Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Single Player, Multiple Characters

He said the stories might not go well... not that they will die in a fire.

Which yeah of course plots might not go so well for the character if you happen to prevent them from solving it (or worse)

Well, I did say "killed off or whatever".

The point is that the Chosen One main character gets to do his quest and the other characters, even the villains, are just spear carriers. This ruins the entire appeal of competitive questing, because we know from the beginning that Joe Hero is going to win no matter what.

In fact, it turns out from later in the same interview that competitive questing was deliberately removed. CQ was the whole reason I backed this game in the first place. Intra-party conflict was the most interesting thing about D:OS 1, and now they've removed it for the sequel. Oh well, the game will probably still be good.

The information I've seen is that once a character joins the party, he will be just as important as any other characters in the party.

That is, if there's a disagreement, there's nothing to say that "the chosen one" will be the victor. I'll have to check this a little more.

i really do hope the avatar has other options than just becoming The Chosen One. This whole Joe-nobody-becomes-jesus-story really annoys the heck out of me (DOS1 was especially annoying on that one b/c it was clear almost from the get-go that your chars were the busdrivers on a trip on the highway to heaven).

I totally love to become superhuman-powerful, but this saviour-shit really, really, really, really ... REALLY is fucked up

id rather have it like you can (via questing) decide not to become The Chosen One and yield somebody else the "honor". Or, alternatively, become Baal (or some other nice guy).

Let me just back up here and make sure I understand...

What does competitive questing have to do with this "chosen one" issue?

Aren't you just annoyed that the player character might end up being the protagonist?

You're controlling a party, not just a character. The point is that companions are mostly under your control, so it's kind of silly to be actively undermining your player character while controlling your companion.

All it would take is for your friend to join your game and you can do all the competing you want.

i dont have an issue with "saviour-story-telling" per se. i just dont like it when MY char (the one i identify myself to a degree) has to be "the one".

i controll a party, but i play my char. thats a subtle but important difference.

and normaly in single player rpgs you play the protagonist who also becomes jesus at the end of a saviour-story

introducing a way of avoiding this becoming-jesus-syndrom via competetive questing sounds like a lot of fun.

and sadly, i dont have friends that also play computer games (anymore), so i am doomed to playing alone

Everything. Swen said that the "main" PC gets to have his origin quest, and the rest of the PCs don't. They're just there to support the One Hero. There's no competition, there's no question of who's going to win in the end, there's no tension or genuine interest. The question is now "HOW is the One Hero going to win?" Before, the question was "WILL PC #1 win at all?" In terms of narrative, these questions are night and day. I was excited for a game with conflict that was meaningful on a level that RPGs have never dared to go to before.


The fact that you're talking about "THE player character" instead of "the player CHARACTERS" illustrates the entire point in a nutshell.


Sure it is, and it's equally silly for friends to work against each other in a game ... yet people do it all the time and it's fun.

The player character is not "me", and I am not "him". He is one character I am manipulating in order to make an enjoyable story. If I'm manipulating more than one character, why should they become mindless slaves serving the motivations of the One True Character? Is my party a "blob", a single person with eight arms and eight legs, but only one mind? Why? Why is that good?

Have you ever played pen & paper role-playing games? Watch the GM. He plays more than one character every session, and they aren't a hive mind that all work together. NPCs fight each other, argue with each other, work at cross purposes, even go to war against each other. Nobody questions why this is good and important. So if it's fun and good storytelling for one person to write the actions of more than one character if he's the GM, why is it bad and wrong for a player to want to do the exact same thing when controlling multiple PCs?


Oh good, so all I have to do is schedule 40+ hours of concurrent play time with 3 other busy adults. Nothing inconvenient about that.

So only play in multiplayer.

How the ***k exactly do you expect "competitive questing" to work in SINGLE-PLAYER? Because playing against yourself is lame, it would be just as predetermined if you chose which of the different heroes competing objectives won.

Even if it was possible to write AI which was smart enough to compete versus fellow party members, it still wouldn't work right because there's no way to make a timer for the AI completing objectives which would work without always beating the player or always losing. A large part about the appeal of D:OS and such is the freeform nature which let you wander around and take your time.

Plus with combat being turn-based and letting other players wander around in real-time, that would create even more headaches with an AI timer.

None of this problem is new, it was talked about when the D:OS 2 kickstarter started. It was said back then that single-player would not have competitive questing. I can only conclude that you were not paying attention.




Sorry this isn't Icewind Dale 2. Maybe what you're looking for is Pillars of Eternity? Oh wait, I don't think that has competitive questing in it.




There is a difference between a human GM and a computer program. The program is infinitely more restricted in what it can and cannot do.



Sorry. Your computer game which allows you to create all party members with custom backgrounds and have AI which lets them feasibly compete against each other to complete conflicting objectives simply does not exist within the current limits of technology, AI, and design. Check back in a couple hundred years.

Right, because as we've established, scheduling 3 other busy adults to join me in a 40+ hour game is assumed to be no problem.

And even if I did only play in multiplayer, I would still only be controlling one character. I can already do that.


