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Interview Divinity: Original Sin 2 Early Access Preview and Interview at Eurogamer

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Divinity: Original Sin 2; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

Eurogamer's Robert Purchese played the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Early Access build, and then had the opportunity to ask Swen Vincke a few questions about it. The result was a combined preview/interview article, which starts off with a familiar topic (sorry, Zombra!):

Even after playing the Early Access version of Divinity: Original Sin 2 for nearly 20 hours I didn't understand why I would want my party members to work against each other. It's one of the big ideas in the sequel, one of the big ways the story will improve on Divinity: Original Sin 1's - this idea that people in your party are in competition with one another. In multiplayer you're even actively encouraged to stitch your friends up, which is something we've written about before. But in single-player, where you control the party members, why would you do it?

Turns out I didn't quite understand - both about competing party members and about other things that either aren't working properly yet, or aren't implemented, in the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Early Access build. I find that out when I speak with the founder and creative director of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke, after my Early Access playthrough. He puts me straight in the hope I can put you straight, too.

"There is something that is missing in Early Access and that is why you're confused," he tells me. "It's party relations and it's scripting for the companions. Currently what you're doing is you're controlling your party members as if you were to control them all in multiplayer - and that will not be the case when you're playing single-player."

Instead, he says, think of them as companions in Dragon Age: Origins or Baldur's Gate; companions with minds of their own.

"Your companions will have their opinions and you will have to influence them," he says. "You will still be able to walk around in the world as [the character] Red Prince if you, for instance, started as Sebille; what you will not be able to do is affect Red Prince's origin's quest. You will also not be able to affect his relationships."

It's an important clarification because it means you won't give the order for conflict in your party, which was the bit I was struggling to understand. The conflict will happen around you in characters with motivations of their own, and it will be up to you to try and manage them. They are designed to clash, and if you handle them badly they may leave and even attack you. But without the party dialogues at the moment, or a relationship gauge affected by it, it's only really half there.
It's also got some details on what's coming up next:

The game's overarching story starts well enough, although Act One, which is what's in the Early Access build, mostly concerns itself with setting things up. There's a prison break that's entertaining for the amount of ways you can achieve it (and because sticking it to The Man and breaking free is always fun), then there are introductions to the vying factions in the world and the baddies, plus a personal revelation to spur you on. According to Vincke it's at the end of Act One, which isn't in the game currently, that things really kick off.

"You're playing Act One but you're not seeing the full end of Act One," he says, "so the full end of Act One is quite spectacular and that's not in there. And it ends there, where you fully comprehend what your central concept is going to be and what you need to go do through Act Two."

And Act Two, he says, "is vastly bigger".

"If you want to quantify it: Act One is going to be 20 to 25 per cent; Act Two is going to be 50 per cent most likely; and Act Three is going to be the last 25 per cent. Three acts," he says, "but that doesn't mean three maps."​

[...] "The journal could be a little bit clearer, that's for sure. We see that," says Vincke (who adds the camera angle will also be zoomed out a bit). "But then again, it's hard because Original Sin is a different kind of experience in that you get so much freedom that we don't have a concept of quests, and this is something that people aren't used to because they've been so indoctrinated that there's a quest, and there's a quest reward, and that's what you get.

"We give you little stories that you encounter through your journey as you follow up on your overarching goal. At the start of the story this is getting off of the island, and as you get off of the island you understand there is something more special about you - and that becomes very clear when you get to the complete end of the Act and have to deal with it. How you get there," he says, "we don't care."

There's still a significant amount of content to come to the game for release. Major things missing from the Early Access build are the undead race; the fun-sounding polymorph and summoning skill lines; skill crafting and item enhancement; Spirit Vision to talk to ghosts (well, it's in there but not used); voice acting - "we're in talks right now to see if we can voice record the entire thing, but that's not a guarantee yet that we can do it"; the Game Master mode, the Editor, and a fix for rangers, "the most boring class right now".​

See the full article for Bertie's complete gameplay impressions.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
skill crafting

How does it work?!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10387

So it is, ah... ...we have skillcrafting coming – it's not in the EA version, but it's coming –, so we have this entire system where we can easily make skills. It's gonna be essentially combining elemental skills with the schools – well, you'll see when it comes out.

Possibly related: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...resentation-at-the-pc-gamer-weekender.107607/

Skillbook crafting - combine two skillsbooks to create another skillbook. Some skills are only available this way.
 

pakoito

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I hope it's Oblivion's Mage Guild all over again. I enjoy systems that can be broken!

For everyone else:


Z7HeRxU.png
 

Aenra

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And then i bitch about subtleties, lol.. the fucking ""journo"" """expert""" could not understand. Understand, lol, a gaem of all things :)

I'm still not sold on the whole skill system; i love the combining/working things out for yourself idea, but i hate the acquisition system; hate because it deprived me of any sense of progression, felt and feels (D:OS) like a cRPGified MOBA game. Get, go, pew.
Did not matter if i was good or bad (in anything), did not matter if i was x or y a level, did not matter if i favoured fballs or earth as a player. Just.. stupid RNG, a multitude of back n forths until some vendor popped a better book. I still fail to see why this wasn't the number one complain combat or combat-related wise.

Likewise with the info available to me. I was given no specific numbers to work with (in the sense of needing half a brain to figure how/which i'd need top for example), just a vague "this attribute makes them go BOOM".. wee...
You will tell me a design 'decision'. If the outcome is bad, i won't waste time splitting hairs, much as i love the practice. Either keep it MOBA, or give me something that i can deduce, count or analyse on my own. It not only fits an RPG, it also helps towards (yes again) my having a sense of progression. You get that when something is improved, but you also get it when you have things to look forward to, calculations you cannot wait to see manifest.
 
