Since DOS2 and BG3 have grown so much on me, I wanted to share my thoughts and a bit of a wish list for the upcoming Divinity game. I’m coming from the perspective of someone who loves creating different builds, experimenting with skills/spells in interesting ways, and generally focusing on combat-based gameplay, which is the main focus of this post. I’d love to hear how you feel about the points I mentioned, since this is of course very subjective. I have also only played those two Larian games so far, so I can’t comment on the older ones.

Gear:
Based on the recent AMA on Reddit, it seems like they are moving away from the randomized gear system. I assume they are leaning more towards a fixed item system like in BG3. I think both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, and I wouldn’t be inherently against the way they handled it in BG3. That being said, there are some negative aspects that should be taken into account.

  • If you play with friends, it doesn’t feel great when one person gets the “best option” (for example, Markoheshkir being the best staff for almost all mage builds in BG3), while the other players have to settle for the next best option. Even when playing alone, it can feel like you plan one character around their optimal gear, while the rest of the party has to be built around avoiding overlap in gear. This can make it difficult to have multiple characters that invest into the same school, because they might compete for the same items.
  • Considering that items in the upcoming Divinity game may have passive effects that enable builds, similar to the special armor sets in DOS2, this could become even more problematic if multiple characters want to utilize the same mechanic. One way to address this could be to avoid having items that are objectively better than all other options and instead give them more unique advantages and drawbacks. Build-enabling passives should also appear on multiple pieces of equipment. For example, if a passive allows you to create fire while walking, and two characters want to use that effect for different builds, there should be more than one way to access it. The items do not have to be exactly the same, and getting multiple copies could be more difficult or expensive, but it would prevent one player’s build from becoming impossible simply because only one item with that effect exists.
  • Locking gear behind quests is a nice way to give players meaningful rewards, but with a fixed item system there is a chance that an important item for a planned build can easily be missed. This could force players to restart their run or switch to a different build because the one item they needed is no longer available. This goes back to the suggestion of having important passives appear on multiple pieces of equipment.
  • Aside from that, I would love to see gear pieces have more interesting effects than just increasing stats or boosting certain schools, which was the case for most items in DOS2. Especially conditional effects that require certain actions or situations instead of simply adding more damage and stacking as many damage modifiers as possible.



Surfaces:
For me, one of the most memorable fights in DOS2 was the “oil fight”, where the surface played a huge role in the entirety of the combat. It felt crushing at times but it also felt epic once you have the upper hand in the fight in the midst of a huge inferno covering the battlefield. I know opinions on surfaces were quite divided in the community. I am part of the group that thinks surfaces are awesome, and I was quite disappointed by how much they were toned down in BG3, to the point where they barely played a role.

I think creating different surfaces, dealing with existing ones, and combining them together, such as extinguishing fire to create fog that you can hide inside, adds a lot of depth to combat. At the same time, I agree that DOS2 might have relied too heavily on fire/necrofire. I think a better variety of surfaces, as well as more ways for martial characters to interact with them, would improve the system.

In DOS2, only Huntsman really had the ability to make use of surfaces through elemental arrowheads. Warfare and Scoundrel mostly had to deal with the disadvantages caused by surfaces without many ways to benefit from them. At the very least, the “Dip” action from BG3 should be a common action available to everyone. Maybe it was handled better in DOS1, but I have not played that game, so I cannot comment on it. On a side note i would love to see a shove action/skill in Divinity as well.


Environments:
In both DOS2 and BG3, you were able to interact with the environment, but these interactions were quite limited, like shooting the braziers in the Goblin Camp so they fall onto enemies (although this was rarely worth doing) or destroying ladders, hitting levers and certain objects such as explosive barrels.

I hope they greatly expand environmental interactions both in and outside of combat, allowing for more creative and interesting gameplay. Some ideas I had:
  • Setting up traps, such as digging a pit trap, starting combat, or luring enemies into it to gain an advantage.
  • Climbing trees to gain high ground, if the mechanic exists. Of course, you should also take fall damage if you fall.
  • Attacking weak points of buildings, such as a fragile balcony that collapses onto enemies or burying enemies under a collapsing structure.
  • Using a rope or other items to create a improvised bridge.
  • Creating environmental destruction, such as destroying walls, boulders, creating craters or fissures, or summoning boulders. Even if these actions do not always have a major gameplay impact, they simply feel cool and satisfying.
  • destroying/turning of lamps, so the light source is gone



Schools/Skills:
Creating combos is one of the things I enjoyed most about DOS2, such as using Chicken Claw with Rupture Tendons, and I would love to see more possibilities for this through stronger synergies between skills or abilities that enable other skills.
Obviously, there are already surface combinations like rain plus lightning or ice spells, but I would like to see more creative and interesting combos, especially between party members not just by one character. This also means having more unique spells, especially ones that do not simply deal damage, buff, debuff, or heal.
Utility spells felt somewhat underwhelming in BG3, where combat often revolves around stacking as many damage riders as possible onto attacks and bursting enemies down. In DOS2, only a few utility skills such as Adrenaline, Apotheosis, or Tactical Retreat felt truly impactful.
Since the combat system still follows the traditional idea of reducing the enemy’s HP to zero, damage will always be king. However, I would prefer if overall damage was toned down and skills became more effective when certain conditions are met.
For example a Warfare skill could knock an enemy back but deal little damage. However, if you create a wall behind the enemy with a Geomancer spell and they are pushed into it, the skill could deal significantly more damage. This would encourage creative combinations instead of simply using the strongest abilities whenever they are available.

Regarding schools, I like the idea of having a separate poison, acid, and plant school while letting Geomancy focus more on earth, metal, and minerals. However, I would not mind if they kept them combined into one school. I played with a friend who used a geomancer, he would frequently curse about how often poison immunity came up due to zombies beeing everywhere, which i can certainly understand since half of your spells would become useless and the other half is on cooldown. I think the frequency in which a certain damage type gets nullified by enemies should be a bit more balanced or at the very least more spread around instead of one act beeing full of an enemy type that all nullify one damage type. Beeing able to double the damage for two or three damage types (water/lightning) while there is no way to do so for other types of damage feels a bit unbalanced.

Some racial abilities were much stronger than others, such as Flesh Sacrifice and Fane’s Time Warp being extremely powerful. I hope racial abilities are balanced better in the future, so your go to character doesn't always have the same race.
I would also like to see more interesting talents that enable unique builds.


Difficulty Mode:
I enjoyed the overall difficulty in DO2 for tactician and honor mode. BG3 on the other hand became extremely easy due to the reduced difficulty of the base game and challenge modes having global multipliers on top of the extremely easy base game. I understand that the easier game modes should be accessible for players who just want to enjoy the story, but it should not impact the challenge modes to the point that it almost feels like cheating, if you play with a party of 4 characters. After all their whole purpose is to be challenging. You should be able to give it your all and it should still feel like a challenge just like in DO2.