Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Alignment should have been ingame

Let me explain why.

First the game have absolute no counter against people killing anybody normal
It would balance out in other games by make them hostile to anyone and ending up death but in DoS2 it rewards the player by XP's, even source their is reason not to.
I fear i would kill anybody on fort joy just becase it gives me to much befits from the deaths of them.

Second alignment also adds depth ingame if for example you are Lawful good and your companion is chaotic evil those 2 would clash eventually.

Also a system like faith can be added by alignment


This would be a really nice addition for a DLC or something.

the problem with that is that there are no "good" companions.. if they had a system where good actions would clash with the companions then you would have to play the game solo as good...

every single companion is bad...

red prince is arrogant and only wants his rule back and thinks of everyone else as slaves.

lohse is controlled by an evil demon that forces her to kill quest npcs and will supposedly do something to cause immense destruction later on where the gods themselves ask you to kill her

sebille is a crazy elf assassin that likes and gets pleasure from killing and murdering people...

fane is an undead who cares little for the other races and would rather see them dead

ifan.. is a criminal but beyond that is probably the nicest one of them all despite being a criminal.

we dont know much about beast yet but he is apparently a pirate so he cant be all that good either.

First of all, I don't really see need in killing everyone just to get XP. On my third playthrough I've cleaned all passes from Fort Joy and I saw that killing mobs that are couple lvls below you are not that rewarding. At best you'll get 1-2 ok items, but you get like 200-400 XP per mob when you need 20k and estimating there is not that much of them that's not really worth it especially for the end game.

Also, want to mention that this game is not MMO or sth, it's cRPG with roleplay at it's best. You are free to do whatever you want.

And again, you can choose Lawful good and still walk in town and kill anyone you want because it's rewarding you with XP. In my opinion Tag system for chars is better then alignment since you as a player choose their way of being Barbarian or Noble or Noble Barbarian. You can be good or evil depending on the situation.

About companions. They have their own vision of situation. Not like good or evil, but depending on their origin story. If you want to roleplay you can talk to them to get their opinion on situation that happened and as I understood from Larian if you disagree on lots of thing they will be able to leave party or even attack you.

In D&D, as far as I remember (don't have lots of experience in it) you can have lawful good and chaotic evil chars in same party. It only describes their personality, maybe they will disagree on some stuff in how to workout some situations, but that doesn't mean that those chars will try to kill each other

They did change Sebille quite a bit in the later EA build she doesn't just want to kill everyone on sight any more. Rather on one of her arms she has the names for all those who she was forced to kill. She didn't get any pleasure from that.

But back to the topic, I think that something like this will actually be in the game. As they always say gaining source from dead bodies is evil and will have consequences.

I've always had problems with alignment. In the 40 odd years I've played D&D, AD&D etc. I've chosen an alignment and always end up playing the same type of person. My own personality has a habit of shining through.

I therefore think that a game that reacts to your actions, is better than trying to fit into yet another box of constrains.

A somewhat shorter timescale with RPGing in my case but yeah, I've found the same thing. I guess some people are better at creating a persona and getting into that mind-set, but my characters always just end up being me. I'd be a terrible actress.

That's a common issue with DnD or roleplaying games in general, some people just can't wear a mask, they end up acting themselves which is why a lot of players never cross genders and many may play a unique race but effectively act and perceive human. A good GM will help with that, but how much a matters depends on the group anyway, long as everyone is having fun who cares?

I've always found the alignment system to be pretty silly, though I know why it exists. It's there as a measuring tool for players to help them stay in character. IMO it's much better to create a complex / complex character; how are you going to judge alignment on someone (like the demon chick) who has diffiferent personalities in and out of combat? Or someone who is extremely racist to a typically peaceful race because they were enslaved and abused by one bad subset of it?

Of course, these days, most people just pay DnD for da loot and killing, but my GMs have always gone far and beyond to make the story entertaining and she always helped with encouraging us to make interesting characters and giving us the prompts to show that off.

The game has a system where if you are a murderous bastard it will penalize you over time.

