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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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Hmm judging that Raze works for Larian
That MIGHT be the Larian studios answer that we will not be getting any origins that are not pre-generated character backgrounds.
Then again... His answer wasn't exactly clear or transparent.
----
Dang need official answer!
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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I am not directly involved in D:OS 2 development. However, give that the number of known origins is 5 (so far) and it required a stretch goal to add the undead origin during the Kickstarter (though admittedly that is more work given it was also an additional race), it does not seem likely additional origins would be added which each take 5-10 times the work of the origin for a specific character.
If the number of origins was on the order of 100, some adaptable generic origins could fit in relatively easily (with the previously discussed restrictions). With the number of origins on the order of 10, adding just 2 adaptable generic origins would easily double (possibly triple) the work required.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
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There is a difference between "Not all encompassing" and "Crappy low-quality origin"
Okay seriously, WHAT YOU WANT IS 100% UNCLEAR. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU HAVE IN MIND. NOBODY. This is a thing that you wrote: So.. what you're saying is that LITERALLY all you want is a origin story that says you're from a merchant family, and allows you to visit your parents merchantile Yes! Ohh my goodness you understand! That sounds EXACTLY like low quality to me. And there you were agreeing that was what you wanted. I am tired of failing to guess the exact vision for origins that you have in your head. I give up.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Mar 2013
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You know, there was another RPG - one with fully voiced NPCs even - which also had player character origin stories as one of its major selling points and managed to handle full character customisation (given name, sex, and when appropriate also race) within those Origins just fine almost a decade ago... How many dialogues, quests and NPC relationships were dependent on the origins? I'm not arguing that it can't be done. Either there are restrictions on how it is done, or it is 10 times the work doing it in all possible combinations of race and gender. You aren't seriously expecting me to go through all of DA:O's quests, are you? Anyway, a reasonable amount throughout, duh. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. And with reasonably varying degrees of importance given by (N)PCs to sex, race, origin and/or a combination thereof. There was content (including whole origins) cut I am sad about it having gotten the ax, of course, but I can't remember a single time it felt like any part of the player character's background was unduly ignored in the finished (base) game. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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You aren't seriously expecting me to go through all of DA:O's quests, are you? I wasn't looking for a number, but a comparison to what is known for D:OS 2. With DA:O's 6 origins, are the ones you don't pick in the game as companions, and do they all have relationships and conflicting interests with each other? If no, then the origins in that game are compatible with the tags used in D:OS 2's generic character, and the argument that another game had adaptable origins is not relevant to whether they can reasonably be implemented in D:OS 2 (a different game with a different budget and team size).
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2015
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There is a difference between "Not all encompassing" and "Crappy low-quality origin"
Okay seriously, WHAT YOU WANT IS 100% UNCLEAR. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU HAVE IN MIND. NOBODY. I'm pretty sure I get it. The Red Prince isn't just an origin -- it's a pre-defined character with limited customisation. Let's not conflate characters and origins. I'm pretty sure he's just asking for some origin tags that can be applied to the custom character. If we look at a game like Dragon Age: Origins, you get a range of different origins to choose from, but this is distinctly different from what Larian is doing with its playable characters. There are different degrees to which you can commit to the origin concept. Dragon Age: Origins had six unique origins which should have had a mostly linear development cost. They built an origin quest for each of these which you experienced at the beginning of the game, and sprinkled some references and content into the rest of the game. I don't think anyone is suggesting competitive questing or DA:O-style origin quests for the custom background in Divinity: Original Sin 2 (aside from the normal level of content they'd normally provide for the other tags). But it'd be nice to feel like you've got a foot in the world. "Hey dad! How's the merchant business treating you?" In Dragon Age: Origins gender was easily the most important thing, content-wise, as it limited romance options and affected the ending of the game (particularly as it relates to Morrigan). In this game, when you romance a heterosexual woman, she usually doesn't care that you are male and human; it's enough that you're male. In these common situations, there's also nothing exponential about adding a new, unrelated tag for "son of a merchant". Does this woman really have a reason to care that your dad is a merchant? There were some characters who did care what race and gender you were, but these were the exceptions. Usually they'd only be checking against one "tag" at a time. If you're worried about the more complex racial implications of having family members, then don't use family members. Maybe one of the origin tags is "ex-military" and you meet your former drill-sergeant or something. Basically anyone who might remember you.
