Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General [SPOILERS] DOS 2 Lore vs Previous Lore

Since I only really played Divine Divinity before playing DOS I and II I was looking for a good summary of other games to find our more about Lucian, Damien and Black Ring. I finally found one, written by Larian themselves nonetheless:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin/posts/452503

So basically, if I get this right, even though DOS II seem to rely heavily on your previous knowledge of those 3 topics since the info in the game is very scarce and vague, it was all retconned in the end to fit the new Void/Ancients narrative.

The basics remained the same, but the lore around it was changed in DOS 2:

- Lucian/Divine One was created by the Gods to stop the Void not the Chaos (but Black Ring was behind those in both case)
- Lucian was killed/feigned death in his attack on Damien's Black Ring forces in elflands and remained hidden on his own doing instead of being betrayed by a Dragon Knight and held prisoner in Nemesis by Damien
- Instead of being just a power to heal (when not corrupted) as it was presented in DD and DOS 1, Source is now capable of many more forms of magic and plays much bigger role in the world

Therefore, as many have already said in other threads, it is kind of pointless trying to fit DOS 2 within the pre-existing timeline as it essentially creates a new one on the foundations of the previous one... A strange and confusing move to say the least. Even though Sven himself said they have been "inconsistent" with their lore before, it didn't actually sound all that bad to me (at least from the summaries) while now they just went and retconned most of it... while still relying on it or knowledge of thereof.

All that being said, I really do like the new take, just wish that if they decided to go that far with the retconning, they would provide us with more lore about Lucian/Damien and the Black Ring within the game itself and made it clear this is a new timeline. What do you girls and guys think?

Personally I would have preferred straying further from the source material, just because not being sure which version of the character you're currently dealing with is more frustrating than dealing with a brand new character who in many ways is the same. I don't really mind, I am not a fan of the other Divinity games and so the breaches in lore were only between D:OS1's story (no books), and D:OS2 which were relatively few EXCEPT WHERE IS AST-

However, one correction about Source: It seems that in D:OS1 it had many of the same powers as in D:OS2; it is described as "ripping the life" from an individual, and while I wont say for certain the Blood Stones seem to be created at least partially with Source. If only because those that manage them turn into spooky scary demons or monsters, which they explain is one of the dangers of using source. Also the spooky forest with all the corpses is a product of Source magic as far as I know, and it certainly is not a place related to healing magic unless you count horrible tree people as healed.
But ultimately I think Source in 1 was just "bad magic that is really strong you guys" and wasn't very well-defined. It isn't in 2 either but, hey, you know what I mean.

I kinda agree, it's pretty frustrating trying to understand how things in this game work when half the information isn't provided, and half the information is different from what was provided previously.

It kinda seems like consistency between games lasts for roughly one game before the lore changes.
Divine Divinity - Beyond Divinity* - Dragon Knight Saga - Dragon Commander - Original Sin - Original Sin 2. (* May not count since it's set almost entirely on a different world from Rivellon.)

Larian has a habit of introducing major, huge things into canon and pretending like they were already there the whole time. That has much the same effect as a 16-year old teenager returning home from school one day to find an uncle who was never, ever mentioned before sitting in the living room chatting it up with his parents as if they're close friends.

Right, should have elaborated there: In DOS1 Source is already corrupted and is being used by the baddies for necromancy and other bad stuff, but it USED to be used mostly or maybe even exclusively for healing miracles if I remember DOS1 correctly. Then in Divine Divinity it was just healing again and then in DOS2 back to just being more powerful/sinister form of magic and also the basis of life for all 7 races as it turns out.