What to do, what to do
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis contains a very extensive quest tree. There's the main quest, which you can go through with a few curve-balls along the way, and then there's the gigantic mass of side quests that lead you further and further astray. The further you get off the beaten track, the more difficult these quests become, but also the greater their reward. As I formerly indicated, the manner in which you handle yourself to complete a certain quest is the determinate factor of which reward you are apt to receive.
In the idyllic countryside you meet a charming farming couple. The woman asks you to deliver a sealed letter to the local blacksmith. This is your first choice; to take a peek and read the letter or leave it be and deliver it. If you'd choose to read the letter, you'd find out that they are having an affair behind the farmer's back. Again you have the choice to tell the farmer, to extort his wife, or to just deliver the letter to the blacksmith. Any suggestions? Extort the wife? Eeeexactly. Unfortunately that doesn't go so well. Both farmer, farmer's wife and blacksmith are in an awful mood if you do that. On top of that, it means the blacksmith will no longer have you in his smithy, meaning you forego equipment and reward.
What, then, is the ideal solution? You use your Dragonslayer-skills to read the mind of the farmer's wife. As such, you find out that there is a secret trunk on the farm which contains evidence that her previous lover was brutally murdered by the farmer. You take this evidence to the local authorities, who come to arrest the murderer, which causes the farmer's wife and the blacksmith to live happily ever after and you get an extra discount in the smithy. Which is ample reason to be convinced that every choice you make can have immediate consequences on the gameplay. Some quests are even interwoven and only by replaying the game you have the chance to obtain the best results... or you can used the well-known save-'n-load strategy we RPG fanatics are all too familiar with.
Man to dragon, dragon to man
As you're putting the last hand to your training and right before you become a fully functional member of the Dragonslayers, these are summoned to hunt a dragon and they leave you by yourself. Running around in Farglow alone, you stand eye to eye with Talana, the dragon that's being hunted. During your fight with Talana, she curses you, causing you to become one with the spirit of the creature. Therefore you are no longer a Dragonslayer, but a Dragon Knight. This new title gives you the opportunity to change into a dragon. Alas, these fantastic creatures are not so beloved by the populace and they soon hunt you as a pack of wolves would a wayward rabbit. Thus, you are obliged to flee, and leave Farglow. You find a world in which Damian has caused untold destruction and decay and you, with your new Dragonpowers, may attempt to save the world - which is not exactly a strange purpose for the average gamer.
As a dragon you also have an entire arsenal of skills and you shall have to choose in which of those skills you invest those precious points. It's fairly obvious that you can't buy the dragon's equipment in the cornerstore. You will have to search for it, completing a number of quests to be able to protect yourself better in your dragon form. Now, you won't be able to freely fly around anywhere as a dragon. All across the world, there are different kinds of dragontraps in place that will make your life hell. You can try to avoid them or disable these traps in your human form. That way, there is an important interaction between both forms, which you'll have to use cleverly to stop Damian.
Gameplay with the dragon is mostly flying around a lot and chucking fire at your opponents. As such, you can shoot fireballs at the Wyvern you encounter - they don't cost you energy, but they take a little target practice - or you can use one of your skills and drown your enemy in a sea of flames, or launch heat-seeking fireballs at them. You can also pause the game here, choose your target, adjust your settings, and plan your attack.
The Dragon Tower
Another part of Ego Draconis is the Dragon Tower. This is your safe haven which at first, you have to be able to conquer from an evil alchemist. You can go there any time. That way you can save your hide at a moment's notice by just teleporting to your tower. In this tower you possess a number of helpful servants, that search the land at your command, for any object that you may require... such as herbs to make potions. In those quarters, you also find a large chest in which you can save a great number of objects that you can't use at the moment, but you may have a use for later on.
In another section of the tower, there's a Frankenstein look-alike. in this room, you can create a "Thing" with the help of collected limbs, and that "Thing" you can summon later in battle, when the going gets tough. Thus, the head determines the class of the thing such as warrior, archer or magician, and the other limbs have an influence on its overall stats. A nice extra that definitely will have some of us searching for the best build. Depending on your style of play, you can create a home-made supermonster, which just might be enormously convenient in battling the many foes on your path.
Flying Fortress
Consider how the official part of the presentation ended a bit sooner than appropriate, Swen obtained the permission of the PR-man present, to show us something extra. In all of Rivellon, as time runs its course, you will see a change in scenery. We go back to Farglow and don't find the cozy little town we left, but gigantic towers that give the place a very decadent, gloomy outlook. You can only reach it in your draconic form and the towers are specially built to stop these flying creatures.
One may notice that, in this part, Larian has taken some inspiration from RTS-games. Not from the point of view of the player, but that of the enemy: He has towers constantly launching demons into the air, towers that shoot arrows and lasers towards you, and towers that generate a specially designed dragonshield and so protect other towers and areas. To disable these last, you have to find a switch; which you can find in the tower itself, or somewhere on another platform. In this phase of the game, it becomes very important to switch between human form and dragon form, because a man can get past such a shield. So why doesn't one just walk past a Flying Fortress, you ask? Because the landscape is so utterly destroyed, that something like that is no longer possible, and you are obligated to fly over some obstacles.
