Divinity: Original Sin (Impressions, hints, tips)

[Honolulu_Blue]

I went to Chicago for the weekend to visit a friend of mine and we ended up playing this pretty much all weekend.

Definitely a fun game. It's really hard. We played it for a quite a while and just made 6th level by the time we were done.

Combat-wise, the game really is all about the tactics and using your environment as best as possible. I can't tell you the number of times a large puddle of water + shock spell meant the difference between life and death for our party. Most battles seem largely about crowd control.

We switched it to "easy" for a few fights and that was far too easy. It's quite a large gap between "easy" and "normal".

I was struggling to figure out where to spend my skill points for the mage. At least early on.

A lot of the writing and quests were delightfully weird and funny. I mean, two words: smelly panties (+1 charisma!)

[BreizhManu]

yeah the humour is great, they use a lot of private jokes too (zyxzax and bellegar are recurring characters).

although i miss the cinematics they had in their previous opus.

that one was my favourite (and it was really a hard fight) :

divinity 2 funny - YouTube

[Blackadar]

It's not divinity humor, but I always loved this:

Enchantment? Enchantment! - Dragon Age: Origins - YouTube

Spoiler

It's at the endgame of Dragon Age. You walk into the 2nd to last room in the game and there's this simpleton that you've run into back in camp who can't do much of anything. He says one word - "enchantment" - and is an idiot savant. Then you walk into this room, look at the monsters he's killed with a simple dagger and realize he can kill monsters far better than you can. Enchantment indeed!

Just a funny way of tweaking the ego of the player just before the final battle.

[JAG]

Lariat made a recent blog post about D:OS, upcoming improvements to the game, and what's to come after. I found it pretty exciting.

Leaked: The Larian plans for 2015/2016 and beyond | Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios

Leaked: The Larian plans for 2015/2016 and beyond
Posted on December 18, 2014

No, I never I expected us to win PC Game of the Year on Gamespot. Not in a million dreams. But I’m damn proud we did. It’s the cherry on top of what has been a fantastic 2014 for Larian Studios and it’s incredibly motivating for all of us to see that all that effort gets rewarded at the end of the day. I was a walking corpse by the end of development but given the amount of support we received, I’d do it again in an instant.

And even if we already said it a thousand times, I’ll say it again – we couldn’t have achieved this level of success without the help of all our Kickstarter backers, the people who made suggestions during Steam Early Access and forums like RpgCodex, RpgWatch and of course our own Larian forum. It deserves to be said over and over and any dev not listening to the hivemind yet really should be paying attention.

Since I like contrast, today’s blog entry is going to be about everything that sucked about Divinity:Original Sin

Or rather, it’s going to be about how we hope to do better in the coming years, and what steps we are taking to make it so. In other words, I’ll try to tell you without telling you exactly what our plans are for the next years.

Progress can only be made if you’re aware of your faults and intend to do something about it, so explaining our plans starts with explaining what I think sucked about D:OS and more importantly, why those sucky things made it to the final game.

In one paragraph and unsurprisingly, my biggest issues with the game are the same things most people had issues with. I think the main story can be told a lot better and has more potential than is apparent, that combat falls a bit flat after act 1 and that crafting,inventory & trade UIs could use a bunch of improvements. Certain dialogs should be done better, there’s still a lot of feedback missing from tooltips & skills, and at higher levels character progression isn’t as cool as it should be. Our loot system doesn’t behave as hoped for, and the companions could use some work.

Add a few hundreds to that and you have my list but, and it’s an important but, despite all this, I still think it’s a pretty good game. There’s plenty of good stuff in there that compensates for the bad, even if there’s a lot that can be improved. And there’s another but too. Those criticisms are not aimed at anybody in our team. They are merely the result of the constraints we worked under when making the game.

Anyway, can you guess what is keeping us busy for the moment?

Yep, we’re fixing parts of the story, improving the UIs, revisiting the encounters, rebalancing the loot, rewriting certain dialogs, adding extra feedback, looking at what we can do to fix character progression, improving the companions etc…

Or what did you expect?

But why were those issues there in the first place? In one phrase: We started from scratch(except for a few systems) when making D:OS and we really had a very small team to do it with. So to avoid having to write another blog entry about what sucks after the release of our next game, we’re now putting a lot of effort and investment in addressing these two issues i.e. We’re increasing our development capacity and we’re ensuring hat we can construct on top of what we’ve already created.