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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I should state just for clarification that "Competitive question" isn't a result of the origins but the player's choices.
Indeed PART of the competitive questing are the extra initial quests specific origins have. Yet that isn't the only source AND even with those you can still chose to work together anyway. It is just a single source of competitive quests and the vast majority do not come from those origins.
Competitive Questing was a system they implemented that allows players to seek out separate goals on quests.
It basically replaces the Rock, Scissor, Paper of the first game and expands on it further.
Last edited by Neonivek; 28/08/16 02:19 AM.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2015
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Indeed PART of the competitive questing are the extra initial quests specific origins have. Yet that isn't the only source AND even with those you can still chose to work together anyway. It is just a single source of competitive quests and the vast majority do not come from those origins.
Competitive Questing was a system they implemented that allows players to seek out separate goals on quests.
It basically replaces the Rock, Scissor, Paper of the first game and expands on it further. That's a good point. Haha. Something just occurred to me. Given that we've been promised romance, I guess this means we will have competitive romancing. After all, it'd be weird for a character to have all 4 player characters as boyfriends. XD
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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I thought romance was less a promised feature and more a goal they want to achieve but aren't sure if they will succeed at it.
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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The 'love and hate' stretch goal was about relationships, not simply romance.
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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The 'love and hate' stretch goal was about relationships, not simply romance.
Ohh thanks! I completely forgot it was a stretch goal.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2015
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It was one of the stretch goals we achieved, if that counts as a promise. When he announced the Love & Hate stretch goal, Swen also said he was planning to include romance anyway, but by achieving the stretch goal they would be able make it much better. He even had a brief romantic dialogue he played as an example. Also, given that another kickstarter update lamented that they had fewer female players than they expected, I understand they have been thinking about how much it is a real problem, and how they can go about fixing it. This is a feature that is recognised to have an impact on the female demographic. I'd be very surprised if they ended up cutting it. http://www.lar.net/2015/09/07/where-are-the-women/Sidea Waswat • a year ago(I'm a woman.) I admit that I prefer games with rich stories and good character interaction and growth. I am a sucker for Bioware games for this reason. I loved Baldur's Gate on its own merits, but I loved that I could play a female and have my character in a relationship with a male - they were prepared for the female gamer. For the record, Anomen was a great character!  I admit that I was disappointed with D:OS because the story and characters were not a bigger part of the experience. The story and characters were great, that wasn't the problem. I wanted more immersion into the story, but the focus of the game was on gameplay, not immersion. The reason I liked D:OS was because the gameplay was amazing. I loved working through the puzzles, thinking through combat techniques, and figuring out how to combine items. I loved the physics. I admit that I don't know any other women who played the game. But frankly, I often feel alone in my gaming tastes. All the women and male gamers I'm friend with, which is a lot, are not exactly role players. Sure, they love Final Fantasy, but that's not even remotely the same type of RPG. I'm the weird D&D fan in my group of friends. When I've brought up D:OS around them, they listen to me talk about how much I loved it, but none of them took that much interest. They were more excited about Dragon Age and the Witcher (I got incredibly bored with the Witcher games, for the record.) So I do think that C-RPG games are more specialty, and let's be honest, they take a lot more work and commitment than Call of Duty or Halo. I like the work in games like D:OS, but a lot of friends don't want to do work when they game. They just want to have fun. Swen Vincke • a year agoThe narrative criticism is something we're susceptible to. What we're trying to do now is maintain (or actually improve) the same gameplay systemics and marry them with better and more immersive narrative. Whether or not we'll succeed remains to be seen, but that at least is the ambition. Sidea • a year agoSwen, I accept that D:OS wasn't a story-focused game. It isn't a problem, because that's not what the game was about. If D:OS 2 has a richer narrative, I'll probably just like it a lot more! It doesn't reflect poorly on the first game, though. I hope that a much more immersive story would attract new players the to games, as story-based games tend to do very well. I think it would be fun if you had a parody romance option too - something not to be taken seriously, but something fun. It would fit in well to the Divinity world.  All this talk is making me really excited to replay the first game. I haven't played since it's been upgraded in my Steam account.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Aug 2016
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I thought romance was less a promised feature and more a goal they want to achieve but aren't sure if they will succeed at it. I'm not sure the 'Love and Hate' stretch goal actually included 'romance' at all, at least from what has been said by the writers in video interviews and possibly by Swen, but I don't remember.
