Board 8 > We're two weeks away from the full release of Divinity: Original Sin 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's so much content just glossed over in this trailer. The game is huge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTWTFX8qzPI

Origin Stories

- Divinity: Original Sin 2 introduces origin stories, different background stories that players will be able to choose for their characters.
- Origin stories will expand and evolve throughout the main campaign: players will have their unique Origin Quests to fulfill and their background and personality will change NPCs’ reactions and create new dialog options and quest opportunities.
- Origin stories are closely tied with the main narrative of the game. Even if the player doesn’t pick up a certain origin story, that character will still exist in the game world as an NPC you can recruit to your party.
- If you don’t recruit a certain origin story character, you will still see their story unfolding throughout the main campaign.
- Depending on who they are, different party members will have different dialogs with the inhabitants of Rivellon. Selecting who does the talking has a big impact on how the story evolves.
- In co-op mode, players with different origin stories will frequently have mutually exclusive, conflicting goals, determined by Origin Quests. If they want to advance their own personal quests, they will have to compete or co-operate.

Pen & Paper Freedom

Extended Player Freedom

- Every choice is yours. You can kill anyone, talk and trade with everyone (including animals, if you have the Pet Pal skill), steal and sneak your way through quests… but there’s a huge number of new mechanics in place to ensure that every situation can be solved in as many ways as we could dream up. For example, the Spirit Vision ability allows you to talk to ghosts of dead NPCs to extract information. If you’re an Elf, you can eat limbs to learn about their owners and even learn new skills. Your race, gender, origin story, and other personality tags unlock plenty of new ways to solve problems in the game.

Break The Game - We Want You To!

- Because we build our games in a very systemic way, there are still a vast number of exploits we want people to use to have fun. Don’t be limited by RPG rules; create your own. Can’t find the key to the door? Smash it with a fireball! Want to get a fancy chest lying in the cave you don’t know how to access? Teleport it! We give you the tools and the freedom you need to solve any quest the way you want.

4 Player Co-Op (drop in/drop out, full controller support, 2 player split-screen support)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHqguB7ihE

Game Master Mode (create your own campaigns!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9cPK2_qKU

Fully Voiced & Orchestral Soundtrack!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCpzzG8dtE

This game looks like it has all that made the first game special and more. I'm so excited. Who's picking it up (or already backed the Kickstarter)?
---

Ffffffuck it looks incredible.

I'm trying to work my way through a 2nd playthrough of the first. I just haven't had much time.
---

I'm glad they made the decision to go fully voiced. it really helps Divinity stand out from its peers.
---

looks neato
---

But did they fix all the annoying crap from D:OS1?
---

thanks. I pledged $25 Canadian dollars on Kickstarter so I like to think I'm responsible for all of this game's success.
---

azuarc posted...

But did they fix all the annoying crap from D:OS1?

I anticipate someone will ask, so I'll just start explainng now.

1) Rock, paper, scissors.
2) Attribute bonuses force you to basically dedicate your whole character to your main equipment stat, and even then you still lose your equipment mid-fight and are a sitting duck if you get hit with a debuff.
3) Rock, paper, scissors.
4) Pathing glitches where it's impossible to make your guys path through a ground hazard out of battle, and impossible to make them avoid it when you're in battle.
5) Overloading of the left mouse button operator leads to some very obnoxious misclicks you can't take back, especially when you click ground instead of the enemy just because their idle animation moves them out of the way
6) Did I mention rock, paper, scissors?
7) Dragging and throwing barrels to block off traps often had some hilariously bad results
8) There were two points in the campaign where you literally could not progress unless you had leveled up a character's stealth. Unfortunately the game doesn't warn you of this, so you play to about level 15 before you find out that you suddenly need to find invisibility potions or something.
9) Critical spells aren't always available, and thus you can occasionally be shut out of being able to fully build your character.
10) Inventory management was often dreadful, and equipment degradation was completely pointless when one point in repair was enough to deal with it. At least they fixed passing things around just to ID them in the EE.
11) Many other skills are indeed completely pointless. Lockpicking and bartering, to name a couple.

And those are just the things that I remember off the top of my head.
---

Is enhanced for the first game worth the 40 buck asking price?
---

KokoroAkechi posted...

Is enhanced for the first game worth the 40 buck asking price?

Do you have the original?
---

azuarc posted...

KokoroAkechi posted...

Is enhanced for the first game worth the 40 buck asking price?

Do you have the original?

No
---

I would wait until it's on sale, because I'm a cheap bastard and I'm pretty sure I've seen it on sale for less than 40 outside of sales, but it's a good game that reached for greatness and missed in a few places. I personally get fed up enough with those limitations and faults to be able to sing the game's praises, but it does do a number of things really well, and it's approach to the RPG genre is relatively unique.
---

The RPS mechanic is gone, thankfully. I don't know about pathing. They've done major overhauls on the AI in game so hopefully that extends to the pathing? It was mostly fine in the original version, but when I played around with the EE on console it had some, uh, issues.

Don't buy Divinity at full price. It's on sale often. It will probably go on sale around the time the sequel releases.
---

iiicon posted...

The RPS mechanic is gone, thankfully

NOOOOOOOOO
---

what

why
---

RPS was so horribly broken. The idea was okay, but you lost far more often than probability suggested you should. Like, when i have a charm factor of 3 to my opponent's 2, I should have at least a 50% chance to win. Quicksave, lose, quickload, lose, quickload, lose, quickload, lose...I once went 30 loads in a row like that before I finally won. The fact that I did eventually win shows that it doesn't save the random seed. It's just crooked as hell.
---

Seriously?

I don't think I ever lost against the AI when my stat was higher?
---

I played a co-op campaign with a friend, it was amazing. I hope the second game is at least as good, but it looks like it will be even better!

Maybe I should see if I can actually run it though...
---

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Seriously?

I don't think I ever lost against the AI when my stat was higher?

Are you telling me or asking me? Because there's absolutely no way that this would be true. RPS is patently crooked, and has been noted by myriad player complaints on various websites. It was from those that I found out I could save literally in the middle of the RPS roll, hit auto, and then reload fairly quickly.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say I've lost as many as 30 straight times. I might not actually have been favored in that match, but I definitely wasn't unfavored.
---

I promise you it's true.

I'll load it up when I get home and double check I'm not misremembering, but I feel like if you threw two of the same in a row, the AI would throw the weakness next pretty much until they lost without fail.
---

I never bother picking. I just hit space bar. But on the first few times I tried to play RPS, it seemed like I was constantly getting counterpicked, so I said to hell with it.
---