Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why source matters in the main story? [spoilers]

Hi!
I've been playing DOS1 and 2 and tried to search for answers and that's all i know in the topic.

So the concept of Source is pretty obvious in general but i don't understand why everyone makes such a big deal of it.
In DOS1 source magic seemed to be more like school of magic that is evil for some reason (like necromancy is usually portrayed in fantasy), pretty much like "witches got powers from satan so are automatically evil".

However in DOS2 source magic is absolutely random, widely known and optional. It's the world of non-magical skills that work like magic (teleportation is magic, but "cloak and dagger" works in the same manner but is just a skill of dexterity, not magic), the regular magic and that extremely narrow type of magic that is spread across every single class in game and gives 1 or 2 skills that are a little bit better than regular ones (e.g my warrior can hit for 3k with 3 AP or for 5k with 4 ap and 3 source points). So the whole story is about how objectively dangerous (randomly spawns hostile monsters) is that very specific set of skills and how can it be used to fight against the void. The only skill that has no substitutes is Bless but it's more of a bad design than a lore problem, lore-wise if you cannot curse, you don't need to bless.

It raises a lot of questions about the story, e.g. why people who are sourcerers use this dangerous skills in skirmishes against fantasy-nazis instead of using safe types of skills (if you can use a granade that does 1000 dmg and is safe or granade that does 2000 dmg but have a chance of 50% to instakill you, would you use the latter?) but let's skip it.

What really interests me is why the big picture of the story is built like soap opera. There are only 2 good endings here that actually make any sense: bring back eternals (fix history) or use the source to fix the veil and be done with this several skills you won't be able to use anymore. Lore-wise it's not a big sacrifice, it's like snapping your fingers to destroy every MP5 gun in the world and in exchange prevent alien invasion that would destroy our world (even MP5 enthusiasts should agree that it's quite good deal). So why does it take a zero-to-hero character to kill the gods, gain some power and fix veil while it could've been done easily by the gods in the first place? The whole story is built on several layers of incompetence and bad will of everyone involved.

I can understand that Lucian built nazi-army for his evil reasons and all the stuff involving him doesn't make sense just because he's crazy so obviously does crazy stuff. Just killing him should pretty much save the world and resolve all conflicts (if sourcerers are not murdered they got no reason for revenge and the spiral of violence is stopped and without this civil war voidwoken do not appear) but let's skip it too.

So in the end if you take power of the source you gain nothing (Lucian was divine when i slain him and i've seen no difference other than he's spectacular glow), if you do nothing then it's suicide, if you give power to the people you gain nothing (they have bigger arsenal but still can't beat eternals), if you fix veil you prevent alien invasion at no cost and if you are Fane and bring eternals back you make the only choice that actually matters and is not sabotage. So the whole point of source is to be building material for veil and it doesn't have any other practical use (it's as if blueberries could heal cancer- you can use them to save millions of lives or eat all of them because they're yummy).

So finally my question is whether this story is so shallow and inconsistent on purpose because it was just an excuse to make epic fights (like hero dropping he's gun so he can fistfight the villain who murdered hero's family in 80s movies) or am i missing some very important lore that makes it actually a good story?

Also, is God-King powerful enough to restore eaten souls or just creates clones of enemies i've consumed (e.g. Windego and Kemm shows up in final fight after i've consumed their souls)?

Also if God-King is such powrful being then why doesn't he just descend into the world instead of sending minions? I'm just a regular guy who can lock him behind the veil but he, who also uses source, cannot tear the hole again? It's like locking rabbit in the cage made of carrots.

I think you're missing the point here. From what I understand,

And that's where the main story of DoS2 begins!

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong!

OK, it makes sense when we're talking about 1 vs 1 fight of titans, but fixing veil seems more like a chore- you take that pile of source and put it back into veil so it's not torn anymore.

However Lucian is already divine and from fighting perspective he was weaker than 2 regular Black Ring minions (while Braccus Rex was really wreaking havoc each turn), i'd expect combined power of 7 to be more than this. Also Lucian is divine which means that he bathed in the source lake and it's supposed to be enough to go against God King, while 7 gods still had all that power of the lake unused, so why didn't use that instead of making Divine? I really can't grasp the idea of what is the value of source really. Like the lake of source is so super powerful mythical thing that just touching it grants you amazing power while on the journey you find 2 or 3 huge tanks of pure source and noone makes a big deal out of it and don't even think about transporting it to Lady Vengeance, bottle it or whatever.

