# Divinity: Original Sin



## Cid (Jul 26, 2014)

Larian's kickstarted reboot of their classic Divine divinity. Full version has been out for a few weeks now (£30 on steam), anyone else playing?

It's good so far... A bit slow to get started perhaps. It takes a leaf from Bioware's dirty, broken book by not being procedurally generated and not respawning mobs. With Bioware's more recent games this really pissed me off, you had all the feel of an RPG, but thrust into a sort of very linear format and always feeling that you have to do absolutely everything so that x doesn't end up poorly equipped for the final battle, or you don't have y item/skill. Divinity gets around this by not being scripted. 

First there are the character interactions, by default you have two player characters (yes, I'm playing single player) one of which you can set to AI (so they agree or don't - I don't think anyone here will do this, so ignore) or not AI. Not AI essentially means that you RP both characters. This may seem a bit weird, but it actually works well for resolving situations where you're being a bit lib dem. You chose what one character says, then the other character's response, during the course of which you've probably decided what you actually want (like the coin toss for a big decision psychology thing). If 'they' disagree it will revert to a (literal) rock, paper, scissors game. It's a bit odd. But works. Decisions will give characteristics which lead to stat changes. The thing is (afaik) there's no big moral compass, it will have effects on interactions down the line, but there's no pressure on you to choose the 'right' thing for how you want the character to be. They're discrete events.

You can recruit two additional party members who all have their own personalities and will argue about various things etc. You can actually play it 'Lone Wolf' (one character, no recruiting), but probably not best for first playthrough. Ability choices are, apparently, relatively flexible (although I'm being cautious). With spells and combat at least it tends to be more about the number you can memorise (obviously int/str/dex stats affect the performance though).

Quests are good... I've not done many mind. There's not really any pressure on you to do them a specific way (indeed it very much does not do anything to hold your hand). You explore and, depending on the abilities of your characters, will eventually find your way to a solution. Again, it is not like the recent spate of scripted RPGs in this respect.

The worry about collecting stuff does haunt me somewhat. I have stolen many things. It is not helped by the crafting system which actually does use things like 'table knife' or 'branch'. Crafting is another thing where hands are not held, although you can pick up recipe books. Not done much yet.  

Combat is decent. It switches to a turn based initiative action point thing (i.e individuals take turns based on initiative - the banner saga card for each character rather than XCOM turn for each side). You can set things up to a certain extent by sneaking up to enemies and messing about with the environment or trying to get off an opening shot before mode switch. There's a lot you can do with the environment; setting fire to poison makes massive explosions, through water on fire for thick steam etc. Loads of other stuff I'm sure, just haven't done much combat yet. The only thing is that the switch between wandering around and fighting can be slightly jarring, but not bad.

Obviously much more to it; Larian humour (perhaps a bit obvious at times), nice environments, talking to animals, ridiculous item management etc etc. Good game though, return to form after Dragon Commander, recommended.


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## Cid (Jul 26, 2014)

Oh, forgot one MASSIVE thing. It has been released with a powerful and comprehensive world editor. I think they still have to polish it a bit, and it's pretty RAM heavy, but there will be a strong modding community for this one.


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## tommers (Jul 26, 2014)

Yes. Very interested in it, even the miserable "everything was better in the old days" hardcore RPG bunch are saying it's really good. 

Just can't really afford the price and not sure my laptop will run it.


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## Epona (Jul 26, 2014)

The only reason I don't have it already is that I'm a bit short of cash right now.

But yeah, I definitely want this one at some point, I loved Divine Divinity and Divinity 2 (although Beyond Divinity was a bit "meh" ).


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## golightly (Jul 27, 2014)

I've been playing it for a while now.  I had a go with the various Beta versions while it was being developed.  I'm enjoying the combat because it's really quite hard and I get a real sense of achievement when I have defeated a group of opponents without losing a member of my team.


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## Chz (Jul 27, 2014)

I love it, but it is very old school in the way the interface is simply atrocious. The last time I felt like I was fighting the interface as much as the beasties was Fallout 2. Love, love, _love_ how you can stack effects in combat though.


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## Cid (Jul 27, 2014)

golightly said:


> I've been playing it for a while now.  I had a go with the various Beta versions while it was being developed.  I'm enjoying the combat because it's really quite hard and I get a real sense of achievement when I have defeated a group of opponents without losing a member of my team.



I've started to realise that going in a bit pissed at 11pm doesn't really work. There're three enemies I didn't even notice flanking me, I've not really thought about strategy etc.


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## Cid (Jul 31, 2014)

Ok, so gaining levels is not that easy. Chose your spec carefully.


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## tommers (Jul 31, 2014)

I downloaded last night. It works but its a bit slow.  Going to give it a go over the weekend.  I like a new system to play about with.  It looks good.


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## ChrisFilter (Jul 2, 2015)

Surprised at the lack of chat about this. Reviews were exceptionally good. What's the urban consensus a year on?


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## JimW (Jul 2, 2015)

ChrisFilter said:


> Surprised at the lack of chat about this. Reviews were exceptionally good. What's the urban consensus a year on?


Bought it and really enjoyed the early game, look and mechanics but thought story lost its way later on and ditched it, thinking I'd see if they patched it or some good mods came out using the excellent engine.


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## Chz (Jul 2, 2015)

I got tired of fighting the interface and the combat was dreadful. Kind of like a bizarro-Pillars of Eternity, because the story and side quests were excellent and the world was well realised. But combat is clunky and rife with abuse of various quirks. Levelling is all-or-nothing in that you'll be annihilated by something and return one level higher to just walk all over it (and levelling is hard!). And the interface in general is not up to the task.

Whereas PoE has a great interface, fun combat, and a good levelling mechanic, brought down by an inane main quest and uninteresting sides and characters. It got boring 2/3ds of the way through.


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## ChrisFilter (Jul 2, 2015)

So neither, then?  What about Wasteland 2?


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## Chz (Jul 3, 2015)

I haven't tried it, but supposedly you need to be a glutton for punishment. It's hardcore. But I hear really great things about it from the sort of people who enjoy that kind of thing.


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