Starting with the development capacity, in about 80% of the cases, bad things in D:OS are related to compromises made because of lack of time. To be honest, they frustrate the hell out of me because I can’t look at them without thinking of what it should’ve been. I hate development compromise but when you have a small team, and iteration is a big part of your development process, inevitably your run out of time and disasters happen when somebody falls sick or makes a mistake. Since you have to make mistakes if you want to be creative and you can’t help falling sick, there’s unfortunately only a few options: You can iterate less(bad idea), you can reduce scope significantly(bad idea for a RPG) or you can increase team size, with a focus on increasing redundancy and removing bottlenecks from your development process.

Luckily we can now take that last option and so we’ve been increasing headcount. There were 42 of us when we finished D:OS, there’s 53 of us now and the number is set to increase throughout 2015.

One of the cool things we’re doing to boost our team size is setting up a new office in Quebec City. Our purpose is straightforward: to get access to some of the experience and talent that’s running around there so that our combined craft gets better. I’ll have more to say about that in the near future but suffice it to say that for Larian, this is a very big step. (Should you be interested in working there, [email protected] will be the place to apply and our job pages with open positions will be appearing soon.)

It’s a lot of growth for a small independent developer from Gent, Belgium and I’m quite apprehensive of the dangers that brings. However, the commercial success of D:OS has given us an opportunity to make true some of our bigger RPG ambitions and I’ll be damned if we don’t seize that chance. Going all in paid off in the past so we might as well try again. After all, making big epic RPGs is what this company was made for even if the route there hasn’t always been that straight.

Fixing things is not all we’re doing however, far from it. We’re not hiring all those people just to transform D:OS in a better experience, no, obviously we’re also working on our new RPGs.

Notice the ‘s’. It’s intentional and while I’d love to tell you more about them, I need to refrain for fear of losing whatever press momentum we’ll be able to muster when we’ll announce them. But there’s one I thing I can already tell you, and it fits well with the second big thing we’re doing to improve the quality of our future offerings – both RPGs are being built on top of the D:OS engine.

It’s an important thing, because it means that whatever we fix in D:OS, will automatically be present in our new RPGs. It also means that we can spend most of our resources on developing new cool stuff without having to reinvent things that worked well already. And it immediately gives us a rationale for putting unreasonable amounts of effort in fixing the things we didn’t do that well in D:OS, meaning our existing players will continue to get improved gameplay for as long as we can maintain compatibility. Furthermore, it also means that the toolset is going to be improved for a long time to come and so eventually we’ll get more and better mods. We’ll even have a Linux version

We call it the secret Larian plan which now obviously isn’t that secret anymore, if ever it was. Our goal is to make new campaigns based on the same core single- and multi-player RPG engine which continuously gets improved, to perfect the rulesets driving it and to increase the amount of stuff you can do in our RPG worlds, all the while making the lore and universe(s) more solid. That latter (s) btw is something that may or may not materialise, so don’t wonder about it too much right now

There’s tons of stuff we can do in the type of gameworlds we pioneered with D:OS and we intend to show that it was a mistake to abandon this type of gameplay in the beginning of the century, taking full advantage of the effort we already poured into D:OS.

You’re not going to see huge animated movies with barely interactive worlds from us in which millions of dollars go to cutscenes. Instead, you’ll see dense, highly interactive worlds where the amount of possible interactions continuously increases and your freedom to do as you want approaches that of a pen & paper RPG. That too costs a lot, but it yields gameplay which is much more up my alley and thankfully, there are a lot of you who enjoy it. As long as that is the case, we’ll keep on making games like this.

Our ambitions are really very high and I can’t wait to play some of the new things we’ll be trying. Throughout its history, Larian has always tried to do new things in each game we released, and we won’t stop doing that. It goes without saying that we’ll fuck things up from time to time, it is our way, but luckily our players are there to tell us when we do, and we’ll keep on listening. I recently looked at the list of suggestions we received during development, and the amount of those suggestions we implemented. It’s a very impressive list but what’s even more impressive is the list of suggestions we didn’t implement, yet.

And that’s really the gist of it.

To ensure our next games will be better, we’re increasing our team size so we can avoid having to make certain development compromises, and we’re building on top of what we have already to prevent the pitfalls of having to start from scratch again. Because we want the foundations to be rock solid, we’re spending a lot of effort on improving the first game in what hopefully becomes a series of games that will lead us to the RPG I’ve been dreaming of, you know, the very big RPG that will dwarf them all.

So unleash your furies about what you think we screwed up in D:OS. Tell us, here or on our forums. We’re listening, and we’re continously picking up and implementing your feedback. We’ve made it an integral part of our development process. But also tell us what you’d really like to see in RPGs like this. Don’t forget that we’re making these so you can play them with friends too. It’s part of the vision. Let us know how we can improve that part.

