Editorial RPG Codex Report: Divinity: Original Sin 2, or, A Visit to Larian Studios

[Sensuki]

It's not original though.

 

[Grotesque]

free transport and accommodation are perfectly normal when you've been invited to a press event

You don't say...

but now with all the doxxing/stalking controversy going on, I'd rather play it safe.

pussy

Bubbles has a kick-ass name.

Ben Dover?

 

[Sensuki]

Mike Hunt

 

[Bubbles]

As long as you don't go into the game expecting Divinity: Total War you should be fine, I had a lot of fun with it anyway. The RTS element is focused on light and fast paced gameplay which some people didn't really like, but if you suck at RTS, you can always autoresolve those. Where the game really shines is in its writing and all the fun political choices you can make.

Swen is really, really looking forward to Act of Aggression by the way; he was waxing nostalgic about C&C Generals and the old FMV games as well. I get the feeling that Larian's choice of genres for new games might have a strong base in Swen's personal tastes.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Update 2 is up.



Would have told Infin, but I can't ever remember how.

 

[twincast]

Some choice reactions of mine on various parts of the article:

quotety-quote-quote

Original Sin 2 would include roughly 180 skills from the Enhanced Edition and “a shitload of new ones.” The term "shitload" was judged imprecise, so Swen clarified: “We're adding hundreds of spells and skills on top of everything that's already there.” These new abilities would also include “a truckload of new surfaces and clouds.” Swen cited the new Grease surface as an example; Grease could be set on fire like oil, but also had a chance of getting people stuck, which might force them to spend more time standing in the flames. Grease also had a third property: cast rain on burning grease and you get “a massive conflagration.” With swelling chest, he declared: “The creativity that's possible with all these combinations starts becoming the equivalent of what you can do with an AD&D rulebook!” The new game will also offer what Swen calls “skill crafting”: combining skill books to make new ones. Combining Summon Spider and Mute would grant you a book of Summon Stealth Spider. Grease and Rain would become Grease Rain, drenching the whole screen in grease. Lacerate and Rain would become Blood Rain, designed specifically for characters with the Leech talent: “all the rain keeps on healing you”. At that point I wrote “Balance???” in my notebook and underlined it five times.

There have also been changes to the combat gameplay, some already implemented, others planned for the future. The biggest change has been to drastically reduce the total amount of AP that a player gets per turn and to remove the AP bonus from the Speed attribute, while also reducing the AP cost of skills and spells. Currently, characters start with only 4 action points, but this is not a final decision. The reasoning for this change is that the previous system was too complicated. Larian had intended for players to use their APs strategically, saving some in one round to be able to spend more in the next. However, according to Swen this system “didn't work that well when [there were] 10 or 15 action points – people weren't calculating. Since [Larian] made that change [to 4 action points], people are really starting to think about what chains and combinations they are going to be making.” Those kinds of big numbers can be very annoying when you're trying to have fun, so this change is very welcome.

Swen also mentioned a cover system – walk your character up to an obstacle, press "C", and they will duck behind it, becoming harder to hit. I never actually got to see the system in action, but it's nice to see the OS series catch up to Blackguards 2 in terms of tactical gameplay options.

Character Origins

Competitive Questing and Asymmetric Goals

Kieron: Single player will work like in OS, but the companions will have a lot more motivation to do their own thing as well. Each of the individual characters – if you play this now, single player, the dwarf will do his own thing.

Gameplay: So he will just take off, for example?

Kieron: Not necessarily. He'll have his own motivations, he'll help you when he feels like it, and if he feels like this is against his will, he won't do it. The companions will react to you more than they did in OS, so even the single player experience will feel different. I hope you see this with the different species, with the elf and the dwarf. The whole point of this is that you feel racial tensions and those racial tensions will be present in the party as well as the game.

[...]

Kieron: I guess like, like you said, the ambition is that- we're hoping, first of all that you won't be just picking 4 characters, there'll actually be a selection. So if you play the single player game, and there's 6 or 8 or 10 [recruitable companions at the start] – whatever it is – and I pick 4 characters to play with, our hope is that these 4 characters will feel alive as a group much more than just your standard companion that just reacts to what you do and says "oh, I didn't like that" or "I did like that." We want the characters to be more of a driving force than a reactionary force. I believe that's what he [Swen] means. But again, this is early concept. When you pick your four characters, if you play multiplayer, you gonna have that experience [of characters having their own personalities and goals]. But if you play single player, your experience will change based on what characters you pick, because each character will interact with each other differently.

