Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Get this game ASAP or in 6-12 months?

I loved the first game dearly and it was the best co-op experience ever for me. The game was challenging, but had many bugs. Then Enhanced Edition final patches fixed so much, but the game became easier or so the community reported.

I am afraid that this pattern will continue with the second game. I am not a beta tester, but I am concerned about developers adding new features, new classes, and voice overs just 2 weeks before the game's release date. How could they even test gameplay balance of a new class with new abilities in such a short time? That is why I do not know whether to wait until the game is well-balanced + patched or get it ASAP with bugs? See, as reviews will start pouring in, a ton of people who played dumbed-down RPG's like Skyrim will complain the game is too hard for them and to make them happy, the game may become not only less buggy, but also less challenging and more mainstream...

I also have a bunch of questions:
- How much hand-holding is there? I dislike heavy hand-holding, like pointing exact location of where to go on maps instead of giving a vague description like "West of here / by the burning building / next to a fisherman in yellow / it resembles gothic architecture", which gives you a decent idea of what to look for, but makes you explore and work for it. However, in a giant world like Skyrim, that would not be plausible... I love lack of hand-holding too, like in Fallout 2, where you get the main quest in the very beginning and off you go, almost clueless about the world, where to go, who to talk to, etc. It was a true exploration, one no other game repeated since IMHO. I also hope there will be none of that "This quest is for level 5 players" info. You ought to find out on your own if some area or quest are too tough for you or not - trial and error is still exploration and maybe one class combination can take one area at lower level while another needs to level up in another area.
- How isn't the AI and difficulty levels? In a lot of game's harder difficulty simply means more enemies, more HP enemies, more damage from enemies, less damage from you, even when identical weapons are used. That is so cheap! How about harder difficulty level = better AI? AI that can adapt to your combat style and pass that knowledge to other enemies and adapt if you change your combat style? These days in other game's a mouse you can kill with a single hit on Normal become God Mouse you cannot kill on Nightmare difficulty. Again, cheap just to increase/decrease stats/amount of enemies/damage, etc.
- How is the actual RPG element? If I want to be a thief, will I get special quests that non-thieves cannot ever get? Will I get specific dialogue options?
- How is party alignment? What 2 players are goody-goody, one is evil and one is neutral?

Concerning the new specializations, even if they announced it recently, they were already working on it way before. I bet they had the rough ideas during pre-prod but only waited the kickstater stretch goal (maybe only checked the ) to really dedicate resources (especially since one of the spec is pretty early in the strech goal).

On the sound topic, the dialogues and audio barks are typically added as one of the last thing in any game because you don't want to re hire the actor multiple times as the story or dialogue are being modified, tweaked, improved etc.

So I would not be too concerned about that.

Alright,from the top!

As for them bringing in new things within 2 weeks is false. The EA we have been given is only the alpha, but that doesn't mean all this stuff will just be added on release. All that stuff is already in the "beta" version which is being tested in house and with other beta testers and etc. So all this stuff is not new and will not be "incomplete" or w/e you want to call it. All the stuff will be tested and balanced for release, even the things not available to us in "Alpha".

As for Voice overs, just read what DeadKnight said. ^

There are "Waypoints" that are added to the game telling you where to go. But that's not in all the quests (from what i saw, but i could be remembering it wrong). I don't really consider that handholding anyway. That's just the game telling you where the quest is, hand holding would be like the game is making everything too easy (imo). The combat and the difficulty is still there (unless ur ya know, gonna be the 1% of the game players who will find the cheesiest of the strats to use and just abuse it).

I believe the waypoints appear when you talk to sunshine and they tell you where to find something which is how it should be. Most things are left to you too fund.

A game like this has less of replay value so why wait? Different origins, gm mode, arena etc.

Here is my take on the game. I have had it for almost a year. I am so in love with it and here is some info on your questions and more.

1. Hand Holding. Nope. You have to use your brain and pay attention to what NPCs tell you. There are often multiple ways of doing things also. Since it's up to the player(s) to be good or evil.


2. AI. The AI is pretty intelligent and will use ground effects and other effects on the players party. Classic Mode is the hardest mode and super fun and challenging, While Explorer mode is a bit more relaxed. From what I have seen it doesn't change their stats, but how they approach battle. Also in classic mode I have had AI enemies stalk my healer even if she was in the back.. so it does seem to identify who is the most threatening or valued.

3. The RPG Element is mind blowing! you can pick your origin. Like my character was a Mystic origin and had special dialog options with some NPCs. I don't know how to post screen shots.. but I will list the selectable Origins. you can pick two.

-Soldier
-Scholar
-Outlaw
-Noble
-Mystic
-Jester
-Barbarian

4. In one of the Co Op videos it shows that party can be different. So you can have goody goody and super evil in same group.

I saw replayability brought up. The game might have a high replay value.. IF they do the creation kit better this time.. the former kit for the other game was horrible and hard to use. Also there is GM mode ~ so we might see GMs looking for players on the forums. Oh Oh and if we can mod the main campaign ~ might see even more options!

But why such low replay value? Is the story and dialogue very similar for every class and character type? I replayed Dragon Age Origins 3 times (third time with mods) and Dragon Age Inquisition twice. Dialogue, character interaction, and cut scenes we're different somewhat for each playthrough and it was worth it. DOS was not like that, but I was hoping DOS 2 would have more of that replay value...

well there will apparently be good/evil paths at the very least or so it seems so thats one reason to at least play it 2 times if nothing else.

To be fair, if you don't have the game already, waiting seems to be the right choice.

The simple fact that the current build has not been playtested if proof enough.

To also be fair, Divinity was not bugged, it had some flaws, and some minor bugs, but the first Divinity was already a great game. They decided to do the E.E. (which was simply another direction because I remember it removing some nice stuff from the first game), and I'm thinking they won't do the same here, but it will definitely be patched a few times...

Yeah if they do the interactivity with race and origin properly, along with just less linearity in the narrative - which the opening alone seems to show - it should have much higher replayability