Reply to Lotrok: I won't go into detail, but there are several claims that I see as holes in his arguments. But, they're his beliefs so nothing I need discuss. I do see where he's coming from, though - it's well known that the story line is contorted.

And give up being a god, after eons? Surely it is worth risking the world if you might be the last one standing?

Ah well, I am curious to hear someone else's interpretation of the storyline? Go ahead
It is certainly true that mine is just made up from bits of information I got here and there, but I've never read a fully complete and consistent (official) manifest anywhere.

Also: there's an extra 't' in my username: rotk stands for 'Return of the King'

Sorry about the misspell - I have trouble seeing details these days. Actually, I replied to you on your reply to the original poster. I wasn't clear (another thing that happens a lot with me, unfortunately). That's why I typed "his" (holes in his arguments), ie, not your arguments. I see no issues with what you wrote.

So could you elaborate on my holes? I did say that i have knowledge from own playthrough so i might've missed some important stuff.

I've created account here just to ask that one question so any input would be nice.

Regarding Lucian,

Ok, but Lucian as NPC doesn't really matter here. Every extremist is a madman and takes action that are not based on logic but his emotions and fears. That's why i wrote "all the stuff involving him doesn't make sense just because he's crazy". Maybe i wrote it in misleading way but i meant that i do not expect anything involving his evil plan to be logical. It's interesting that you can see him as non-villain (i really wonder how can you justify his clearly evil actions, like murdering innocents, so feel free to tell me about it) but it's not really what i ask.

What i mean is that he was divine for quite some time and had that whole pool of source at his disposal (Etheran) and yet he died almost as easily as some random gang member (Kraken was just a summon and required more effort to get killed).

What i mean is that source is portrayed as something very important and useful in narration but in actual gameplay it hardly matters and if i was wearing that source-blocking jewelry for the whole game (excluding Bless which is needed for main quest) i wouldn't really feel that i'm missing something, every source skill was replacable by other skills without much loss of firepower (max 20-50% once per fight, usually not in 1st turn). It's supposed to be the medium for souls, but consumed souls can be recreated apparently. You can use it to fix the veil but it just makes it a quest item not important part of the universe (e.g. Force in Star Wars is like an element, not physical item). From my experience it's unknown if it's limited or infinite (gods created mortals as harvesters of source so it seems that it can be produced, but it might be a tricky way of saying that it was "spilled" when tearing veil and gods just wanted to pick it up), it's supposed to be limited and yet everyone has some tanks, bottles, medallions or even toys full of it. I've finished 2 games and still don't understand the concept of what it really is and it bugs me.

Maybe scriptwriters just didn't care and "it is what it is, it's needed for plot, move along" is the correct answer.
Or maybe it's like Anathema which is praised by Tarquin but pretty much useless until you are that one specific guy who can really use it efficiently (my crit chances were too low to even consider it).
Or i can imagine it's just another layer of gods' show- they made up stories about power of source as some sort of propaganda, but this one seems like a bit of a stretch.

1. So the concept of Source is pretty obvious in general but i don't understand why everyone makes such a big deal of it.
- Source is life; no source, either a zombie or dead. Source spells, I agree. Better but not a lot better and pretty much one use except in the final battles.

2. So the whole story is about how objectively dangerous (randomly spawns hostile monsters)
- That isn't clear at all. It's alluded to be propaganda spawned by Lucian to make it easier to round up sourcerors so he could steal their source to fix the veil.

3. It raises a lot of questions about the story, e.g. why people who are sourcerers use this dangerous skills in skirmishes against fantasy-nazis instead of using safe types of skills
- Some of the source spells are real battle changers like the protection bubble and are unique (although. for some, I'm not sure how useful). Some of the three dot source spells work over several turns. The characters perceive them as more powerful and, if it means not losing the first battle to live and fight a second battle versus easily killed voidwoken, oh well.

4. There are only 2 good endings here that actually make any sense: bring back eternals (fix history) or use the source to fix the veil
- I don't call the evil ending of killing everyone to bring back the echo of the eternals, now voidwoken, to make sense at all. The veil has been torn since the beginning of seven race history and has caused problems but life went on. Fixing it means killing everyone and all life for the most part since all the source the seven used would have to be returned. There is a hole here in the endings as there should be nothing for the main characters to come back to. I feel (and I think it may well be the canon ending since it allows a total reboot of the series, ie, a fresh start to a staling product) to be the give the source to everyone ending as the godking is defeated and a golden age happens. It allows other side of the veil stories as well as new evil people of the seven races such as a new Baccus to be enemies in the future without having to rely on what happened prior.