And happy holidays.

And thank you for everything. In case you didn’t see it yet, here’s a movie Thomas made to show just exactly how important player feedback was for the success of Divinity:Original Sin.

[Ironhead]

Hmmmm.....I was going to pick this up but if they feel they are going to release a much improved version of the game sometime in the future I might as well wait.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I really enjoy this game. I am still plowing through it slowly with a friend of mine.

I'd love if they expanded co-op play to 4 people.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Ironhead

Hmmmm.....I was going to pick this up but if they feel they are going to release a much improved version of the game sometime in the future I might as well wait.

I had been playing it mutliplayer but it looks like I'm going to have to start over and go single player so I think I'm going to wait too. Thankfully I might have one or two games to play in the meantime.

[dzilla77]

This is under $27 buck right now.

[MizzouCowboy]

Anyone still playing this?

I've been playing the hell out of it and I see no end in sight. My characters are level nines. The "puzzles" are the most annoying thing I have ever seen in a game since they give you no clue as to what the hell you are supposed to do. I'll try for a while but then I give up and search the net for answers. Yeah, how long would have it taken me to figure out to throw a book on the weighted trap to make it click?? Quests? Hell, I think I have 20 or so that I have no clue as to where to go or what to do.

Guess I could say that I am delightfully frustrated. Love it and hate it at the same time. Can't wait to play it again just to piss myself off.

[Eaglesfan27]

I'm in the final stages of the game and still loving it. There are some frustrating puzzles but I was able to finally figure out every one of them and there are clues around for most of them, particularly if you have the animal speak perk.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by MizzouCowboy

Anyone still playing this?

I've been playing the hell out of it and I see no end in sight. My characters are level nines. The "puzzles" are the most annoying thing I have ever seen in a game since they give you no clue as to what the hell you are supposed to do. I'll try for a while but then I give up and search the net for answers. Yeah, how long would have it taken me to figure out to throw a book on the weighted trap to make it click?? Quests? Hell, I think I have 20 or so that I have no clue as to where to go or what to do.

Guess I could say that I am delightfully frustrated. Love it and hate it at the same time. Can't wait to play it again just to piss myself off.

Yeah, the puzzles are unintuitive (as I posted on the first page of this thread) at best and downright frustrating at worst. As I said:

Originally Posted by Blackadar

But the puzzles...oy vey the puzzles are soooooooo screwed up. I seriously don't know how anyone could complete this game without a ton of help from the web or a strategy guide. Some of them make no sense whatsoever to solve and/or devolve into pixel hunts to find something. It's like Larian didn't play test this with any kind of focus group, because in all the years I've been playing PC RPGs (since Wizardry 1 back in like 1980) I have never seen more shitty obscure quests than I have in this game.

But the combat more than makes up for it. What a fun, if maddening game.

[JAG]

More details on the upcoming changes. I'm impressed and looking forward to this (sorry for the formatting):

Announcing Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition!!!
Posted by Larian Studios LLC
Hello Everyone!
Today we are very excited to announce Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition for PS4 and Xbox One as well as PC, Mac, SteamOS and Linux. This isn't just some patch or minor content update to the game you all know and (hopefully) love; it's a whole new experience! With controller support, local co-op with split screen, fully voiced characters, a totally reworked story (with a brand new ending), and much more, we're very proud to finally be able to share what we've crafted here at Larian.
In the update video below, Swen reveals a little more about the fantastic new features you can look forward to in Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition.
Divinity: Original Sin - Update 67: Enhanced Edition - YouTube
We've also included controller support on PC, so now you can kick back and explore Rivellon from the comfort of your sofa with Steam's Big Picture. We've put a lot of effort into streamlining the experience and have designed a slick, new UI that makes playing with a controller just as intuitive and fun as playing with mouse and keyboard.
As well as local co-op, split screen and controller support, the Enhanced Edition also features:
All characters are now fully voiced by AAA-voice actors
New quests, new characters, and new content
Entirely new gameplay modes and character builds
A heavily rewritten story with a brand new ending
Massively reworked visuals and sound effects
And much more to be announced in the coming months!
A Gift For Our Fans
In appreciation of all the fans who helped make Divinity: Original Sin the success that it was, the Enhanced Edition will be completely free to everyone who owns Original Sin. This is a reflection of our immense gratitude to all of you. We deeply appreciate your support, and the feedback we received from you helped us create and polish this game into something that we're extremely proud of.
A Whole New Game

