Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Divinity - General Discussion

It's also about the technological progress that accompanies this and how we can use it for ourselves. Photography certainly caused an outcry among artists back then. Nowadays, photography is a recognized form of art. Similarly, when the first drawing programs for PCs came onto the market, they were also condemned, as if the images they produced were not art.. Today, these programs are indispensable, and many of them also use AI.

But I understand, of course, that AI also carries risks. For me, it depends on how it's used. It's our responsibility to use these things for ourselves. At least we can't bury AI somewhere in the Mojave Desert anymore.

E: Meaning added

Non-binaries.

They dislike being associated with a "Gender" so we get "Body Type A and Body Type B"

It's one of the things that companies do to facilitate minorities. Alongside stuff like being able to use male voices on a female character or a female voice on a male character, as well as the option for either genital on either body type - Things for the trans players who want representation (Though I still find it curious, as I was under the impression that trans people simply identified as the other gender and want to be seen as their "True" gender, rather than identifying as a mix of both genders that is the reality of the imperfections of sex change procedures... But apparently that's not the case for everyone)

Indeed, this forum was really nice during EA (even when just lurking around.) Still I'm gonna pass on EA this time.

And I remember the EA feedback loop a bit differently: e.g. it wasn't the community who demanded changes around the dream visitor, it was telemetry data from the EA players that showed, tadpole powers were much less used than anticipated. So they made last minute, story breaking changes, that nobody asked for, in order to make players use the illithid mechanics more.

On the other hand, for game aspects on which the forum has been very vocal, more often than not, people have been talking to a void. The "toilet chain" discussion is just one of many examples: When I was using it for the first time, it seemed like a broken relic from D:OS2, not even worth mentioning, because it was even more clunky now and surely it would be fixed. Instead it ignited a whole "mega thread" debate where Tuco and others laid out, with admirable dedication, detail and patience, the many dimensions in which the party control system was broken. Almost nothing came out of it.

Also, God forbid, a commuity manager takes an active role in discussions and manages expectations.

Even BG3 as a whole felt to me like a let down. With act 3 indisputably unfinished (e.g. no upper city, no Orpheus story arc, ...) and an abrupt unsatisfactory ending (that didn't even made sense for my playthrough - not to mention my second, well thought-out, completionist run that I couldn't even finish, because of stability issues starting late act 2.)

The PC Gamer interview with Swen and the writers from the other day painfully reminded me again of two things: 1) they didn't have automated regression tests in place for a game of this scope (!) (causing 2 new bugs to appear for every bug they fixed) and 2) they, well, just lost love for the project at the end (!!). In other words, for BG3 we got the exact opposite of what you would expect from a relatively large studio with indie appeal: the brittle technical foundation of an indie combined with, ultimately, the lack of dedication of a huge studio. (In contrast, compare this to the love and dedication Owlcat put into PF:WotR even years after its release.)

Really hope, Larian gets their act together with Divinity, but I'll wait for some of the more critical voices here on the forum to give their thumbs up on story, gameplay and stability, before playing it. Not feeling the hype this time. Right now I'm more looking forward to Solasta 2, Osiris Reborn and Witcher 4.

I think it's a matter of taste, as it is with all art. When we are talking about consept art; my opinion is using the human first and preferably unfiltered gives the most interesting result.

Using digital tools haven't been a issue I think, it's specifically genAI that is a problem for many.

I don't pretend, there weren't things, that could have been better for sure, totally agree.

But the Dream Visitor /Daisy had it''s own thread back then and a lot of people (me included) voiced discomfort about that character being too rapey and I was very glad, it was changed.
The toilet chain is true, that should have been changed. I still don't like it at all.
I'm very sure that at least Halsin, but imo Minthara too are only companions, because people campaigned for them.
I think, they lost love for the game in the end because of WotC. They don't seem to be the easiest to work with and I remember Swen or someone else from Larian mentioning, that all the people, they worked with on WotC are gone now. That can't be easy.

I agree, that upper city and more for Wyll and Orpheus would have been nice, but I still like the game a lot.

I think the fact, that they work with their own IP now should be helpful.

And there are more things like how Larian refused to change the rest system.

If you are realistic about it, Larian ignored EA feedback a lot and in the few cases they acted on it the changes very often made the game worse.
Not to mention that EA also made Larian ignore Act 2 and 3, which really shows, in order to feed EA players new content.

True, that was maybe a big part of the problem and it was completely out of their control. But still I'm wary. Even though they seem to be very conscious about what went wrong, tthis time they are "even more ambitious", aiming higher. I for one would be fully satisfied if they would manage to develop a game of the scope of BG3, that delivers on its promise (i.e. completed and polished.)

I'm pretty sure that the possibility to have Minthara as a companion was there from early on, because there was a mod, long before the official Minthara recruiting procedure was released, that unlocked this. With this mod you could knock out Minthara to recruit her. She also had the voice lines to give her opinion about the other companions.
What I find more amazing is that there were not more "evil" companions for a dark urge run. My DU ended at the reunion party with only Scratch as remaining companion. All the others were dead (mainly because of the DU's actions) or had left. I read somewhere that, initially, Ketheric was also set up to be a possible companion. But I don't know how close or far that is from the truth.

Possibly, but I think its because Larian overpromised and underdelivered.
When EA started they specifically said they put in the evil companions first so that people play them instead of choosing only the good ones. And initially they were a lot more ambigious and according to datamining Nightsong was a very different person.

