Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General The first thing I want to see in the game

Interesting character, strongly tied together aesthetic, some little hooks to differentiate from "vanilla" fantasy elves, decent amount of customization and clear introduction to the rather unique tag functions. A game with a bit of character, ideas and vision and the determination to make it happen right.

Also, now that we've had our quota of identity politics threads from new users, can we just start deleting new ones? The random thread starters never seem to come back so I doubt they'll be missed. (Although some older users can grab the torch of the OP's argument pretty seamlessly when these threads do start. But I'm sure they're welcome to start their own threads if they feel the lack of lurker accounts starting topics is detrimental.)

It'd just be nice if we kept the forums tidy for people who want to add to things rather than tear everything down.

I like the elven designs...

Me too, I especially like the slightly sinewy alien physique. They're more on the beastly side of nature than the flowery side, works well to tie in with the whole eating everything shtick.

I like the alien elves look, much better than just humans with pointy ears.

It's rather funny a person with new account is saying all this... You should have just stuck to your first point... Also I know why armour looks weird on elves, because they are meant to wear magic armour... It looks absurd, but far better.

Well, you say funny, I say pretty starkly demonstrative of the problem. New accounts have no safeguards and can be abused if not taken with a pinch of salt.

Chain Lightning! I just came in cause I loved seeing the name Vas Ort Grav, was one of my favorite spells in UO.

Haha, yeah, nothing says ultimate magical badassery like dropping a 7th circle spell on three mofos at once.

Loved the magical language system in UO, it's very meta: When you first start playing it's (litterally) arcane nonsense. Then you learn a bit more about it and it all makes sense, it's all very consistent and intuitive. Does wonders for immersion.

The only thing I wonder about new elves is how the hell did they [de]evolve from these guys in such a short time (that's from Divine Divinity when the Divine was alive):

New elves look like somewhere along the way they grew to Avatar size and dropped normal clothes for leaves and bark. I don't care about bikini mails or whatever, but I care about Rivellon setting continuity - it looks like some parts of it went down the drain.

They could still write, that the elves in Divine Divinity are the descendants from the Old Empire/Nation/Kingdom we also saw in Dragon Commander, while the rest of Elvenkind has chosen to evolve a little bit into the treecreatures we see now. Or they really retcon it. Happens.

It's strange because the rest of the races didn't change much from either Divine Divinity or Dragon Commander (lizards in DOS2, btw, look exactly like in Dragon Commander).



Elves though went from this:


To the picture up top.


I think so too. Personally, I can't say I'm a fan of the new look though.

Yeah, I get that.

But Divine Divinity's 14 years old now (holy crap!), from a practical standpoint I can understand if they want to retcon a few things to try out some new ideas. It's practically necessary with a setting this long-lived to stop things getting stale. And I'm all for it in this case, since I like the new elves more than the slightly more generic ones in DD.

From a lore standpoint OS2 is set a loooong time (by Rivellon standards, the gap includes 2 almost-world-ending cataclysms) before DD. For comparison, it's about as long as the time gap between DD and The Dragon Knight Saga. And in that timeframe some of the elves in that picture had been transformed into this:



It was all explained in the game though, in broad strokes anyway (megalomaniac mage, a little dragon blood, and presto). When you have that much time to play with and a world as fantastical as Rivellon, it's pretty easy to justify almost any change. Plus Larian seem know how not to take themselves too seriously and have fun with the setting, which leads to even more variety. It's part of their charm for me.

Is it? The timeline is very sketchy. But it is known that Dragon Commander happened 8000 years before Divine Divinity, DOS1 100-1000 years prior Divine Divinity and DOS2 100-1000 after Divine Divinity. More details I hope will be shed in a lore book coming with release.
But either way 10 thousand years span (give or take) is surely not enough to [de]evolve so drastically. I think something weird happened to the elves, like they caught a severe case of retconitis.

Ehm, DD came before OS 2.

And at the end, you can explain it with magic. Still logical enough, since magic is very powerful in Rivellon.

I suppose I do see the DOS2 elves as a sort of evolutionary point between those in DD and what we saw in ED. The latter I'm not so keen on and I feel a bit sad seeing them going towards what I guess in inevitable, but for the time being they're still pretty cool and interesting looking.

Yeah, I'm a little sketchy where OS2 is supposed to lie too, the only semi-quantitative measure I saw was "generations after OS1" on the KS. Depending on which races generations, that could mean some very different timescales. I took it to mean closer to OS1 than DD (otherwise DD would have been the nearest logical timeline landmark to compare it to), therefore somewhere after OS1 but before DD.

And yeah it's true, natural evolution from one of those elves into the other isn't going to cut it on those timescales. But there are other options to explain it, magical tinkering, symbiosis, mixing sub-races etc. It might come with a slight wiff of retcon, but obviously they didn't have OS2 planned out when they plotted DD so retcons are excusable in the right circumstances.

It's whether the retcon produced something better or worse than the previous work that's the measure of it's value, and I will happily admit is still up for debate. Though my side on that debate is obviously clear at this point. :P

[Edit] Ah, nevermind, I'd missed the clarification of things in a later KS update. Mea culpa, defo after DD. Been trying not to spoil things for myself too much story wise.

DD (actually, not even DD but Divinity 2) is closest to DOS2, because DOS2 comes after it. The Divine is dead, but his son Alexander is alive. Considering Alexander is not a Divine (but a mage who may be able to prolong his life) I'd say DOS2 comes 100-1000 years after DD. And I recall hearing 1000 years in one of the streams.

D:OS2 takes place before Divinity 2 (and before Beyond Divinity, as well, I believe). The span from Divine Divinity to Divinity 2 is less than 100 years, and OS2 is somewhere in the middle.

Divine Divinity (and Beyond Divinity, D:OS2, and D2) takes place about 1000 years after D:OS1.

But since every game retcons something about the prior releases, I'm not sure a definitive timeline is very important.

Lol, timeline is so messed up that everyone has their own ideas as to what was when. I hope you devs are reading this - make it a point to put an official timeline in the lore book.

This can't be right because in Divinity 2 the Divine was alive (you even save him from imprisonment), but in DOS2 he's dead.