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is a completely separate game: not an update to Divinity: Original Sin. Both games will remain available on PC and Mac, and it is important to note that they are totally different entities, so if you've already bought Original Sin you'll see separate listings for Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition in your Steam Library. This means that saved games can't be transferred from Divinity: Original Sin to the Enhanced Edition. This is largely because of the technical changes we've made to how the game looks and feels, but the story has also been rewritten so heavily that most saved games would no longer be compatible with the plot. (After all, it wouldn't make sense to load a game in which you're halfway through a quest line that's been replaced with something different.)
From the very first day of production, we designed the Enhanced Edition to be optimized for DirectX 11 graphics. For our Windows players, this means that Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition will require a 64-bit system and a graphics card with DirectX 11 hardware support. However, both editions of the game will remain available to everyone on Steam, so Windows players with 32-bit systems and DirectX 9 will always be able to play Divinity: Original Sin.
When Can We Play?
As Swen says: "When? When it's ready!" We are committed to giving you the best possible experience and we will not compromise on quality, so it's going to take as long as it'll take. But watch this space, the release date is coming soon!
Are You Ready For E3?
We are! At E3 we'll be sharing much more about Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition's features and gameplay, including the much-anticipated new modes of play.
More background?
Then check out Swen’s blog. He talks about how we came to make the Enhanced Edition and why it’s such an important part of our future plans. In the mean time, if you want more about what we're up to, check out our forums, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

[mckerney]

Guess I'm going to keep putting off my play through of this then.

[NobodyHere]

Looks like the sequel is going to be hitting kickstarter in a couple weeks.

Divinity Original Sin 2

[Peregrine]

Man I need to play this game at some point.

[thesloppy]

I'm pretty much a curmudgeon when it comes to most games, especially RPGs, and manage to find fault with even the most well-received modern tries in the genre. However, I loved every moment of Divinity and played it all the way through to completion, which is an absolute rarity for me.

[gi]

My wife and I are loving it. We'll be supporting the Kickstarter for II.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Me and a buddy of mine have been slowly making our way through this game. We started over a year ago now and are pretty much at the end. Well, we're at the end, but wanted to go back and clean up some side quests.

We've had a blast. It's a super fun game. The only knock on it would be that some of the puzzles are ridiculously obtuse and rely on reading some random thing or seeing some teeny-tiny switch on a wall. We usually try to figure things out for about 10-15 minutes and then immediately run to the wiki/walkthrough for guidance. That's my only complaint really.

Also, sometimes it's hard to figure out where to go. During our game we ended missing a big chunk of the quest and got a little ahead of ourselves. After consulting the walkthrough we ended up circling back.

Also, Madora may have the worst voice in video game history.

Still, love the game. 100+ hours of good times.

I will definitely be supporting the second one.

[JAG]

Ok slackers, now's a good time to jump in if you haven't already (sorry for formatting, not fixing it):

Update #75: RELEASE DAY! Get your copy of Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition!
Posted by Larian Studios LLC
It’s been over a year in the making, but it's been worth it. Today, we are very proud to deliver to you Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition!
What makes our Enhanced Edition different from others? Check out our latest home-brewed trailer to find out just how far we went to bring you the ultimate Divinity experience:
Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Release Trailer - YouTube

The verdict is in...
The first reviews of Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition are in, and the results are exciting. Here's a short sampling:
“Of all the games with co-op I’ve played this year, this is by far the most surprising and definitely one of the most enjoyable.” PlayStation Universe, 9/10
“There’s nothing else quite like Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition.” IGN, 9/10
“A challenging, sprawling, and enchanting title from the very start.” Push Square, 9/10 “A fantastic version of an already great game.” PlayStationLifeStyle.net, 9/10
“A title highly recommended for all fans of the genre and more.” EveryEye.it, 9/10
“Its pad gameplay could become a model for other games of this genre.” jeuxvideo.com, 19/20
How do I get my copy of Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition?
If you already purchased the original Divinity: Original Sin, you will receive the Enhanced Edition FREE as a download in your Steam or GOG account. This will appear as a second entry in your library, next to Divinity: Original Sin. Download it and get to playing! (Oh, and spread the word to your friends who didn't try it yet )
If you’ve never purchased the game, head over to Steam or GOG and make your purchase!
A thousand changes!
We have a short list & a long list of changes.
The long list contains over 1000 changes distilled from a change-list that contains more than 13000 changes! But since the short list is a bit more readable, we put that one here.

