Fire doesn’t care who or what it burns, and neither does Divinity. The second one of them ignites the oil around him, intention goes up in smoke just like the rest. It doesn’t matter if I want to save the dying man surrounded by enemies.
It doesn’t necessarily matter if I want to be the hero, or if I want to do everything right. It’s more accurate to say that the world is indifferent to player intent.
It wouldn’t be fair to call its world mean, because it’s not malice that’s standing between me and that perfect, clean save. And in that way, Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been somewhat suffocating for me, in spite of how much fun it is to poke and prod at all of its moving parts. I want clean edges and perfect solutions. I need to open every crate, talk to every NPC and solve every problem before I feel ready to move on from an area. I’m absolutely the player who needs to fill in every area of the map. Learning to accept that mess has been my biggest challenge. Learning to accept that mess has been my biggest challenge Inevitably, someone’s going to make a mess. It’s like standing in the middle of a sea of dominos, but only actually knowing where half of the lines start. Even rolling back to older saves hasn’t been enough for me to undo some of my more disastrous accidents. There are just so many pieces in play, so many potential points of failure or at least complication, that it’s an impossible feat to try and stay on top of them all. There’s a lot to be said for knowing who an NPC may or may not want to deal with.īut that density and complexity can have its costs, too. Origins as well as tags (some of which are set at character creation, while others can be acquired) can impact a character’s options in many different situations. Maybe it’s in a healing spell cast over the wounded. Of course murder’s always on the table, but maybe the real key is in an innocent red ball looted from a previous encounter (which hopefully no one traded for a lockpick). Conversations, battles, and quests are all scenarios to be solved, one way or another. Isolated into their most basic elements there’s a predictability to everything, a logic that can be employed in some situations (particularly combat) for perfectly unsurprising outcomes. A teleportation glove can lead someone too clever for their own good somewhere they’re absolutely not prepared to be. An arrow shot astray in a fight can cause an unrelated and cascading loop of fire, poison and electricity to render a nearby area completely impassable. A seemingly inconsequential conversation with someone can lead to them dropping dead from some unholy and unknown force. A lot of different things can happen in Divinity: Original Sin 2 it’s an RPG that is overwhelmingly about planning ahead yet still being completely taken by surprise. It’s an RPG that is overwhelmingly about planning ahead yet still being completely taken by surpriseĪnd that’s incredibly valuable. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this, since a more diverse set of skills can ensure a party is ready to deal with anything. Better still, they offer players the option to influence their class when they do join up, so a party that’s already brimming with magic users can nudge a new companion in a different direction to fill a skill gap. Origin characters will become companions if they aren’t picked as the player character, meaning that their stories and the unique interactions they can have aren’t completely locked off. Players still have complete control over the origin character’s class, abilities and appearance, so there’s wiggle room even if you love a character concept but hate their weapon/hair/cannibalism-related clairvoyance. Choosing an origin character doesn’t mean sacrificing any chance at customization, though. Players can customize their own characters (down to picking an instrument to highlight their personal soundtrack) or choose from several pre-made origins. From the very beginning Original Sin 2 feels wonderfully flexible.
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