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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Wouldn't it be funny if the only people you are allowed to romance or rival are the Companions? :P
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2015
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That's entirely possible.
I wonder how awkward that might get in 4-player co-op. XD
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old hand
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OP
old hand
Joined: Oct 2015
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I just realized that with competitive questing...
One way to entirely mess over the players your with is to simply know the 4 Pregens in advance :P
Since they will always be the race and gender of their pregen.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2016
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There is a difference between "Not all encompassing" and "Crappy low-quality origin"
Okay seriously, WHAT YOU WANT IS 100% UNCLEAR. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU HAVE IN MIND. NOBODY. This is a thing that you wrote: So.. what you're saying is that LITERALLY all you want is a origin story that says you're from a merchant family, and allows you to visit your parents merchantile Yes! Ohh my goodness you understand! That sounds EXACTLY like low quality to me. And there you were agreeing that was what you wanted. I am tired of failing to guess the exact vision for origins that you have in your head. I give up. I just made an account to comment on this and say I do get what they are saying. This game popped up on my radar about a week ago, and what made me excited and had me considering purchasing it was the possibility of having so much flexibility as to how the game would react to my created character. But fast forward to today, and I saw signs that the character creation might be more locked than Larian made it seem. Realistically you have the 5 pregenned characters that have more extensive dialogue options and opportunities but are locked to specific races/sexes. Then you have 1 generic one that you can have more customization with but will be missing out on nearly all the cool story dialogue and scenarios that the devs put in the game which was a major selling point. So realistically as a player you're essentially having to choose between a set character with a cool story whose class/skills you can change or one that you can really customize at the expense of story content. Those seem like two very different experiences that are very different from how Larian has been selling the game thus far. In everything I've read and watched the implication seems to be what Neonivek was saying which was that origins would be less constrained as to how much you could customize your character. When Larian advertises the game they keep saying you can pick name, gender, race, class, and origin. But realistically the options are A. Pick set Origin and Class or B. Pick Generic Origin and everything else. It just seems a lot more restrictive than they let on. There just seems to be a dramatic gap in gameplay experience between the two compared to what was being advertised and neither option seems completely satisfying.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Aug 2016
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So realistically as a player you're essentially having to choose between a set character with a cool story whose class/skills you can change or one that you can really customize at the expense of story content. Those seem like two very different experiences that are very different from how Larian has been selling the game thus far. ive kept my eye on this thread, and from the updates and gamplays that Larian have released you are able to recruit the pre-generated origins as companions. If you play single player and you create a PC with a generic background and recruit say the red prince, wouldn't you still have access to the red price personal story quests even if your PC is generic? so even if you create a PC with the generic background you still don't really miss the content if you use the pre-generated characters in dialogs?
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2015
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so even if you create a PC with the generic background you still don't really miss the content if you use the pre-generated characters in dialogs? I'm not convinced this is actually a deliberate choice. It seems a bit awkward for players to be able to simply switch characters every time a dialogue doesn't go so well. My expectation is that they've left this "multiplayer" mechanic in because they haven't built the single player equivalent. At this stage, once companions join your party, they are essentially just additional player characters. This severely limits the kinds of inter-party interactions you can have. I understand that there is a desire from many fans for the companions to be more Bioware-like, and this would be the ideal opportunity for Larian to implement their "love and hate" system. (How many other people will there be to develop relationships with?) It would be awkward to have a Bioware-style companion where you can choose what they will say at any given moment. I expect they will lock down your control of companions once the love and hate system is rolled out.
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