Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Humor - Don't overdo it

We all need to laugh from time to time, but too much humor - like too much spice - can be annoying. The endless stream of mechanical chickens, sheeps, grotesque NPC's you encounter in Divinity Original Sin can become unbearable in the long run and totally destroys the immersion for me. I hope that Larian can take a more balanced approach towards humor in Divinity Original Sin 2.

I dunno, it's what always made Divinity what it is for me: the series managed a really good mix of humour and poignancy, and didn't skimp on either. I think they were definitely the better for it; other games like the Fallouts and Dragon Ages managed their share of humour, but the particular blend of humour and seriousness are Divinity's hallmarks. I'd be disappointed to see the ridiculousness dialled down. There aren't many games like it; in fact Sacred 2 is the only one I can think of offhand.

Humor is a big part of Larian game, yes.
As Swen told a lot already though, the theme and DOS:2 in general will be way more "mature".
But it's still a high fantasy game so anything can happen, especially funny stuff

I would lose my humour if not

Ah, a kindred spirit.

Frankly, I'm getting nervous with all the emphasis on the way more 'mature' speak. I hope it doesn't lose its soul in the process.

I certainly look forward to a more mature sequel. I've said before that I felt some of the humour in D:OS was too juvenile for my taste (eg, the scene of teleporting into the woman's bathroom).

But I don't believe that maturity is incompatible with humour. I remember being enthralled with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which had some interesting themes and plenty of fun moments. But the sequel decided to be darker and edgier and I struggled to find anything I liked about it.

We could probably argue for days about what is or isn't juvenile. But I hope I've made my point.

I like the humor in D:OS, but sometimes it can be a little too goofy. With more focus on seriousness, I'm expecting more dark humor, and more situational humor that isn't like "Oh, haha, I'm talking well!" but is born out of the conflict of origins and interests and the like. And with way more writers, I imagine there will be a lot more internal dialog about what's actually funny, so even if the humor's tone is the same, I do think it'll be better.

If this forum were Facebook, I would "like" this.

"Dark and edgy" makes me a bit nervous, though: that was in vogue a few years ago and took, say, Oblivion which was charming but for the most part not dark and edgy enough, and gave us Skyrim, which had the darker, grittier side turned up to 11 and which I found a little charmless in comparison.

And I think Inquisition now sets the bar for the minimum number of cheese references a game should have. Which was quite a lot.

Well, Beyond Divinity was a very dark game and still funny, so maybe they want to recreate the tone of this game. And in my opinion the Enhanced Edition became a very dark game, at least at the end. It started lightly and then we landed in the Phantom Forest.

Oh my, the Phantom Forest ...

Larian is known for its humor and realy as of late most fantasy stories that have taken themselves too seriously have been boring.

One thing humor does is actually create a sense of "anything is possible", this is one thing to consider with fantasy archetypes.

Original Sin had talking Snowmen that fought you. And why wouldnt it? Its magic afterall.

Im a bit sick of games treating magic like some kind of science with strict limitations, it tends to deemphasize the entire thing.

Also most settings that try to be "dark and edgy" fail to do so and just end up beeing silly. Like the Dragon Age games which try realy hard but as a result i just cant take the world they created seriously.

If you wanna overod dark and edgy, you need humor too, such as 40k. Dark Humor is humor too afterall.

I like Larians humor and i hope it sticks around.



Tho i gotta reply on the Oblivion/Skyrim comparison: realy?
For one thing, TES is a series that isnt exactly known for its great humor, Skyrim was mostly darker than Oblivion in artstyle, which is to say it had an artstyle of its own.
It was much closer to Morrowind, which is the gold standard for a TES game as far as im concerned.

From watching allot of awsome movies the best ones have a balenced crew of actors and it is key in most of them that there is a strong comic to hit the punch lines at key moments of over levity to soften the mood the same is true in game story lines. Some of the best catch lines from movies have transended from there origional state and spawned other grate moments in movies and games. ones that every one tryes to paridy in real life.

I dont like Hollywood humor thats basically Action scene -> Beat -> Punchline for comedic relief -> Action scene

Its not involved, its basically a distraction. I think people are too afraid of Humor actually beeing part of the plot, of parts of the plot beeing kind of... silly while the plot stays serious at the same time.

I know an author that does this very well but he only writes in German.

The metal rats and chicken came from nowhere, so they threw me a little bit off the game, but in Divinity Original Sin, I think the most boring writing I had to read was the serious one, while I appreciated most of the humorous one.

All the "guardian" stuff was really bland for me, including most animation videos, whereas I really liked the humor in some characters (the prost- no the lady who read books to you, who you rent for the bored troll, the immaculate students touring Luculla, the sketchy fabulous five, the hard hearing mayor of Cyseal, the beast who wants you to kill its goblin master...) and in some zones (the elemental war in hiberheim, the stone wars in Hunter Egde - genius).

Now that I think of it, the rares instances of humor I didn't really liked much were the ones that didn't mesh particulary well with the world. Baardvark mentionned the wishing well (you could remove them and nothing would change much), but there's also a big useless zone in Luculla with the animals you must save from being sent to a slaugtherhouse, and the musicians/bohemian camp (you could remove them aswell without changing anything much). I didn't feel like they were linked to anything really in the world.


So I don't really mind the tone (be it humorous or serious), as long as it meshes well within the world (not just some free humor that hides an area of nothing). Given that humor is hard and that you can't strike 100%, overall I think it was very well handled in Divinity, but I agree with the OP: avoid empty humor, I think humor must complement a solid situation, solid story and solid characters, not be on its own. Jokes must have a setup.