That's a really good point. People (and therefore believable characters) are much more complicated than some simple pigeon-holing would indicate and their reactions even on simple good/evil and lawful/random axes are going to be highly dependent on the situation. I'm not "what I'm supposed to be" for narrow values of "supposed" IRL so my character shouldn't be either. I mean, to take something really basic like my current FO4 character as an example, she's the one who's snarky and rude in conversation but a bit of a do-gooder in her actions, which creates a bit of an incongruity on the D&D alignment scale. I'm not saying FO4 handles it especially well, but it would be worse if I felt some real obligation to always act in a certain way.

I do not see this happen but then again the game is not released and might have some surprise in it.

They talked about it before, but I haven't heard anything since. It was related to how you get source points, and that killing everyone to drain them of their source was gonna be punished somehow.

What he probably means is that the devs have been hinting that your actions in game (like how you get Source) will have consequences near the end of the game.



That's exactly it. I remember one of my most enjoyable campaigns involved one of ours whose foreign god (Ra) forced a trial on his character in order to help break the cleric out of his self destructive stupor for failing to save the desert tribe that helped raise him.

The trial was that he was given a sunestone and had to offer it to anyone in need of aid; as long as they held the sunstone he had to irrefutably obey them. The idea (and our GM played Ra perfectly in this) was that obviously people would abuse this fact and force the cleric to do bad things (our asshole and arrogant highborn paladin made him steal and hide loot in the middle of combat, for instance), prompting the cleric to remember the reason he became a cleric; to help his people survive in the dangerous desert, not to go around being bad.

It was an interesting bit of character building we had a lot of fun with (caused a lot of RP conflict in our group). Anyway, like I said, it's obvious real people can't always been lined up with DnD alignments but it does a pretty good job broadly categorizing motives to help players get an idea of how their characters should act when roleplaying.

I actually would just say it's a Chaotic Good character in DnD.
However I agree that there is no need for an alignement in DOS2. The reputation works well enough I suppose. If everyone hates you, chances are you are bad.

I also like that sometimes you may finish a quest thinking it was a good solution but in the end the consequences are pretty evil although you did not foresee that. I don't need an alignement meter to reflect it you know and feel bad already. And it could work the other way around too.

I'll bow to your superior knowledge regarding D&D since mine comes entirely from hearing other people talk about it! Maybe the pigeon-holing isn't quite as bad as I'd thought but I think I may still feel a bit constrained. I like fine-grained reputation systems but even then can feel a certain degree of pressure to perform as expected.


I agree that's a good thing if used sparingly; and if done properly, as I'm usually reminded of Fallout 3's Tenpenny Tower quest as one whose "unintended consequences" was done very poorly and it wasn't so much a case of feeling bad as feeling irritated... had it been better written I'd have left it at feeling bad but instead I used the console to manhandle its outcome in a more agreeable direction.

It really all comes to the DM honestly. But most I know don't pay too much attention to it, it's more guideline to envision your character. That's also why I don't think we need it in DOS2.


I actually had in mind the Witcher 3, where you make certain choice really not knowing the impact it would have later, then the revelation!
But I agree it has to be really well made otherwise you either feel you choice did not matter or it was almost the opposite of your choice.

The problem with fixed alignments is that they turn everything into a black and white. X IS evil, Y IS good. They don't allow for colours to exist and the small nuances of human moral values are what's necessary for a fun roleplay environment.

It's the same reason I barely touch DnD. I don't like being forced into a morale preset.

Maybe alignment could scale with difficulty level? I imagine the more difficult the mode, the more or less alignment you would want. I say this because some people are more involved with the story, and others are more involved with the combat and mechanics.

Or it would be really awesome to have alignment as an option just like you pick difficulty setting. With personality and choices it's difficult to know what each person perceives the impact of their actions to be. One person may see an action as hostile while another may see it as reasonable. So it's kinda hard to basically build a moral framework around answers to questions that will vary from person to person. I think that's why its your answers to a variety of situations over time. I can barely image the if-then coding involved for this. I already have a headache just thinking about it 😂