Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Initial Impressions

I've been playing for the first hour and, unfortunately, I have to call it a night but before I go I wanted to jot down my initial impressions.

The overall look and feel of the game is a lot more polished than I was expecting: more polished even than the recent videos had given me to believe. In terms of presentation it appears to be very strong.

I've only experience one major bug so far which was a CTD (crash to desktop) when I tried to return to the Main Menu from the Character Creation screen. That said none of the options on the Character Creation screen other than class selection appeared to work: clicking gender or any of the left/right arrows did nothing. I suspect that hasn't been enabled yet but I'm mentioning it nonetheless.

The game itself looks very pretty but my enjoyment of it was hampered by the control system. Nothing seemed to work quite the way I was expecting it to. I'm sure I'll adapt in time but right now they are detracting from the experience.

Changes or options I would like to see therefore:

• If ESC (escape) would backout/close any of the popup windows (i.e. inventory, map, etc.) and to only bring up the Game Menu (i.e. the one with Save, Load, Options, Quit, etc.) when all other windows are close.
• An option to use WASD to move the characters instead of the camera (we already have edge scrolling enabled). I like to be able to drive the main character using WASD.
• The ability to fix the camera to the current character or an easy way to center it if I scroll to far
• The ability to rotate the camera freely not just 30 degrees. The assets appear to have all their faces and textures so it appears possible.
• As you zoom in with the camera should pivot to become more OTS (over-the-shoulder) so you can see more of what is in front of you (at the very least you should have a similar field of view to when you are zoomed out.
• A hot-key to switch between characters (in other games this is often Tab (which is currently "enter combat mode").
• In combat option to hold down a key (shift, control, whatever) to display the movement point chain so it isn't constantly following round the screen. I keep fearing I'm going to make my character move if click on a quick bar button (a bug in Wasteland 2's beta which has a similar helper).
• A different cursor to indicate inaccessible areas i.e. where we can't walk
• Something to indicate the range and area of effect of spells.
• When the map is open mouse wheel should control its zoom the map not the camera behind it (the conversation window already scrolls with the mouse wheel).

Finally, one last niggle, in the first conversation (i.e. with Junius) you are given the option to "Ask a few more questions" before you have even asked one question! It's a bit like asking Alice if she'd like some more tea before she had had any!

I'm pretty sure that the background assets don't have all the necessary graphics to do full camera rotation - Swen mentioned something along these lines in the livestream a couple of days ago. I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that most isometric games are designed this way (maybe Wasteland 2 is an exception).

Concerning camera control. At first I would just click the ground like I was playing NWN. I noticed that the camera would not follow and was a little frustrated by this. Then I held down the mouse pointer and was pleasantly surprised when the camera locked on to my character and I could control their movement. Try this if you haven't yet.

Also if you have scrolled far away from your characters, just hold in the left mouse button for a sec.

Only had time for a little testing, but omg, the wizard skills are fun. Normally I am a sword and board type, but dropping townsfolk in lakes, fire and just on their heads took up 80% of my playtime so far, lol.

Also love the telekinesis ability.

Not having out of range notifications (as was mentioned in the lets play) is a bit annoying. Also noticed, if your melee is next to a monster, it is hard to click on mob with ranged abilities, 9 out of 10 time you end of hitting your melee

But even for an early alpha, I have to say I am impressed with the sheer amount of stuff you can manipulate and do. The fun factor of just putzing around is astounding, haha!

I just noticed that after it centers from holding left mouse, the camera will then follow your character in point and click until until you scroll away again. I like that a lot.

I don't think Isometric games really need WASD. They are traditionally driven by mouse control and it works flawlessly.

The only thing that I found weird was the way items being culled from the camera fade away. It just seems weird and at first I wasn't sure if it was a rendering bug, or if they were supposed to fade like you would usually see.

That is about as accurate as saying "games are traditionally made with publishers and it works flawlessly". Okay maybe not quite that bad but please don't dismiss ideas simply because they don't match the way things were done in the past. Especially when it wouldn't impact on your preferred control system: I'm not asking to remove anything only to simply to add an option.

A range indicator for spells and attacks would be very nice indeed. In general I'm still struggling a bit with proper positioning in combat, but that is largely due to the somewhat quirky camera (which I assume will be improved in a later version). If I recall one of the answers from the review session correctly,a 360° camera isn't possible because the assets don't allow it, but it would be great if we could tilt the camera a bit to get a better view, especially in combat.

That said, I love the game even in its current rough state, especially the writing ("Call me Ishmashell" - priceless!)