"In our game," said Singh, "within character creation, we actually let the player decide how that conquest happened, and based off the decisions that you make there, you actually shape the starting state of the world. And so, depending on those choices you're actually going to get a very different experience."
I saw some evidence of this during the demo. Our Fatebinder visited a town called Plainsgate, in a land that was devastated by powerful magic during the war. Plainsgate used to be a flourishing farming community that bore crops and could feed thousands, but post-war it's become barren and is constantly rocked by earthquakes.
In another game we visited the same town, though due to different choices made during character creation the events of the war had played out differently. In this game the conflict in Plainsgate had been much more severe, and the land was even more damaged by magic to the point where a portion of the town had actually crumbled into a chasm. It's name was even different: in this reality, it was called Halfgate.
More than just the landscape was changed due to the choices made at the start of the game. In one instance, we were allied with a faction called the Scarlet Chorus, one of Kyros' many armies which served him during the war. In the second playthrough, the Scarlet Chorus considered the Fatebinder to be an enemy. While both the Fatebinder, the Scarlet Chorus, and other factions serve the Overlord, it clearly doesn't mean everyone gets along.
A player's choices at the beginning of the game can also determine which quests they'll take on. On the trip to Plainsgate we were looking for a half-human prisoner called a Beastman who might have information on how to break the magic spells that had been cast over the land and restore it to its past farming glory. In the Halfgate version, however, we were there to kill the Beastman. These types of changes brought on by player choices while creating their character are one way Obsidian is hoping to make the game a different experience on subsequent playthroughs.
