Divinity: Original Sin: Press preview

The main thing in the life of every developer is to find your own style. After an unusual, but particularly unremarkable experiment with a motley Dragon Commander it became obvious that the calling Larian Studios – in creating role-playing games. Moreover, “old school” – with a large open world, deep nonlinearity and megabytes of texts. This is exactly how it should turn out Divinity: Original Sin. In order to stir up interest in it, I recently visited Moscow myself with a fresh build Sven Vincke (Swen Vincke), creative director Larian Studios.

Oh this classic

"Original Sin allows for multiple passing styles. We want to show you a bloodless path, so we won’t fight today, but we’ll deal with our enemies through diplomacy,” under this motto Sven began the demonstration. He began by creating a detachment. The game has two main characters, completely subject to “customization”. At the start, we will be allowed to choose the gender of each person, as well as assign one of several classes and corresponding “skills” to the heroes.

It is worth noting that the possibilities for “leveling up” characters in Divinity almost limitless. Dozens, hundreds of all kinds of parameters, “perks” and spells – there is plenty to choose from, but it’s difficult to clearly attribute all this variety to advantages. Of course, the “old-school” audience will be pleased, but won’t the young generation of gamers, who are only familiar with hearsay, be afraid of getting lost in the text jungle? Baldur’s Gate or Divine Divinity, – big question.

The main characters in Original Sin, as we have already said, two, and it is for them that the history of the game is written. However, the squad can be increased to four people by random mercenaries. As you know, new Divinity is tailored for cooperative play, and each player can take control of one of the heroes. Nobody forbids them all to set off on their own free journey around the world, fight monsters, talk with NPCs and complete quests. If necessary, they can teleport to each other. Decisions made by one member of the group are recorded on the account of the entire company, so each player bears great responsibility for the fate of the passage.

On the free movement of heroes, according to Vincke, built the lion’s share of game mechanics. For example, one of the characters who has the skill of stealth movement can sneak past strong opponents, and the rest of the heroes will subsequently teleport to him. This was the style in which the first half of the presentation was held. In stealth mode, the picture becomes black and white, but the area within the enemy’s field of view remains in color. To remain unnoticed, you just need to carefully bypass it.

With this passage, experience is not lost, since increasing levels can be achieved by simply exploring the world. It will not be possible to reach the final completely bloodlessly, but reducing the number of battles to a minimum using stealth is quite possible. And if we add a little diplomatic skill to this, then weapons will have to be used only in the rarest cases.

Dialogues with each character are written very richly and constantly offer a considerable number of lines to choose from. The game has several social “skills” such as persuasion or intimidation. In a conversation, we can optionally produce phrases corresponding to one of them. There are no wrong decisions, but in some situations some will be more productive than others. Somewhere you need to show off your eloquence, and somewhere you need to say a few sweet words. Bonuses are provided for appropriate use of replicas.

IN Original Sin parallel dialogues https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/astrozino-casino/ have been implemented. Several main characters can participate in one conversation – special cross phrases are written for this. In multiplayer mode, this approach makes interacting with NPCs more fun, since the outcome of the conversation depends on all players. Offline, you can give the right to vote to artificial intelligence or speak for everyone yourself. In the latter case, comical situations may arise. Characters often communicate with each other, commenting on issues on the agenda. Starting a fight with one of the heroes, then choosing the second one in order to start a conversation with the first one and evaluate the result of the battle is strange, to say the least.

A huge number of events, interesting scenes and interactive non-linear situations were concentrated in the small area shown to us. Here the world is thought out to the smallest detail and filled with charismatic NPCs. A troll demanding payment for crossing a destroyed bridge; a cat turning into a human; a huge spider queen, frightening passers-by; villagers who have created a strange sect, which, by the way, you can join – the high density of interesting places, events and characters greatly enlivens Rivellon.

But most importantly, in each situation we will be offered several possible solutions. They do not come down to the banal “kill or negotiate”, but allow for many alternative approaches. There are no distinct poles of good and evil in the game, there are no right and wrong actions. We will meet numerous factions and people with different interests and goals, and only we have the choice of which of them to help.

