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

Well, I'm just quoting the devs. According to this kickstarter update, "this is just before Beyond Divinity, [Damian]'s still stuck in Nemesis."

Messed up, that's what it is.

My understanding is "missing, presumed dead" at the time of DOS2. But in Flames of Vengeance he kind of got better.

I think the current understanding is that DOS2 is somewhere between BD and ED, though I guess all will be revealed in due course.

In Divinity 2, at the beginning, everyone thought the Divine was dead, too.

But I'm glad you bring this up, because it's a great example of what I mean when I say the devs retcon everything with every new game. In Divinity 2, everyone thought it was the Dragon Knights who murdered the Divine, and there's... no reference to any of that in D:OS2. It may come later, but there is, in fact, a Dragon Knight in the Early Access chapter we got, and you'd think maybe "wait didn't y'all kill the Divine" would be an option, but NOPE, nary a word.

I also want to be clear that this isn't something I think is particularly bad. I don't think any creator should be afraid to retcon their work to make it better. But it DOES make it difficult to understand the series as a whole.

Actually now that I think about it *presumed dead* may work. There was a time between Divine's supposed assassination by Damian (which was actually a trick to magically imprison him) and his salvation from imprisonment by the Dragon Knight. If that's what it is then our DOS2 protagonist has no chance of becoming the new Divine as some people were propheting in the game. Too bad, it had potential.
But something is definitely going on in the game as whole organizations and otherworldly creatures are looking for a new Divine. And this would also mean that the game actually takes place no more than some 100 years after DD.

I would love a proper timeline because Divinity 2 says nothing about Sourcerers or Mad Source Kings.

Back on the topic at hand - all of this timeline speculation doesn't explain what happened to the elves. Was it a retcon, another subspecies or were they simply transformed by smoking too much drudanae?

Yep, as far as I can tell, those bits of lore were created for the first Original Sin.

Honestly, I'm starting to think of Original Sin almost as a sort of "reboot" for the lore.

I hope this does not mean we lose Aleroth ...

My understanding is that DOS2 comes after DD but before BD. And I agree, an official timeline or a lorebook would be awesome!

And tbh, I would very much like to see again not only Aleroth but also Verdistis ;-)

This is the problem with prequels, you get stuck having to explain changes. They should have had a game where someone went back in time and changed something and now this is a while new timeline so it will not be bound to future events. Could always say the the other elves are the product of mating between humans and elves (halfbreeds), and the elves we see here are the pureblood elves. It would explain why the other elves just look like humans with pointy ears.

Alternatively, you could say that they start off looking like human with pointy ears, but as they get older they transform into what we have now. The human looking elves could be their young years and the alienish ones are their adult years.

Like I said, I like what they did with the elves, it actually makes them another species instead of just humans with pointy ears.

Lol. The good old days -- when elves had the technology to wear clothes.

One day, an elven scholar will discover an ancient tomb, inside there will be etchings on the wall. Once discovered, the scholar may be able to recover this arcane art and share it with his people.

Well again i like the new elves a lot and i hope they don't get "fixed".

I love the new elves.
The Tolkien elves are done to death, yay for new ones.

Also they are not attractive in the least, but who cares.

That's a matter of taste.