But late in development Larian seemed to realize that they can't deliver half of what they promised or otherwise decided to radically change the game. That was when the large rewrites began.
Additional origins like Minsc and Helia were scrapped and Minsc shoved into the back with hardly any content as they had to include him. The existing companions got rewritten to be a lot nicer and Daisy, where you had choices, got replaced by the railroad emperor where you had only a single path which was easier for Larian to implement. Any alternative path like Orpheus or removing the tadpole got removed and the evil path ignored completely.

I bet it wasn't even planned that the Durge is customizable, but because Dragonborn were finished so late they had added the option to create the Durge as a fall back solution if Dragonborn were not ready for release.

On the use of generative AI...

"It's just a tool..." "It's like using photoshop..." "Artists complained about cameras in the same way...": When it comes to art there's a huge difference between a tool that assists you while you retain full control over your output and a tool that does work for you. Generative AI does not 'assist' in the process. It does a portion of that process for you -- a very important part of the process when it comes to art. Looking up photographic references or using other art as inspiration is absolutely not comparable to telling generative AI to show you something. One requires you to still participate in the thought process of putting the pieces together using your own interpretation, the other feeds you a result that is simply the average of everything it found relatable to your prompt. You are watering down creativity/vision and letting the AI have input over the very foundation of your process -- which poisons the whole process forward.

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"None of it will be in the final product...": This is so incredibly far from the point. Art is not just about the final product. Sure, as the consumer you don't need to care about anything but the final product. People will voice their opinions and express their morals with their wallets when the time comes. But Larian doesn't just get immunity to criticism from other creatives and artists, and that general sentiment is AI has absolutely zero place in the creative process. Full stop. No exceptions.

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AI makes a lot of sense for business (even though currently it's not actually saving time or money -- Larian admits themselves), but it has no place in art. So I guess it's a matter of whether they want to make games as a business or as art. There is no wrong answer to that one. It's not wrong to want to make money making games.

HOWEVER... "art" is only half of the discussion with generative AI. There are serious world-wide impacts on it's use, and these aren't opinion. Generative AI is a technology based on theft. Generative AI is also having serious environmental impacts that need to be addressed.

Larian can use this technology if they want, but they've lost face in any claim to be a company that stands for artists or cares about the environment. They have no leg to stand on criticizing other's use of AI anymore. They've planted the seed of doubt in their audience: every written line, every concept, every asset...it's now "is this AI? Did they use AI to make this? Did they forget to replace an AI asset?"

Hope it was worth it.

Maybe they mean, that they finally fit try to make the DIvinity lore fitting together. As I understand, the DIvine DIvinity games and teh DOS games have some lore contradictions. That would for me be a pretty decent 'aiming higher'. And if they do early access, listen more to the gameplay complains (toilet chain and still wonky fighting mechanics - shooting through doors is still not working properly - and more).

Ido


You sure about Minthara? I admit, I might have forgotten that.
And yes, there should have been more evil companions. As is, if you go full evil, you loose at least two origins (Wyll and Karlach), maybe Gale too, if you don't manage to convince him. You won't get Halsin, Jaheira or Minsc realistically and you can very easily loose Lae'zel and/or Shadowheart too. Astarion might stay, but I totally can see an evil character standing alone at the end.


I won't be going head over heel into early access, but all in all it was still a nice experience with the caveat, that a lot of of very important things that were pointed out, didn't make it into the game.

Tbh, getting rid of Daisy as it were, was a good thing for me. That touchyfeely thing going on there was uncomfortable.

And I'm still mad about Helia, she sounded interesting and awesome. And she would have brough ta bit more diversity into the mix.

I didn't dislike the Emperor, he was pretty good as a character, right until the point, he crashed Wylls quest to make the most unbelievable announcment.
What I didn't like about Orpheus versus Empy was the fact, that no matter what,
I do hope, that they don't give us such a half finished end choice in the new game.

I think a lot of people are forgetting that there was another capital sin about Daisly aside for her vague "rapey vibes". She wasn't working because she wasn't even remotely convincing in her role.
People on this very forum used to mock the character for how OBVIOUSLY untrustworthy she was. No one was buying the shit she was selling and everyone could see the trickery behind her attempts to be "alluring" to the player coming from a mile away.

Changing her in a protector figure was one of the most sensible changes Larian did during Early Access.
Too bad I can't say I share the enthusiasm for where that plotline led in the end (the "big reveal" turned out to be incredibly contrived and I ended up disliking the character fiercely after it), nor for a lot of other things they changed or suddenly removed without much of an explanation.

Very dramatic, but says who, exactly?


They've planted some seed in you I see. No seed planted on my end. Nice knack for generalization you have here though.

Totally agree. You knew from the first meeting, Daisy was not trustworthy. And I ended disliking the Dream Guardian because of the big reveal too. It was too much and too forced. He should have stayed an adventurer and self proclaimed protector

Too much, agreed. I remember having to take a half hour brake just to decide how to proceed with the reveal in terms of dialogue choices.

But forced? In what way do you find this reveal to be forced? There was a handful of hints and companion opinions that the whole dream guardian is a mind flayer ploy, starting from act 1. I think the fact that you bought into the adventurer story says volumes about how well it was written and executed with the Emperor. You even create your own version of a Dream Guardian to make them more trustworthy!

I mean the other big reveal...

Ah, I see!

Sorry, I elaborated, while you answered