Hello, I've backed both Original Sin and Original Sin 2, pledging at physical collector's editions for both! I've put in 4 hours into the first Alpha version of Original Sin 2 so far, so here's my impressions:
Bugs
- Pink quest text, this happened with me for the quests involving the imprisoned elf next to the arena fighting hatch, and the woman the other side of town looking for her daughter, who gives you her doll.
- Markers disappearing from the map. The 'location' markers seem to appear and disappear whenever they want, sometimes they show the quest objective location, other times they disappear for no reason.
Positives
- A personal and bias like: correct use of foley FX. This is a criminally underrated aspect of modern sound design so I'm ecstatic to see Larian pay attention to this. If my character wears boots, it should sound like boots, if they are barefoot it should sound like they are, if they walk, it should sound different to running at a pace. Again, personal thing here, but details like this are what make for good sound design.
- Crime system. As mention above, this is an incredibly innovative game mechanic for RPGs in general and for the pen and paper style. Whoever thought this up needs a promotion and fast. It makes total sense for NPCs to search their belongings or to glance over in the direction every so often, and this makes thieving a more worthwhile and exciting skill to invest in.
- Dialogues. More, better, interesting, skill/race/gender checks are fantastic. It seems like there is always a choice to make and I hope this continues throughout the game. The quality of the writing, personalities of the characters and descriptions are at the top along with Planescape.
- Low AP + turn based = amazing. I'm glad Larian kept the turn-base combat, along with having overall lower AP in exchange for treating AP like a dump stat. This really does make the player really think about how to approach a battle, where to setup party members and what actions to queue.
- Better graphics. On the surface level it may not seem much improved, but again, there're little details not seen in the first game. The character models look more realistic, higher fidelity, the shadows and lighting seem to look sharper, crisper and more material reactive. My main gripes are how FXAA is a little too blurry in this game and how your entire characters are coated in the wet/hot shader, as opposed to only the body parts exposed to them. Speaking of exposed body parts, I'm glad whoever modelled the characters didn't make all women wear high heels and let all the characters show more skin when they are 'naked', as opposed to what Bioware do and still make them wear full bodysuits (hello, I just took my clothes off). Also, the height and weight difference between races are great, the elves are slim and muscly, lizards are big and bulky, dwarves are... well actual dwarves. Really loving this stuff, guys.
- Maturity. Whilst I've noticed the great humour from previous games is still here, I'm loving how mature this game looks to be. Not every NPC is Mr. Nice Guy 003, or promise to offer you treasures beyond imagination for every single quest, some even outright battle you for being near them or disagreeing with them. This is so good, the realism of the characters and their personalities in a world such as this where the Sorcerers are treated as prisoners is ironically more welcoming than having every NPC tell you their life story and offer you to kill the rat the other side of the world, or just down the street. In addition, there is this one character I met in the starting town who appeared to be a prostitute, or work in a brothel, she is the blonde woman in the kitchen area. Meeting a character such as this brings the situation into reality that not even status can make you immune to the world's poverty.
- Character creation. I know that this is alpha and more features are yet to come, but what's on offer so far is an improvement over the first game. The new 'tag' system you can apply to your character add to that pen and paper freedom and yet again, offers players even more choice. This also ties in well with the new origin story system.
- Portraits. Probably my biggest complaint when it comes to character creators are that most games that use portraits just don't get it right. It's either import your own to get a good one, or it uses an in-game photo that looks really nad... DOS2 is a game that does it right, perfectly. The portraits are, in real time, moulded whilst you change the character's face, but what is good is that they are stylised to look pre-made. Not sure how Larian got around to making this, but it's so so so good!
Negatives
- Where are the day and night cycles? I know, I know, it's an alpha. But this is 2016 and I expect an open world RPG to have a working day and night cycle, no excuses. If that means less quests and NPCs then so be it, I want a living breathing reactive world with NPCs working on a schedule, not stand in the exact same spot or pre-determined routine doing the same things over and over, saying the same things over and over.