Bubbles: Right, so if one of the characters has a mission to kill a specific person [as shown in the prototype] and I just walk my party past them and say "Goodbye, I'm leaving forever now", then that character will... will he complain with me, or will he go out and kill that person, or what's the idea?

Kieron: [silence] Er... still don't know about that yet. You're asking specific questions, and I'd love to give you specific answers. We have our goals, we have our desires, to make it possible that these guys feel properly real, but I can't speculate.

Sarah: One thing that I really dislike is just plain filler lore books, like we have them in DOS. I feel annoyed when I pick up a book and it's really just someone's ramblings in there. I wanna read it and I want it to be relevant to me, either to the story that I'm playing, or give me a hint or something, or have some kind of gameplay value like this. If you invest your time reading, you want… [something relevant and linked to what you're busy with, at that time.]

Kieron: We certainly don't want a childish, quest-based relationship progress, if that makes sense. One thing [I don't like], playing games, is if I'm playing a game and have an option to romance a certain character and it's just a matter of talking to them now and probably doing something for them, and then, a few more missions later, I talk to them again and do something else for them. It's this kind of robotic progression – as writers we want to make sure that the characters feel so fleshed out when they're interacting, if something was potentially to blossom in their characters, plot-wise, we want the player to be able to explore that in a role playing context. But we don't want to give them a sort of childish kind of "tick a box" – "oh, I have a romantic option!" or "Now she's my wife," or "Now he's my husband." That's not the goal, the goal is to actually allow you to express the character. If I feel like I'm really playing this character, this human rogue, and I'm getting really into him, and it makes sense that the flirtations between [him and] somebody else starts to go somewhere then it should make sense that it should start to go somewhere.
[...]
Sarah: Oh, well, kind of... well, it's true there's nothing set in stone like quest design wise, but Jan [Van Dosselaer, senior writer] is working on a system, we're still trying to flesh out how many starting backgrounds you can have, and whether, from the beginning, you can play as a married couple [married characters] or as two people who have history together, to see if their relationship can grow together or decline, depending on the choices that you make. That's something we're talking about now, a system to implement that from the beginning, so that it's very organic from their backstory, that you have a sense of interacting with your partner – especially since it's in co-op.
[...]
Sarah: The way that I've seen it working so far is that you have an event or something that will trigger a dialogue, and you should be aware that this is a romance dialogue. Something will happen, you have a choice of four responses, one is very flirtatious, one is guarded or neutral, one is completely neutral, and one is dismissive or something like that. So you should be fairly aware of the relationship you're creating when you choose these. I'm not sure this is exactly how it's gonna go into the game, but when we've talked about how it's gonna work, this is kind of how we envision it. A bit like the affinity affection [sic] dialogues in D:OS – they were a bit gamey, not the best element of the game, but we're envisioning something like this where you have four options.

 

[Sensuki]

C&C Generals was awesome (did not like Zero Hour though)

GLA UNDERGROUND!

 

[vonAchdorf]

Swen doesn't like dwarves in RPGs.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I'm only at the beginning, but damn what a great read so far,

I assured him that our community was full of only the kindest and most professional people, and released him to return to his work.

:D

Nicely done Bubbles , honestly!

 

[jagged-jimmy]

2 months ago I wouldn't add a disclaimer, but now with all the doxxing/stalking controversy going on, I'd rather play it safe.

That's what i thought. The day we all start play it safe is the day Codex dies. So do your duty and just add after all the sexist stuff.

 

[Cadmus]

yes, rape her kill her shit in her mouth, the codex way

Swen seems to be the driving force behind the game which I think is great, the game needs a strong vision to not end up like Wasteland 2. Some of the kickstarter makes me worried that they are kinda designing the game by committee. I guess that's what they did with D:OS too and it shows. Whatever, I'm really after the combat anyway and they seem to understand how to make it good.

 

[Haba]

Odysseus balls those Dragon Commander waifu choices... If they put similar choices in divos2 I forgive the writing.

Seriously... I think.

I have to admit, Dragon Commander is probably the only dating sim ever where I seriously had difficult time deciding which chick to go for. They all had interesting personalities, after all.

 

[Excidium II]

The dwarven chick has some interesting personalities.

 

[Eyestabber]

That's what i thought. The day we all start play it safe is the day Codex dies. So do your duty and just add after all the sexist stuff.

Duly noted, newfaggotry on my part. Let's try that again, shall we?