Unplanned improvisation

Typically, game presentations are thought out with special care so as not to get into an awkward situation that reveals shortcomings in the gameplay and, God forbid, bugs. The first half hour heroes Sven Vincke confidently walked around Rivellon, demonstrating the merits of art direction, surprising us with branching dialogues, “crafting” capabilities and NPCs reacting to theft, and the developer vividly described the endless gameplay possibilities… However, at one moment the harmonious praises abruptly stopped, and the presentation went off course. Marketing fortune that day was clearly not on the side of the creative director Larian.

A group of heroes encountered a goblin who was using a certain monster as a draft animal to transport his goods. When learning a certain skill, characters can learn to understand the speech of animals. Having talked with the monster, we learned that the poor fellow was tired of such a life, dreams of freedom and wishes death to his master. For our release, he promised to tell us some big secret. Sven decided to please the poor creature, and, according to the presentation script, the goblin slave owner had to meekly throw away his green hooves from a couple of blows with swords. However Vincke hesitated, and the far gone goblin found himself in sight of the mercenary camp located nearby. They decided to restore justice and save the peaceful merchant.

As a result, Sven’s squad had to sort things out with six opponents at once, which clearly went against the intended “thou shalt not kill” course. The developer became embarrassed and began to apologize and look for a way out of the unexpected situation. He tried to get out of the awkward situation peacefully, but he failed. As a result, in order to continue the path, the developer had to fight with uninvited enemies for about twenty minutes. However, this did not make the presentation any less interesting. On the contrary, Sven demonstrated all the advantages of turn-based combat mechanics Original Sin.

To avoid falling into a puddle, you need to freeze it

The game has a huge number of spells: Vincke summoned elementals and wolves, charmed opponents, luring them to his side, set enemies on fire with fireballs and fried them with lightning. Each group member has a certain number of action points, which must be used to pay for using “skills” and performing actions. You can skip the queue, and then during the next turn the number of points will increase. A deceased character can be resurrected by nearby colleagues.

We also saw the full potential of the famous system of interaction of elements. We can combine different spells, and also use the features of the environment to increase the effect of attacks. For example, a puddle under the enemy’s feet can be frozen, causing him to slip and fall. You can shoot an electric discharge at it – then the spell will hit all enemies standing in the water. There are really a lot of options, and this approach significantly enriches the potential of team interaction.

The battle looked spectacular and varied. In battle, you need to take into account many tactical subtleties, including the skills of the characters and the characteristics of your opponents. Spiders, for example, can quickly move around the map, which will allow them to immediately reach the squad’s mages and deal with them.

Fortunately, the battle ended in our favor. Continuing their journey, Sven’s squad came across a village whose inhabitants worshiped a talking totem. After wandering around the area, the heroes found a secret underground passage. Sven commented that the very beast that started the massacre could have told us about its existence earlier. However, now the hatch has been discovered thanks to the tracking skills of one of the characters, allowing them to find hidden doors and things.

It turned out that a cunning goblin was sitting under the totem, who, in order to subjugate the entire village to his will, was engaged in “voicing” the totem. Branded humor Larian remained in place: in Original Sin, as in other games in the series, there is no room for pretentious seriousness. Epicness here coexists with cheerful self-irony. Knights can place buckets on their heads instead of helmets, the animation of sneaking heroes “puts” thick green bushes on them, and the dialogues are permeated with humor and unexpected references.

It was possible to come to an agreement with the goblin and not give away the secret of the source of the totemic “phonogram”. However, Sven mistakenly attacked the trickster. The latter turned out to be not timid and quickly knocked out the hero. The developer was upset, said that he planned to show us an encounter with a giant spider queen, and asked for forgiveness for the “ruined” presentation.

Despite the unforeseen incident, the work carried out in the company Sven Vincke sixty minutes left a nostalgic aftertaste in my soul. The memories that came flooding back concerned not so much “old-school” RPGs in general, but the series itself Divinity. Larian once created a unique universe, and Original Sin, as we hope, will reveal to us its new facets.

Sven Vincke — an old-school game maker, not inferior to market demands, with his own taste and view of the genre. New Divinity richly seasoned with text dialogues, an excessively large set of “skills” and pays attention primarily to role-playing and a rich world. Will it be successful today??