Full controller support for one and two players
Dynamic split-screen support for local co-op play
Sleek new UI for use with controller
Full AAA voice-overs for all characters
New sound effects and improvements made to existing effects
Main quest revamped to include more characters, more events, and more adventure
A new ending, with a reworked and expanded plot
Existing quests updated and polished Storyline background expanded
Companions now banter and argue with one another
Invest skill points in the new Dual Wielding ability to improve your proficiency
Hurl elemental, area of effect, status-setting, and damage-causing grenades. This comes with the new Bombardier ability, letting you spend skill points to improve your proficiency.
Wands are brand new one-handed ranged weapons dealing elemental damage. They come pre-charged with an additional powerful skill that the player can invoke 1-4 times, depending on his or her Wand skill level. The skill also determines your attack range with wands (from barely-out-of-melee to bow-level).
Explorer Mode. Formerly "Casual," Explorer players will face less-fierce enemies and enjoy a higher chance of knocking them dead, freeing up the player's time to discover, craft, sleuth, and travel outside of combat.
Classic Mode. Formerly "Normal". What we suggest for first-time players (who've played a classic cRPG before).
Tactician Mode. A brand new game setting featuring smarter, stronger enemies to challenge combat-oriented players.
Honour Mode. All the challenge of Tactician Mode, but in Honour Mode you only have a single save and a single life (no resurrecting!) at your disposal. If your character goes down, it's game over.
Tactician and Honour modes feature re-designed encounters and puzzles, including new mechanics, monsters, skills, and challenges. Enemy AI is more intelligent and designed to defend against past players' most commonly-used tactics.
New traps have been added, making tactics, puzzles, and simply moving around in the world more challenging than ever.
New skills and skill system
New tiered skill system ('Novice', 'Adept', 'Master') allows you to learn devastating new abilities as you progress in your chosen school of magic. 15+ new skills featuring custom animations and damage
Existing encounters have been improved and re-balanced to provide a more consistent experience throughout all zones.
Now includes upgraded AI to better counter the player’s tactics
Updated system makes crafting more intuitive
New creatures - Elemental Wards, Enchanted Armours, Bolt-stricken Zombie, Arcane Vortex, Nether Jester, Poison Slug, Spitfire Totem, Void Crystal, Oilskin ExploSkeleton, Soul of Desperation, Angry Chest
New cut scenes added and old cut scenes improved
Skills have been rebalanced and redistributed into skill schools in more cohesive themes.
Balancing changes have made mid- and late-game combat more dynamic and engaging.
Existing Abilities and Talents have been rebalanced.
Weapon ability progression has been updated to differentiate play styles based on weapon types (e.g. the 'Two-handed weapons' theme now focuses on slow weapons that do monstrous damage with each strike, while 'Dual Wielding' is centered around unleashing a hail of rapid blows on your enemies.)
Vendors offer more variety and sell better loot.
Magical items are built up differently. Items' use requirements have been revised.
Economy (gold value and rarity of all items) has been revised.
Treasure generation and traders have been overhauled to be less random and use a system that guarantees better variation in drops over time.
Weapons, armour, shields, potions, and statuses have been rebalanced.
Our top-secret formulas that calculate hit chances, crit chances, damage, armour, blocking, and more have all been carefully revised and improved.
'Saving throws' formula has been improved.
New items and item combos added for creating wands and grenades
360-degree camera, with improved art assets for viewing at all angles
Reworked visuals for improved performance
Textures were updated to improve performance DirectX 11 was added, which improves performance. Because of these changes, the game now only works on 64-bit Operating Systems.
New animations for new weapon types (wands and dual wielding)
New effects and animations for new skills, but also enhanced existing skills
New custom animations for all NPCs
New animations for new creatures and destructibles
(Should you for some reason want to see the list of all 13000 changes, sorry, but you're out of luck. After all, "what happens at Larian stays at Larian," and we can't share some of the friendly, constructive language devs use to point things out to one another.)
Errrrr... is the Tactician Mode for me?
It could be, but only if you're really comfortable with cRPGs in general, and Divinity: Original Sin in particular. Check out the following interview with Edouard (who worked on the combat design) to discover what Tactician Mode is and how it was created.
Tactician Mode features stronger, smarter baddies and more (and more challenging) puzzles and traps.

[Atocep]

I finished Pillars of Eternity + White March Sunday so I'll be diving into this again until Fallout is released.

[jeff061]

I've had Divinity on my wishlist since before release, just hasn't dropped low enough for me to pull the trigger.

[thesloppy]

I really, really loved this game, but I'm still not sure there's enough to get me to restart a 50+ hour campaign.

[thesloppy]

I fired it up, figuring you can't beat the price, and I'm already super happy just to have the controller support, which I didn't even realize I wanted.

[Galaril]

The ps4 edition is getting great reviews so may grab it down the road for it.