WOW, GR8 DEV LEGS, TOTALLY KICKSTARTED MY PENIS, 10/10 WOULD STALK!!!

Spoiler

 

[Excidium II]

What are those acade machines?

 

[Jaedar]

I get the feeling that Larian's choice of genres for new games might have a strong base in Swen's personal tastes.

I suspect that having a lead, both of the project and of the company who is *really* into what you are making is a huge boon, and likely why all of larian's games, even the mediocre ones like dragon commander, are still very cool.

 

[DefJam101]

I, too, don't hate Roguey

 

[ROARRR]

I didn´t read everything, but I noticed the article is

very detailed(informative),
good structured(easy to select what I want to know) and
easy to read(not written in "nerd/geek/bureaucratic/academic" language)!

I like it...you get from me a newfag (blood)stone brofist
*puchau*

RPGWatch has some cool features. I like how every newspost has a little infobox for the game it's about.

I, too, don't hate Roguey

Me too! Even Hiver! I would have never joined the Codex-Forum if talking shit, trolling or saying his stupid opinion(that is mostly crushed in seconds here) was a trouble

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

^what the fuck, literally

 

[ROARRR]

^what the fuck, literally

I love you too

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Who are all these people who can play 4 person coop anyway? I tend to play RPGs I enjoy in marathon sessions. At a weekend I could conceivably play a newly released RPG all day if I liked it enough.

There are some people I regularly play Payday 2 with, but it doesn't normally go past 3 hours and they aren't into RPGs or story based dialogue games. It would be abominable to play a game like this with them.

So who are all these people? Why do they prefer giving other people dialogue choices instead of making them on their own? Why is it fun to have your companion run around town when you just want to go out and do some quests?

 

[Sitra Achara]

Who are all these people who can play 4 person coop anyway? I tend to play RPGs I enjoy in marathon sessions. At a weekend I could conceivably play a newly released RPG all day if I liked it enough.

There are some people I regularly play Payday 2 with, but it doesn't normally go past 3 hours and they aren't into RPGs or story based dialogue games. It would be abominable to play a game like this with them.

So who are all these people? Why do they prefer giving other people dialogue choices instead of making them on their own? Why is it fun to have your companion run around town when you just want to go out and do some quests?

Men with many cheeses?

 

[Eyestabber]

Hey Bubbles, these guys talk about all the cool stuff they intend to add, but let's be honest here: we don't really want CHANGE. Original Sin was great, and we kinda want more of the same. What's your impression on Larian's team? Do you feel that they understand what made D:OS great and are willing to scrap ideas that would CHANGE the game too much, therefore only ADDING a few cool stuff here and there OR do you feel like they're like "oh, OS was great, but we have this new awesome idea that is going to be totally BETTER..."? If you were to give it a 0-10, with 10 being "they will make an OS clone" and 0 being "it's a totally new game, no fucking idea what will come out", where would you stand?

Side note: is it just me, or Swen Vinckle has, like, maxed out his Charisma stat? Charisma 18 on D&D, 10 on Fallout and so on...?

 

[Zeriel]

He would have 25 in D&D.

 

[Bubbles]

Hey Bubbles, these guys talk about all the cool stuff they intend to add, but let's be honest here: we don't really want CHANGE. Original Sin was great, and we kinda want more of the same. What's your impression on Larian's team? Do you feel that they understand what made D:OS great and are willing to scrap ideas that would CHANGE the game too much, therefore only ADDING a few cool stuff here and there OR do you feel like they're like "oh, OS was great, but we have this new awesome idea that is going to be totally BETTER..."? If you were to give it a 0-10, with 10 being "they will make an OS clone" and 0 being "it's a totally new game, no fucking idea what will come out", where would you stand?

Well, most of the people I met at Larian hadn't worked on DOS 1 and none of them were dedicated gameplay designers, so that complicates things a little. Swen himself is trying to walk a tightrope between continuing everything that was great about the first game while at the same time revolutionizing the genre both in single- and multiplayer. Don't know how to rate that on a 0 to 10 scale.

The two senior writers both seemed to be tendentially more interested in providing continuity and improving on the foundation of the previous games than in making any sweeping changes; you might see that reflected in Sarah's answers in the interview.

But there are also elements that have been there from the beginning (like envisioning DOS 1 as a couch game played with controllers) that weren't quite so obvious in the release version of the first game, but are quickly coming to the fore now. That might seem like a major change in direction to PC players, even through it technically isn't.