Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Narration vs. visuals

I really like the narration in the game. It's really well written. The parts that the player is supposed to imagine based on a spoken description are usually very effective for me. For example, the memories you gain from eating body parts seem so vivid. Many of them are quite grim and gruesome, and I LOVE it! Also, I was surprised by the level of detail in telling some of the 'adult' scenes in the game. It's quite refreshing to see this level of maturity in this kind of a game.

It would be nice though to have some of the visuals match the narration, at least to some extent. I'm not talking about the more complex actions like a character "leans toward you and puts a dagger to your throat", or "leans and whispers", etc. I'm talking about simpler things like "someone's face is so and so...". In the image below a character is supposed to be covered in scars, but a close look reveals a generic looking plain human model with no scars whatsoever.

It's not a big issue, just something that could be improved.

I agree on both counts: it is very well written and I was similarly impressed with particular bits, but there does seem to be a few cases where the dialogue has a somewhat estranged relationship with what you're seeing, both in actions and appearance. I guess it's one of those areas where things can sometimes be difficult to closely synchronise when there's different people (or even teams) working on the respective bits though there's a few areas of incongruity that would benefit from a bit of attention. Like Roost and his baby-soft skin which has apparently never seen anything harsher than the finest silks.

yea, i wasn't sure if I was looking at the right guy that the narrator was talking about.. This guy looks like he bathes in milk and honey every day.

The more I play, the more I miss decent visuals and scripted animations. I understand that DOS is supposed to mimic tabletop board games, and the writing and narratives are accomplishing that very well, but that doesn't mean it should look as 'static' as a board game, with character models that look like cardboard cutouts.

I think that a 3-year old game like Dragon Age Inquisition looks better, and has more detail in the models. And what about Witcher 3 which is more than 2 years old? The visual quality and detail in that game is just astounding, it's absolutely gorgeous. Yes, I understand that those games are not turn-based RPGs with isometric view like DOS. They're real-time action games that rely heavily on scripted animations, so the visuals are even more important there. But that doesn't mean that a 2017 turn-based game can't look as good. Of course, it's hard to compare any game to a masterpiece like Witcher 3. DOS 2 pales in comparison, and is much less immersive, especially when all your characters ever do is stare at each other.

There's a certain lack of visual stimulus in both DOS games, which is present in most modern games and is essential for immersion. After each narrated scene, I feel like "something is missing here".

I suspect the DOS engine is probably up to it, it's more likely that the animations required are an enormous amount of work, and Andromeda showed us the critical reaction if you get them wrong! Which isn't to say I disagree with you, because I do.

Inquisition does look pretty, I agree, and though I'm not so far sold on Frostbite 3 as a useful RPG engine (since it lacks support for... well, nearly everything that RPGs use) it does have extremely good graphics.

So there's that, but to look at it the other way there's also Tyranny which is in the direction of DOS but even more so: although in some ways the graphics are better than I tend to think, the lack of being able to zoom in or rotate the camera really does make it feel very static. I'm wondering if all these respective games are really showing deliberate design decisions rather than any other limitation, though speaking personally I generally prefer the "more is more" approach to graphics, animations and what-not.

Well, I don't know about engines and what they allow. As a gamer I just look at what's possible in other games.

And just to be more specific, i'm not talking about the art design in the game, which is actually very good. For the most part the artistic elements are creating the right 'feel'. It's the visual implementation and detail that's really lagging behind what I'm used to seeing in other games.

Here is a scene I just recorded in DOS 2


When I look at the skeleton, I don't see an animate creature that's talking to me, while also struggling to get free, and moaning and groaning, etc. All I see a skeletal outline that's doing reverse push-ups on that table. (I think it's a combination of lower back and triceps workout)
As a general rule I'm not against skeletons exercising on tables, but this is just not the place or time. But joking aside, there's a gap between what I hear from the narrator and what my eyes see. Too large of a gap.

Even the first Dragon Age game (2008 ?) had characters that actually looked like they were talking to each other, and also some excellent scripted scenes that really added to the storytelling.

p.s. The more I think about past games, the more I want to reinstall Witcher 3 for another playthrough (4th I think). When I finished DOSEE I never felt like playing it again, and I don't see this changing with DOS 2 so far. One reason for that is precisely that visual aspect; because I know that even when I play a totally different origin story with a different party composition, the only real difference I will see in the game is different cardboard outlines staring at each other (and maybe doing push-ups).