Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Qn to writers: How do you all intend to tie in...

D:OS 1 was fine. But multiplayer does take extra time and resources to work on. Multiplayer might force the devs to not include shortcuts, but shortcuts can save time. There is the claim that "having to take into account the multiplayer means ensuring that all kinds of reactivity works properly". Okay, but what if you turn that around. What would prevent the devs from putting that kind of reactivity into a single-player-only game?

D:OS 2 also has a stronger multiplayer focus than D:OS 1, with its competitive questing, arena fighting, and they also proposed the definitely-only-multiplayer DM mode. The arena fighting could be useful in single-player as free income if the winner gets a prize, but the others are definitely multiplayer only.

So I don't really accept the claim that adding a lot of multiplayer focus ONLY improves single-player gameplay. There are still trade-offs.


I didn't say that I would hate a turn-based Divinity 3. I just said that I would not MIND if it was real-time.

I could easily see Larian continuing on with D:OS 3 and 4 in the same vein as D:OS 1 and D:OS 2. That doesn't mean that they have to use the same style for Divinity 3 as they would for D:OS 3.

There is nothing exclusive to MP in D:OS1, though, and I'd say it didn't take as long as you'd think to properly set it up. They can't even speak to NPCs at the same time. I kinda agree that D:OS2 is shaping up to be a lot more multiplayer focused, but since they aren't working on a new engine this time, that won't be a problem. A LOT of players will be disappointed if it turns out like CoD where the SP is an after-thought because they had to cram that crap somewhere. That's why I don't think they will sacrifice any features of the SP for the MP portion. They are just making the game have more MP features. There is no winning here, however, because it's true that they can develop more SP content if it wasn't for MP, but MP can improve the experience for many people without dipping its toes into the SP content. It's ultimately a design choice and they've decided to go with the MP route.

I agree there always are trade-offs.
However, what I meant is that it's easier to turn a coop game, especially one like DOS which a turn-based cRPG, to a SP experience. I'm not fully aware of the Arena yet as I missed most of the streams, but I seem to remember reading somewhere the Arena in SP would essentially be a kind of stand your ground against NPCs rather than players fighting each others. As for the rewards, I'm clueless, but if it's just a title "master of the arena", I can assure you I won't step in it, neither in SP nor in MP. With the correct motivation though I just might !
The opposite isn't as true, I believe. Players in MP could find all sorts of exploit that wouldn't be possible in SP. Building your game on a SP foundation and trying to add a working MP seems like more work than the reverse, is all, and most MP content can work well in SP too.

Don't worry, I didn't say nor implied you'd hate a turnbased D3. I totally understand the need to change things and go back to RT once in a while. It's refreshing.
I just thought it would be fun to 'merge' both series like SoulReaver did. Could work. After all, they are mostly the same story with the same overall background. However, SR and Legacy of Kain had a very similar gameplay so it was easier to pull of.

What Lacrymas said.

And besides: Divinity: Original Sin is their most successfull game and if everything goes right, they will earn even more money with D:OS 2, so it would be stupid at least to think about another game like them. Besides the gameplay of D:OS fits their dream of a big world to explore most.

For repeating the formula: Well, the Timeperiod of Divinity 2 is another, than the Timeperiod of Beyond Divinity. They use Airships now. And we had some Steampunk elements. So they could freshen it up a bit with some machines and guns for the grand finale?

And after that, I don't know. Another Dragon Commander? A new Action-RPG-IP? Wouldn't be that bad .

Personally, I would love to see another Dragon Knight - Saga, with every gameplayelement fixed.

Thank you for explanation. I've made wrong decision about time scale due to Zandalor's words in DD. Perhaps, Wizards like women try not to reveal their true age =)

By the way, It looks strange that Aleroth's healers uses forbidden magic =)

I've bought D:OS via Steam during early access and later Source Hunter DLC. There is no any prequel novella.
I've bought Divinity Antology via Steam (DD, BD, Divinity 2 DC). And Divinity 2 Developer's cut seems to contain two novellas: The Prophecy and Child of Chaos. Is any of them contain this history?

The most glaring question of this entire conversation is: Why is the Source considered bad by the people in D:OS AND the Divine Magisters centuries after that? We haven't seen anything bad happen related to the Source, we don't even know what the Source IS and how it's differentiated from normal magic.

"The Prophecy" contains the history of the first Game (Divine Divinity) and "Child of Chaos" the back story of Beyond Divinity. There is no mentioning of the Sourcemagic in the novellas, since Source was introduced in Divinity: Original Sin, but they explain what the Council of Seven and the Lord of Chaos is.

They are a fun read. Just don't be confused when you read, that they call "Rivellon" a country and not a world. It started out as the dukedom of Ferol in the first game, then it became the name of whole world^^.

@Lacrymas

That's not true, though. I've already mentioned that one of the first quests in DD was related to the Source and I think even the main quest's objective was to find the reason why the Source is blocked.

We've already seen that the Source has healing magic and I don't think that's bad :p We need a better understanding of the motivations of our villains.

I meant in the novellas and have corrected it . But the actual concept of Sourcerers was created in Divinity: Original Sin.

