fuck off, let's just do it my way oh and by the way your dull character is my character's bitch once again today" looks just too good to be true. This is why I'm trying to find ways to (over?)balance it. But you're right, players will most likely be flower pickers holding hands and trying to find consensus every time : "But I really want to help this poor seashell !" "Ok, no problem ^^^^^^^".

 

[MicoSelva]

On the question of randomization:

How much randomness is there in the game? Is all the content hand placed or are there any so-called random encounters? Are there respawning enemies? What about loot? Is there any randomization in the items we find?

No, all encounters are hand-placed and unless there's a good reason, there's no respawning enemies. But yes, there is some randomization in the items you find (though not all)

 

[Volrath]

Belgium, a small country at the forefront of incline

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.lar.net/2013/03/30/kickstarter-campaign-3-days-in/

Personally, I think we can still have a campaign that can go way beyond our funding goal, though admittedly, we will need to fix a few obvious things (well, they’re obvious now ) like the rewards, part of the story we tell (less features, more who and why), and what happens if we fail in this Kickstarter. Thank you to DarkUnderlord,Robcat and the rest of the gang for helping us get these insights btw.

 

[Zeriel]

I was actually thinking the same thing he mentions in that blog when I saw the number of views their main video has. I don't think the pitch is particularly bad--I think the Kickstarter in general for whatever reason just hasn't had much direct exposure yet. If you look at the views on the video vs. the backers, its kind of amazing how many backers they already have with so few views. (Assuming people who back actually watch the video.)

 

[Gragt]

Is there any other kinds of spells except elemental ones?

I don't know about the final version but the alpha only had elemental spells as far as I can recall: ice, fire, electric and water though there were some effects like poison.

So then what decides who is better at diplomacy?

Lots of stuff from what I heard but I don't know :D All I know is that the intent is to not let one player be in a position to win every single argument.

 

[Haba]

its kind of amazing how many backers they already have with so few views. (Assuming people who back actually watch the video.)

They have most probably now gotten all those people who knew of the game already and need not to be convinced. The real trial by fire is filling the remaining gap with people who've never heard of DtOS

 

[Zeriel]

Just to recap: outside of Kickstarter's own website, and direct links, RPGWatch & RPGCodex are second and third highest clickthroughs for this thing so far. D:OS is so underexposed that we're mainstream.

 

[Zed]

rpg watch ahead of codex in directing pledgers to the KS...
well that's what you get when you break a news embargo, I guess. dirty tricks.

 

[JarlFrank]

its kind of amazing how many backers they already have with so few views. (Assuming people who back actually watch the video.)

They have most probably now gotten all those people who knew of the game already and need not to be convinced. The real trial of fire is filling the remaining gap with people who've never heard of DtOS

Yeah, I didn't even watch the video cause I already knew from previous Codex news that it will be a good game.

 

[Arkeus]

WOOHOOO 200K achieved.
Let's hope for this update, shall we?

 

[Jaesun]

Update #2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin/posts/441170?ref=activity

Shortest Review Meeting Ever (And Underwear)
Update #2 · Mar 30, 2013 · comment

"Ooooh, we're half way theeee-eeere, wooo-oo..."

Thank you! You’ve helped us reach 50% of our funding goal in less than 72 hours. Your show of support is very rewarding to all the developers in our team and we’re really happy about the feedback you’ve been giving us. You cannot imagine how important it is to a developer like us to be able to interact directly with our players and we look forward to having many more discussions with you in the comments sections.

As promised, here’s our second update.

Early bird reward
As a token of appreciation to all our fans who pledged already (and the ones we hope are going to pledge in the very near future) we’re giving away Zandalor’s trunks of epic intelligence to the first 5000 backers! Wear these and you’ll be able to discover an easter egg in the final version of the game – but beware, these trunks are rumored to have an opinon about things! (Item does not unbalance the game.)

This piece of concept art shows these trunks off. As to Sir John himself, I don't know if he, or his utility-belt-system, is still in.

[Jaesun says HOT!]

Review meeting video
A snapshot of a small review meeting between David & Swen in which we play through a section of the game and comment on what still needs to be done. This is quite relevant to this Kickstarter campaign. We came to Kickstarter to be able to make all these changes that we're talking about. You’ll see quite a few game systems in action that haven’t been shown yet, and which we’ll re-address in more detail in future updates. Included are our thoughts on animal empathy, gender recognition, consistency of the game world and… teleporter pyramids!

Let us know if you agree with their comments!

Blog update
Swen wrote a new blog update in which he comments on the impression that the Kickstarter is not going fast enough. The general gist is that 1 in 5 people who see the Kickstarter video back our campaign (which is an amazingly high number), but that the number of views is relatively low. So obviously we’re looking for ways to increase the amount of RPG players that come to our page, because we’re convinced that this is a game all RPG players want to play. He also included an overview of how people are arriving on our Kickstarter page.
http://www.lar.net/2013/03/30/kickstarter-campaign-3-days-in/

Rewards
We’re going to be changing the reward structure and type of rewards a bit in the coming days, so stay tuned for more info. We'll also make a matrix so it's easier to see what is in what, and update the graphics on the main page.

Next update

Expect a new update by Tuesday, and thank you once again!!!

Thank you. Thank you very much.