Uhh. Assuming that I knew the outcome of every dialogue decision, every branching path, and every dice roll beforehand? I guess you're right. Oh wait, that logic applies equally well to normal single-player. So I guess you're saying RPGs suck in general. Sorry you feel that way.


I'm not talking about fighting against an AI. I'm talking about controlling all four characters and having them pursue different objectives ... you know, exactly like the game is already set up in multiplayer.


I was paying strict attention to the kickstarter and have been asking this question for a full year, and the opposite is the case. I'd love to see a source for your information. I haven't been on these forums much so maybe I missed something. Show me.


Yes, the Icewind Dale games were actual party-based games. Why are you speaking of them disparagingly? What's wrong with that format?

And you're mistaken about Pillars of Eternity. It is a Chosen One game, not a party-based game. Learn the difference quickly if you want to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.


Read closer. I'm not talking about AI. I'm talking about a single human person controlling more than one character, in a way more meaningful than "another pair of arms and 30 more hit points".


Missed the point. We actually do have the entire game you described, except for the AI, and I'm not talking about AI. The only thing missing is the UI structure that allows a single player to pursue more than one origin quest, to have one character fail while another succeeds.

@Zombra

Well given the modding support this game is going to have I'm sure someone will mod the game to allow single player to control all 4 characters and pursue different objectives.

*I'm hoping someone attempts to add greater ai for the single player campaign myself so it can play closer to multiplayer.

I don't see a problem with competitive questing in the single player portion. You don't need the AI to do things specifically and it is a called ROLE-PLAYING-GAME for a reason: People like role-playing; Sometimes that involves controlling how your characters react and/or interact with each other and determining their motives and other things; It can be fun, just like writing your own story or playing table-top board game by yourself (that is created for 1 OR more people).

Due to the lack of definition, I don't even understand what the OP wants.

I fail to see what practical difference OP has in mind. Seems to me that if he wants to focus on "secondary character" questline, and force the party to fulfill this one first, he can. He can even stop the game once it's done. What are the mechanics the OP wants?

Feeling like you are playing a multiplayer game when you play single?
You cray-cray.

With a bit of experience in this area, while it's not impossible it would be a bit of a task to say the least.

Mainly because of all the increased party dynamics in D:OS 2 and that one of the characters is still by default considered the player character.

What he wants in D:OS2 is what D:OS already had in a less sophisticated form. And since the "playing against yourself" mode already/still exists for QA and plain old testing purposes, not providing this option to players strikes me as... surprisingly petty.

To be honest, while reading the latest interviews, the single player portion of the game seems like a stripped version of the multiplayer version.

I think I described it pretty well, but I'll try again.

I want to create four characters, each with the ability to make their own decisions, and pursue individual and even incompatible goals. I do not want any of these four to be "the" player character; none of them should be the Chosen One. It should be possible for any of the four to succeed or fail at their personal objectives. It should be possible for them to take different sides in a conflict and work against each other. It should be possible for any of the four to die (perhaps even by killing each other), and the game will continue as long as someone is left.

From what Swen described, none of this is in the (single player) game. We can only make one player character, and this character will be a "Chosen One"; the game will center around his personal story, and any companions he acquires will be subservient to that story (if they do have goals incompatible to the hero's, they are doomed to fail). The party will all agree to pick one side of any conflict (probably whatever Our Hero decides). PCs #2, 3, and 4 will not be able to pursue their "origin" quests. If PC #1 dies, the game is over, making him "essential" while the rest are just sidekicks.

/this

since QA @Larian plays with all origins stories active (ie including companions origin stories) it seems more like setting some flag somewhere than doing "modding" in the common sense of the word

As far as I understand, the Origin quests are separate (or perhaps layered on top of) the main quest line. However, the main quest line is basically the same regardless of your origin. Your main quest line relates, in some way, to the fact that you are a sourceror . All 4 members of the party share this trait and so share an interest in the main quest.

None of the party are mortal, as such. It's designed for 4-player co-op, and the they have stated that permadeath is not going to happen. I'm not sure if they're planning to give you a game over screen if only the player character/s die, but it seems unlikely based on current information. Theoretically, there's nothing stopping you from killing the player character, and simply choosing not to resurrect him.

Yes, one character will be more important than the others. When you create your character, you can choose which one will be most important and play him as the protagonist. I also understand that if you're playing multiplayer (which is drop-in), then the party member they control can start competing for the role of protagonist.

I'm sure there are some people who are so committed to role-playing that they'd enjoy competing against themself, but this really takes a special kind of roleplayer. I really imagine that most people who are so interested in actively creating (and not just participating in) a story would be much more interested in creating their own campaign in the mod tools (assuming it's usable).

Just because only the player characters can be protagonists, it doesn't mean he's the "chosen one". When you watch a movie about Nelson Mandela, he didn't achieve great things because he was chosen, or because he was born with a special power that would change the world forever. But they made a movie about him because he achieved great things. When you start watching the movie, you do it knowing that he's the protagonist and you'll be watching to see what he achieved and how he did it.

I really don't understand how you're conflating protagonist with chosen one. I love Game of Thrones, but this is not Game of Thrones. We don't need to have the expectation that permadeath can happen at anytime.

I agree. This would be a good and easy idea for a mod, but I agree with their decision to not include this as an option in the published game.