Thus, The main problem of writers is to make narrative which will be interesting both newfags and oldfags.
There were no such problem in D:OS because its hystory barely connected with previous games. By the way, It seems like Dragon commander almost has no such connection.
But they intend to place D:OS 2 in centre of original trilogy.

E.g., during Kickstarter company, I've read about some "Divine order" in every second update and can't understand what is that?

Eeehh, not really. When BG came around it wasn't filled with detailed descriptions of what the Sword Coast is or what an Ogre is. They need to make the narrative in such a way as to pay homage to the lore, but also to be easily taken in by new people. Remember the betrayal that was Ultima IX? We have to avoid that. The Divine Order is The Evil Church(tm) basically. Though whether it's evil or not is yet to be revealed, but it all points that way.

Yes, D:OS was very loosely connected to the previous games, but the world also gained a bit more deepth. And like I said, I think with D:OS 2 we will finally get a definitive background for ALL games.

As for Dragon Commander: Well it's story was told 8000 years before even D:OS, so yes, the connection is also very loose. Although, you played the first Dragon Knight and met Maxos, the creator of the order of Dragon Knights. So at least we had that^^.

"The Divine Order" is something like the new church of Rivellon: they praise the seven gods, but especially Lucian the Divine One, the Christfigure of Rivellon, who is the canon hero of Divine Divinity. In Divinity 2 they consisted mostly of paladins, who served under Lucian and hunted the "Black Ring", the enemy faction from the first (Divine Divinity), second (Beyond Divinity) and third game (Divinity 2)

If the Divine Order is The Evil Church(tm) and the Black Ring still exists, the drama from their clash will be glorious to see. Still, the whole "Source" question hangs in the air.

Yesss. It will be like choosing between living in a crapsack world (Divine Order, until Lucian regains the control) and being one of the riders of the Apocalypse (Black Ring). I'm very curious .

Is there any official information about this universe from Larian?
I have played only D:OS so far.
---- spoiler warning ----

- Is Rivellon a universe, a planet or a country?

- Is Hilberheim (is this the correct name?) something like the elemental plane in DnD or a place in this world?

- Is the whole thing a multiverse like DnD?

- Are there differences between the game world and earth except the existence of magic and several races?

- The only sourcerers I know are the white witch and her sister. I see no difference between them and a normal mage.

- I do not know what source is. If I understand everything right, one char in D:OS1 is the god who created it but it was corrupted by the dragon. But the white witch seemed very normal and her sister was corrupted by a creature, not by her magic.

1. Planet, I believe.
2. I think an elemental plane.
3. Not like DnD.
4. What do you mean? Other than geography?
5. Maybe D:OS 2 will finally try and explain what the difference is.

@MadScientist

- Rivellon is now the name of the world. In Divine Divinity it was the name of the country.

- Don't know, but I guess, since hell, the homestead of the demons (not the voiddemons), also exists as it's own plane.

- Do you mean one big universe or a lot of parallelluniverses? I don't know, but we know at least, that there exist more than one world in the universe, like the planet Nemesis in Beyond Divinity.

- Well, chests can talk and everything seems to have a soul. Everything seems to be possible in Rivellon, even when they follow the laws of physics^^.

- Source should have been some kind of special magic, which should have played a bigger role in an early pitch of D:OS. If I remember it correctly it was the power of creation itself, but then got corrupted. I hope we will see more differences in D:OS 2 than the use of source stones. But yes, I know what you mean.

Between BG 1 and BG 2 releases was about 2 years. Nevertheless, I think it is a bad idea to start with the second part.

Between D:OS 2 and DD releases will be 15 years minimum. Even if someone played all the games He can forgot some parts of history.

Sadly, but I havn't played Ultima games. It has no such big popularity in Russia as Fallout and BG.
Some month ago EA presented Ultima 8 for all origin users, but I afraid to play this series from tail.



Thank you. I've already understand that stuff in bulk. But with no shades. Keep playing BD.

By the way, looks like The Lord of Chaos slowly capture the Larian. There are games in chronological order:
Divinity Original Sin, Divine Divinity, Divinity Original Sin 2, Beyond Divinity, Divinity 2.
Bloody mess =)
Couple more games and it will be more complicated than MGS games.

The reason why D:OS is so disjointed and doesn't answer any of its own questions, and by doing so raising even more, is because they had to rewrite the whole game at a very late stage in development. This time *should* be different because they have a lot of time and they've already planned how the story will play out. I hope MCA would also help the other writers in some of their endeavors, because if you thought Durance and Grieving Mother's good writing was jarring in relation to all the other NPCs in the game, wait till you can juxtapose Chris' flashes of brilliance and D:OS1's writing. People would convulse from epileptic seizures. We don't know how skillful the other writers they hired are, though, but still, some general advice and guidance from MCA wouldn't go amiss.

Yes, I remember when they changed the clearly defined main characters to selfmade models. That was kind of strange, but I it helped the player creating their own, personal source hunters.

As for Chris Avellones influence on the writing: I don't think, that he will get to deep into the process (I think he left Obsidian, because he's a bit tired of writing for video games), but maybe he will act as kind of an editor for the other writers, to polish their scripts.