- OP skills. Balancing is hard to get right and I know this is an alpha, but as of the time of typing, where are over powered skills and classes that need to be either nerfed or have higher requirements for. The ranger and wayfarer come to mind immediately, the dual-wielding wands can get frustratingly OP when said character has them (the witch you fight in the underground arena, is my example), who simply run halfway across the map then shooter her dual wands from a distance and can kill any of my party members in a single turn. For the ranger (and I guess this counts for magic users too) the skill where you can shoot up into the air and 'rain/barrage' down spells on enemies seems OP. The range, and in fact the range on most skills and regular attacks seem a little too far, should be lowered to accommodate for this, OR have it so the 'rain/barrage' skills cannot make barrels explode or are less accurate than regular attacks. Speaking of regular attacks, the ranger feels OP compared to a warrior, a ranger should not be able to pierce a turtle's shell and finish it in less time than a brute up close hitting it with a hammer.
- Item sorting. After having lots of loot of all kinds I want to be able to sort them with just a couple of clicks, what happened to the sort function? It was patched into the original game. Also, I would prefer it when you split an item quantity to give out to party members, that the number you want to split them by appears BEFORE you drag over the item to their inventory. It makes it more convenient knowing how much you are giving them beforehand.
- Expensive equipment. I can't fight powerful enemies without decent equipment, so when a certain NPC tells me the only way out of the island is to fight who-knows how many crocodiles, who are very powerful, I need money to buy stuff. My 8 gold pieces cannot buy 30+ gold shoes for just one character. I killed some enemies around the beaches but they don't drop money, so how are you suppose to get enough without feeling frustrated? It seems like the game wants to encourage you to become a thief or a pickpocket, as this is clearly the only way I can see how to make some coin right now.
- Stiff dialogue animations... I'm sad to see this still not fixed or addressed. When the text reads that a guard walks up to you, I don't expect them to either stand there or walk in the wrong direction. Also, when I talk to an NPC, or they talk to me, I do expect them to face each other or at least turn their heads. It's really bad to see NPCs having this argument, or deep moment, when they are all facing the wrong way and one of them is in the middle of dying from a disease that I can't heal because I'm forced into dialogue.
Consider revising
- Chat window, it gets in the way of clicking around the map, even with the option to click through it. Also, it's really annoying having to keep pressing the Esc key every time I click the chat window text box; to cancel out typing. If I press the text box, but something in-game happens, when I press a shortcut key it begins typing into the chat window. This is frustrating.
- Character skills menu. When I click their skills menu I want to see more than just 3 skills and what they were given for tags and sorcerer skill. I want to see a biography about what I know about them, their race, gender, traits, abilities, its goals in life, what quests I have done for them or if there needs to be any done for them. Things like this, it makes a good RPG even better.
- NPC thief response. Whilst it's truly amazing how good the crime system is, it just doesn't make sense for this 1 lowly unarmed merchant to hold up an entire party of well-armed warriors for a petty pair of boots gone missing. It would be more realistic, more immersive and sneakier if the NPC only talked to one of the party members, whilst the other 3 can still move around. For example, if I stole an apple, I could quickly send it to another party member, then when the NPC I stole from questions me and I allow a search, they won't see the apple I just stole.
- More armour and weapons. I know this is alpha and the beginning of the game, but come on, leather armour is all they have going? No race-specific armour, or dodgy merchants selling special material clothing?
- AI. Another tough thing to get right, but I've noticed the AI will repeat the exact same things if you, the player, do things exactly the same too. This will lead to exploitable builds and generally is unfun to see NPCs do either 1 of 2 things: charge like a mad bull or cast retreat only to run all the way back to where they just were. Individual AI should be given depending on their class, not took from a generic AI tree, in my opinion.
Alright I think that about does it for my impressions of a long-time Divinity fan. This game is truly amazing and it's probably going in my top 10 games of all time, but we'll see what is added and removed in the alpha and beyond!
