The Nitty Gritty of Divinity: Original Sin 2

[dropcap size=big]S[/dropcap]o with the announcement of Divinity: Original Sin 2’s Kickstarter campaign, and with the game reaching its funding goal in less than a day, I decided to delve into the nitty gritty details about the improvements we should expect from the sequel to the critically acclaimed role playing game, and see what changes and advancements were made.

According to Divinity: Original Sin 2’s creative director, Swen Vencke, you’ll get to pick and create a character and decide their race, stats, and origin story, the latter of which will supposedly play a huge role in how the game plays out for you.  In addition to creating your own character you’ll also be able to recruit three team mates to join you.

It is definitely interesting to see how who you choose to come with you, or who you choose to be, will affect how you play the game, and how the narrative will play out.  For example; the Kickstarter video consists of alpha footage using the Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced engine and assets, which there will be changes throughout the development process.  During the gameplay I noticed some very interesting things.  In the footage there’s a party of four characters, which consisted of a Dwarf, a Wood Elf, an Imperial Mage, and a Knight. In the scenario shown the party of four needed to go to a town in which they were wanted. When they entered they were immediately noticed by one of the guards. Because one of the characters was born in the town they were infiltrating  the guards let them through instead of being thrown in jail; however one of the characters, the Dwarf, was not allowed to enter with the party due to how Dwarves are treated in that world.

The gameplay overall seems largely the same from the first game, utilizing turn-based combat based on RPG stats.  The dialogue tree has been re-vamped though.  It will give more options to progress through a conversation in order to achieve your goals, which changes from character to character effectively changing how you will progress through a conversation with an Npc.

Original Sin 2 will also feature a 4 player co-op mode in which you can either cooperatively play with or against each other.  What exactly they mean by the latter I’m not entirely sure as since the developer haven’t elaborated any further than that, but it is assumed that you can hurt one another if you decide to play competitively.

There is so much more I can go over in this one post alone, but I think you get the gist of it.   I’d suggest reading through the Kickstarter page to learn more about the game if you haven’t done so already.  If you do decide to pledge some money to support Larian Studios to develop this game you can get access to the Alpha and Beta build of the game through Steam once they’re available. When this will be happening I don’t know, but the developers have stated that Divinity: Original Sin 2 is scheduled to be released in late 2016.

Anyways, if this article has convinced you to go and pledge some money for Divinity: Original Sins 2’s development then go ahead and throw a couple bucks at the Kickstarter.  For those of you on the fence I leave you with Larian’s pitch video for Divinity: Original Sin 2. Enjoy.