Hey Larian,
How's it going with D:OS 2 development? Hope it's going good, looking forward to the game coming out. I have faith in you guys.
So I've been a fan of you people's work, ever since Divinity 2: DkS. I don't use the word "fan" lightly as I've always been the kind of gamer to pick up games that I see and like and not simply from one game developer company's pedigree.
You guys are the exception as Dks has become one of my all-time favorite RPGs which I return to playing every now and then, and because I have that much respect for you guys.
Now I've played both D:OS and its EE version, throughly enjoyed both. EE though, I couldn't complete it yet despite reaching the last area in the game due to lack of time but also due to being told, in Quest terms by the game, to complete the rest of the game before I continue. And this basically in a nutshell, is the reason for posting this... post.
From Divinity 2 to OS and EE, I have seen a lot of variation in the way you guys seemed to have designed quests. Now, allow me to just warn you that I lack any knowledge when it comes to quest design and whatever knowledge I have is I'm sure, quite less compared to the average gamer.
When you guys designed quests in Divinity 2, we got side quests and story-forwarding quests. Ofcourse, unlike games like Dragon Age, you don't differentiate between main-story quests and side quests, which is fine.
In Divinity 2, I found a lot of freedom when it came to its quests. Not talking about the freedom to choose the manner in which I complete a quest, but rather the freedom to actually decide to even take a look at the quest in the first place. So as a player, I liked the fact that I could ignore entire quest lines and just go on finishing the story.
In an RPG, I find this small freedom to be a great trait. It allows me to play the RPG and access the content of the game I'm interested in and ignore the rest, excluding ofcourse the mandate story quests. This allows me to play the content that I didn't go through in a previous one and still have a fresh experience of the game.
In D:OS and EE, it felt like quite a bit of that freedom is taken away from the player. Not saying I couldn't ignore some quest lines, I could and I did when I wanted to, but when it came to the time where I just wanted to go through the story quest line, the game would force me to arbitrarily seek out some ambiguously placed quest item that is a quest reward for some other quest.
This forced me plenty of times to go around to finding whatever it is the game wanted me to find, could be a blood vial, some spell scroll, some rune stone yada yada..., and I would be forced to do this same routine every new playthrough.
And even in the same playthrough, it sucked out a lot of fun I was having at those times as I was forced to jump track to a different quest line I did not have that must interest in, to find a resolution for the one I was really interested in.
At the moment in EE, when I just wanted to fight the final boss, the game wants to me go explore more to find the quest items, one of which I even found digging a hole in the ground. Meaning, it could take me forever to find those items in the game without following a quest guide online.
So this is my one gripe so far with Original Sin. I would appreciate it, if you could even consider allowing players to choose to explore various parts of the game in their own time, rather than be forced to do so by setting some small arbitrary element in the game which we have to search for half way around the world.
I hope I explained the issue I'm having properly for you.
Despite all of that though, it is a fact that my time with your games have been incredibly fun and it's really great that a GD company that takes so much care in its works like you, exists.
I'll keep checking this post in case someone responds to it. Thanks.