Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Female armors - a woman POV

They also changed every thing else about the characters, including the option to not even have a female PC.

I'm maybe missing your point here. I understand that was changed. The reason for them originally identifying the two PC's as male and female was most likely there for a pivotal reason. It was probably changed to adapt to the multiplayer and allow more connection with the PC if for instance a male wanted to play a male with his friend in the game. Doesn't change the possibility that the Male and Female PC's might have possibly been very pivotal to the original story and thus was changed from original design or vision. Not saying it was a bad thing. I'm just saying in my opinion I would have liked to see where their original ideas would have taken them.

The original character design was never the defining aspect of the game. It was never a 'vision'.


I never made the claim that character design was the defining aspect of the game. I find it weird you claim character design was never a "vision". As an artist I sometimes spend hours trying to come up with a "vision" of what I want to draw before ever putting pencil to paper. Games likewise have bullet points and ideas that create the vision of the game. But the bottom line is video games are visual. We interact with them visually and we explore them visually. If this game was originally envisioned to be sci-fi instead of fantasy it would still be a direction, or even a vision to take the game. All steps taken to enhance the game serve to take it closer to that vision. Character design doesn't necessarily encompass that vision but it obviously is supposed to draw you closer to the world in which they are existing in.

So you give examples of things that couldn't be changed now even if Larian want to do so, and yet ignore the many, many things that have already been changed.

I didn't mean to ignore them. I just simply didn't think all applied to the subject I was talking about. Balancing changes and some mechanical changes don't all necessarily affect the vision of where you want to take a player in a game or story. They can affect the vision. I just don't think they all do. In my opinion I feel like character design does affect it, just as much as the environment those characters are walking around in.

Why does cover art exemplify their true vision of a game, but it is ok if they change everything else?

It's not always okay to change everything else. There's changes that affect gameplay (mechanics) and there are changes that affect the setting and placement of the story and world (design). Since I was mostly focusing on the design, look and feel of the world the game takes place in, I think it's kind of sucky that we can so easily change the design due to complaints, when everyone throws a fit when changes happen to mechanics.

But again, I don't really feel that the changing of the metal bikini is that big of a deal, so much as I would have really liked to see Larian say, "Hey this is how we wanted the characters to look and this is how they're going to look". Again sticking to their guns and stuff for what they had designed. I mean you gotta remember. These guys spend countless hours and time brainstorming and trying to come up with a look and feel of what this world is supposed to be. This is done by the concept artists after the directors and whatnot tell them what they're looking for. Once they have concept art down all 3d modelling and texturing is basically trying to capture and apply the concept art INSIDE the game. So I feel like changing the art affects the original vision of the world they're creating. Because after all that art is what they were trying to capture live in game with 3d models.

In my opinion of course.