5. Just killing him should pretty much save the world and resolve all conflicts
- There were plenty of conflicts prior to Lucian and some of the endings do just that - kill Lucian with possibly a new divine (who hopefully isn't as flawed) taking over. The gods have been back stabbing each other from the beginning. The only thing they could agree to is that they would never trust each other to unite so they created the concept of the divine. Any four gods would theoretically be able to defeat the divine.

6. So the whole point of source is to be building material veil and it doesn't have any other practical use
- There was source in the world prior to tearing the veil. The eternals used source and there was life in Rivellon. Fane discovered the veil and wanted to discover what was beyond it. The seven saw a way to make them all powerful - using some of the veil to create new life. Astarte released additional source into the world for healing purposes but it was misused by some (like Baccus) so was deemed evil. It then became good again with only "healers" using it until it was needed to fight the void. Lucian discovered the truth that the gods used their created beings to sustain themselves (another hole in the story line - does life grow source? if not, what would be the point?) and he knew his mistake allowed the void to not be controlled by them (killing the elves) so wanted to fix his latest mistake by draining the source from the gods and all new life and fixing the veil. How he would do this as a zombie I have no clue. The gods' believed that a new, more powerful divine could fix stop the void and sustain their creation but hoped the one in their particular image, the champion of that god, would respect the god afterwards that he could now easily eliminate. I'd say the god was dreaming but, whatever. If you become divine, it's the status quo; nothing really changes - the void can get to Rivellon so there is constant strife but life goes on. That also makes more sense then fixing the void or allowing the voidwoken to rule (at least to me).

I'd say the story is not shallow at all but is not very consistent, ie, full of holes. I think most issues are just to make a playable game. How fun would it be if Lucien could just smite you easily at the end? Would it be fun if you could call up source spells so powerful that all enemies would die instantly? I still believe that that dadblasted sword should be some 20x more powerful, though - it doesn't even make a dent on Braccus (or Lucien).

exactly what i meant, used as weapon becuase i understand a concept of sustaining life


Well here you got me, i was seeing the whole conflict as sourcerors spawning void beasts as side effect of war against nazis. I've seen it as facts, not just stories.



Again, i was playing hand-to-hand and bowmen only, never seen highest tiers of source spells so it's fault of my assumptions.


As Fane i see bringin Eternals back as good ending (just as fixing history in Avengers- if you change past you automatically murder everyone in current timeline) but maybe i misunderstood the concept. However it might've been the wording used but i thought that giving power to everyone was pointless as they didn't kill the god-king but in the meantime realized they can use this new power for killing each other and restarted old conflicts.


Again, my assumption was that sourcerer genocide is heating up use of accidental/forced source spells and multiplying number of void woken summons. There were always conflicts, but i thought of "saving the world" as stopping space invaders, not bringing peace to everyone.


I say it would be fun if we had some counter measures (e.g he wasn't buffed crazy with initiative and was alone so we could use some guerilla tactics). But for me the last battle was lazy and not fun at all. But the same goes to DOS1, the last battle was the most terrible design i've seen since KOTOR1).


With smart restrictions it would be awesome, like instakill arrows from Baldur's Gate- it costs a lot, it's extremely rare (i think there was only one piece) and you have to really consider if it's the right time to use it. In general i'd say it would be fun if source points were calculated as AP, so spending 4 AP and 3 SP would be worth the amount of damage you can deal with 7 AP.


I would use it just for the sake of gambling fun if it was the same damage but would at least reduce the cost of switching weapons to 0AP for 1 turn after it breaks. Or if it would increase crit chance to some sensible level (e.g. 50% if you're below). But from narration perspective it should be just plain and simple instakill on target- OP weapon that have only 1 charge is not really op, and if you don't like it you don't have to use it. As a player i see it as lazy design just as much as not scaling quest prizes to currrent level in Witcher 3 (remember that "best in the world sword made by best blacksmith that ever lived" that was worse than some random pointy stick?)


Anyways, thanks for the answer, you made it a little bit more clear to me.

Only comment: the final battle in the Dragon Knight Saga was also bad. I have not been a fan of the final battles. I think, as a kind of throw back style, the game was made hard which is fine with me but the final battles are an exercise in tedium IMO.