Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis The moral of the story of Ego Draconis kinda s*cks

In parallel to replaying Dragon Knight Saga, I'm currently also replaying the UbiSoft game Hype The Time Quest. Another game from my childhood with a suprisingly deep story, and a game which I sometimes think maybe inspired some of the decisions in the design of Divinity 2. Given that Larian and UbiSoft collaborated on some earlier games of the Divinity series, maybe that isn't too far fetched.

Anyways, it's just now that I started paying attention to the "themes" of the stories of those games. Hype The Time Quest is all about the main character being humble whereas the antagonists are being corrupted by their power. The narrator even asks at the end if there is a moral to the story, and if there is, it would be about humility.

Well, that got me thinking about the moral of the story of Ego Draconis specifically. I don't know if Flames of Vengeance was planned from the beginning, but if it wasn't...

I don't know about the moral, but I sure know the developers learned to regret the ending of Ego Draconis. It turned out many players were very, Very upset with the plot twist.
Me personally, I found it hilarious (I was thinking of all people who would not get the joke, had no idea back then how spot on that statement was).

Sorry that I interrupted your topic, I just wanted to clear out that you may get reactions from people on why they didn't like the plot rather then why there was that plot (and what morals that come with it).

To answer one of your questions though: I don't believe that Flames of Vengeance was originally planned. There was obviously some sequel for Ego Draconis' story in mind but I don't believe it would have had the same storyline if it weren't for people's frustrations with the plot of the previous title. I think the idea was to get Lucian the Divine much more involved in a completely new game.

Eventually the original game got patched in the form of an expansion, to (1) fix all technical issues with ED and (2) give the audience a more satisfying end. The name Flames of Vengeance itself is referring to the ending of ED after all.

The Dragon Knight Saga was put to a pause and thus came Dragon Commander and Original Sin.

I can tell you for sure that Ego Draconis' plot was under heavy debate within the team internally, as it is clearly stated on page 78 of the Developer's Journal.

Thanks for your explanation! Is this Developer's Journal included in the Developer's Cut? Maybe I've ignored it so far and should take a look at it (meaning, I do own Developer's Cut, I just didn't spend a lot of time looking at the extra documents).



I guess I'm one of them, then. What joke are you referring to?



Well, imagine my shock. Star Wars VIII / Game of Thrones Season 8 all over again. Or rather, way before that; maybe the backlash to Ego Draconis should have been a warning to Rian Johnson as well as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss... ^^



I'm bringing up this comparison because of the issue of rewatch / replay value. Game of Thrones Season 8 for example completely ruined the rewatch value of the series to me.

Dragon Knight Saga, in contrast, has a very high replay value in my opinion, but that's because of the great gameplay itself, not because of the course the story takes. In fact, my brother and I agree that the game gets worse and worse the further it progresses:

- the best RPG part is Broken Valley
- Sentinel Island is a little less diverse in its landscape and challenges
- the Orobas Fjords are still fun, but quite disconnected, with various random quests you have to fly to
- the Flying Fortresses start out extremely hard but then become extremely repetitive
- Aleroth is just a small strip of land with a hugely annoying quest
- and then the ending finds a way to make everything even worse

Flames of Vengeance, while giving you the chance to rectify your mistake and providing a new type of experience - more like a crime / horror story set in a fantasy city, with all the investigation and the undead running around - this novelty dies off quickly once you realise the entire game is limited to Aleroth. Which is made worse once you find out that the developers were actually working on another Broken-Valley-type area but ran out of time. The only dragon section in FoV is the opposite of enjoyable, and when you finally finish the game...

Your points are all valid, though I personally disagree on the Aleroth part in FoV, I found it surprisingly amusing!
And at times I found the Orobas Fjords at least as much fun as Broken Valley.
That being sad, I still love Ego Draconis as a whole.

And the Developer's journal also states that Broken Valley was indeed the area that received the most love from it's makers
(actually I find this pattern in pretty much every Divinity game: the first level/area gets the most attention, I would not be surprised if the same goes for BG3).

The Developer's journal is included on gog and the physical edition of Developer's cut, don't know about Steam.

The joke? The joke was on all us players, who so foolishly thought they had vanquished evil forever! Hah! Boy was I taken by surprise.

But, then there could be no sequel.

Except there's no morale to the story since the player has no agency - everything is 100% linear and there's no way to influence the ending. Giving this turd of an ending any praise is like saying Spec Ops the line has a deep morale message, despite being a linear corridor shooter with no choices.

if you listened to Lovis, you would have gotten a clue that the object of the quest was a farce. as he tells the story........something like "moments before she felt the blade"..........the soul forge was incantated just before she was executed. but even he perceived the lie as the truth. all Damian wanted was access to the past......the quest allowed him to accomplish his hidden agenda, using you as his pawn.

on a side note....I wish there was a second process to accomplish the casper quest. sad to see him die........too bad you weren't able to capture the chicken and give it to him. that would have made the quest a bit more noble

The end of flames of vengeance was, in my opinion, Damian soul forged with his lover in the hall of echos thus the final battle was with Damian and his lover and Berlin after all. No doubt their souls love on after because of the soul forged which has a romantic tinge in a horrific epitome.

I play this game over and over for the last 13 years. I am hooked. Just started another game. Will plAy until the end. Original sin Just does not hook me.
If a sequel comes it will be bought up fast...