Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General What makes Original Sin such an exceptional game?

Huge question--like asking, "What makes the Earth go 'round?" There are thousands of answers. So I'll keep my rhetoric simple.

D:OS is exceptionally good because Larian developers don't know when to quit--they keep improving, polishing, improving--relentlessly--and it seems they will do so until they reach their own internal barometer for satisfaction--a bar the height of which only they are able to measure. They'll keep improving and refining the game until it gets to where they want it to go, and won't stop until they get there...;)

It's the difference between a mediocre developer and a great, memorable developer, and Larian has proven itself in the latter category decisively. I'm impressed--mightily--with this company and it's because of D:OS.

When Larian finishes with the game I'll predict it will continue to sell for years into the future, will continue to sell when other games popular at the moment have been forgotten--because in every respect D:OS is and will be so much more. Good job Larian! (Just wanted to say that today, but the whole Larian team deserves so much more...And, uh, how about that medal & awards ceremony for Raze? He is often the lightning rod for so much misplaced angst, and yet he never fails at courtesy or professionalism--at least, it looks that way to me. Good job, one and all! Larian should be an example and an inspiration to game companies the world over!)

The Combat.

Best turnbased combat I have ever seen including "Temple of Elemental Evil" and Fallout 1 and 2 and tactics. Yes I like it that much.

One of the best worlds, as good as Baldurs Gate's and Icewind Dales.

Great Character Building and all that it entails-skills, abilities, items, progression, spells, classes, crafting.

Actually, that one's pretty easy. Gravity.

Gravity alone would throw the Earth into the sun. It's the combined pull of both gravity and inertia.

What makes Divinity: Original Sin so special and great?

The love that Larian put into it is evident in every aspect of play!

The Rock-Paper-Scissors game during discussions,a LOT of interaction almost with everything,wonderful and variable sountrack,and Divinity OS is oldschool game,where you should think harder save often,carefully dig up the graves!!

How well thoughtout the gameplay, but also the world is. Seriousy, you can track down the heritage of every monster in this game. And every storydetail is also explained if you are looking around with an open mind.

Where do the Orcs come from? Explained. How do the vilains do things? Explained. Why do we stuff? Explained and that with a smaller wordcount than every Bioware RPG together! Those may be little, but none the less important details, that show how believable the world is.

And it just embraces the fact that it is a fantasy game. Of course this means that every commoner is exceptionaly well-spoken and of course being a hero means that we rescue the world/universe. I mean, if we can believe that a shell can speak, why shouldn't it be possible to rescue all of creation just by ourselves? We have seen stranger things before!

And every game feels new and fresh, even if I know how the story goes. But now I can plan it with my friends and be part of their first experience and it will be just as new, as it is for them.

I know.

The exploskeletons.

... well, yea and the boobs on the game cover.

[quote=Waltc]What makes Original Sin such an exceptional game?[/quote]

All of the above aaand: The COOP! Really, I waited for years for another Baldurs Gate RPG that I could play with my friends at multiplayer LAN Parties! I would even have settled with a game of much lower quality, but Original Sin in fact even manages to solve one of the main quirks of Baldurs Gate Multiplayer: That your friends always had to wait while the "leader" of the party talks to Vendors or people. We usually decided to "vote" out of game for the answers so that everyone is involved and no one left out. But the rock/paper/scissors game is even more fun.

Really, I think it's like the switch of sequential turn based civilization to simultaneous turn based civ, that also made that game hugely popular in our LAN Parties.

By the way, could I humbly ask Larian Studios to do a little kickstarter for a 4 Player COOP Patch or an addon/DLC that includes such a patch? There are mods out there, but they are not perfect yet, and some people would be willing to pay for such an official patch.

In two words? Emergent gameplay.

D:OS has a lot of issues, honestly, but at the end of the day, there are so many different ways to do things, not just in how you build your characters, but in how you approach the battlefield and what happens on it, that those issues can be largely overlooked.

I was never a fan of Divine Divinity, I never got through Beyond Divinity, and I thought Divinity II was pretty damn terrible. Which is probably part of why I initially overlooked Divinity: Original Sin - from the screenshots and so forth, it looks mostly like yet another uninteresting ARPG without any depth, and like I said, not being a fan of Larian beforehand just made me go /ignore.

Furthermore, I find the world of Rivellon to be largely uninteresting, with very few redeeming aspects.

But D:OS is honestly really, really good, in multiple ways. The combat system is probably amongst the best turn-based games I've played, especially considering that it's not built around the idea of squares, but in an open 3D environment.

I hope Larian really takes D:OS to heart, and keeps working on D:OS as a foundation, polishing, expanding, and making it all-round better, until such a point that they have it down to a veritable science, allowing them to focus on world-building and narrative. Because if so, they have an incredibly bright future ahead of them.

The spell interactions and combat system. Simply fantastic and unique in this combination.

Yep...all of the above...I keep finding things I hadn't seen before--Next patch, I'll probably start over again...;) Few games have captured me like this one...

Me too !!

Even though I backed Pillars of Eternity at a high tier level, I am not sure I am going to want to stop playing D:OS to start playing that.

I honestly hope Larian makes some sequels, prequels and spinoffs, sticking to the D:OS engine without a lot of changes in how that works and virtually no changesw in the way combat, spells, and characters are built, they could definately modify loot and add lots of monsters and enemies to fight though.

Loot and lack of variety in enemies are probably the 2 things I think bother me the most.

But the game sure is not bad at all, it may even take the place of Baldurs Gate 2 as my alltime favorite.

WHen I am not playing it , I wish I was, when I am playing it, I wish it was bigger, longer and had even more to it.