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Kem0sabe

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"The journal could be a little bit clearer, that's for sure. We see that," says Vincke (who adds the camera angle will also be zoomed out a bit). "But then again, it's hard because Original Sin is a different kind of experience in that you get so much freedom that we don't have a concept of quests, and this is something that people aren't used to because they've been so indoctrinated that there's a quest, and there's a quest reward, and that's what you get.

What a bunch of bullshit. Of course the game revolves around quests, same as the original, you get glowing quest icons, you get objectives, you get rewards. Swen comes off sounding like a low budget molyneux when he goes off on these tangents about how his game is so much different.
 

Aenra

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Swen comes off sounding like a low budget molyneux when he goes off on these tangents about how his game is so much different.

I'd wait a bit before stating that.. have you seen the questing diagram? Just seen it?
We're talking maze-like, Ariadne herself would have been awed. May well be it's as (or near as) complex as he makes it out to be. In which case, his reply there is hardly misleading. Time will tell of course, but as i said, you may be rushing here :)
Emphasis on 'time will tell'.
 

Drowed

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Even if the questing diagram is "maze-like", it's just quests.

Even if your goal has changed along the way, or if there are several different stages to it, it doesn't change the issue. No matter how complex this system is, even if it reaches the complexity of the "real world" (yeah, right), I still don't see how it couldn't be described as quests. I mean, we can even describe our own life in quests if we want to. Buying food? It's a miniquest/task. Solving the problem of infiltration on the wall? It's a quest. Convincing that hot coworker to go out with you? A quest-chain, no doubt. The fact that there are multiple solutions and different ways of approaching it doesn't change that it's, essentially, a quest.

I like Swen, he's a great guy, but... Yeah, this is PR speak.
 

Aenra

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You should meet Lacrymas Drowed, you two would do well together.

Of course it's still quests and scripts, what the fuck do you expect, a Belgian basement causing the first singularity event? In a game of all things?..
Reservation is healthy, criticism as well. A-caca-demic theorising (vanity IS his favourite sin) for the sole purpose of being contrary just for the sake of it is not. Unless somewhere in there you lost a point you had but failed to make apparent?

edit: if the system works so as for you to feel the outcomes are as varied as your -possible- actions, if the gameplay feel cohesive and organic due to/despite that, then goal achieved. IF; as i said, time will tell. If it does not, it's the team's fault; not the system's. When you write your own AI and deploy it in your own technologically advanced RPG, you can always let us know of course.
 
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Kem0sabe

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You should meet Lacrymas Drowed, you two would do well together.

Of course it's still quests and scripts, what the fuck do you expect, a Belgian basement causing the first singularity event? In a game of all things?..
Reservation is healthy, criticism as well. A-caca-demic theorising (vanity IS his favourite sin) for the sole purpose of being contrary just for the sake of it is not. Unless somewhere in there you lost a point you had but failed to make apparent?

edit: if the system works so as for you to feel the outcomes are as varied as your -possible- actions, if the gameplay feel cohesive and organic due to/despite that, then goal achieved. IF, as i said, time will tell. If it does not, it's the team's fault; not the system's. When you write your own AI and deploy it in your own technologically advanced RPG, you can always let us know of course.

I take issue with developers claiming publicly that they are beyond "gameplay feature x" and theirs is a new paradigm. In this case Sven claiming that there are no quests in D:OS2.
 

Aenra

Guest
Kem0 you're a nice guy, but honestly? Stick to redheaded women threads. First you think i have an agenda, then you come back to tell me yeah, ok, but i got an issue anyway because i don't like how he says it, got nothing to base it on, but even so, fuck it, Aenra has an agenda, i am right, and Swen is Molyneux.
Go back to redheads

edit: i hate doing this to people i feel fond of, but idiocy is idiocy. When he talks about paradigm, he means his N-1 quest design.. theory.. thing. He's talked about it a million times over. Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe you read too many of Infinitron's posts, but what you got (out of your ass) and what he's saying are two wholly different things.
 
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Kem0sabe

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Kem0 you're a nice guy, but honestly? Stick to redheaded women threads. First you think i have an agenda, then you come back to tell me yeah, ok, but i got an issue anyway because i don't like how he says it, got nothing to base it on, but even so, fuck it, Aenra has an agenda, i am right, and Swen is Molyneux.
Go back to redheads

You mean those silly emoticons?

:nocountryforshitposters:
 

Aenra

Guest
Must be a half nigger syndrom. You kindly tell them they're wrong, you even add something nice about their personality to smooth things down, and rather than either quitting or ammending, they go on to utter/post something even more idiotic/representative of their abysmally low IQ
 

Kem0sabe

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Must be a half nigger syndrom. You kindly tell them they're wrong, you even add something nice about their personality to smooth things down, and rather than either quitting or ammending, they go on to utter/post something even more idiotic/representative of their abysmally low IQ

:butthurt:
 

hpstg

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Must be a half nigger syndrom. You kindly tell them they're wrong, you even add something nice about their personality to smooth things down, and rather than either quitting or ammending, they go on to utter/post something even more idiotic/representative of their abysmally low IQ

Thank God for you Aenra!

caSsjXx.jpg
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Last year, one of the developers of Legend of Grimrock (of all games) wrote about his preference for "non-quest based" RPGs: http://www.grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6865&p=98177#p98177

It's not about money. LOG1 and LOG2 are how they are because of our preferences and vision of what kind of game we wanted to make. Even if we had 10x the budget, Grimrock games would not be modern open world (quest-based) games, which I personally don't find very interesting. In the early days of LOG2 development we tried to move into this direction, but found out we didn't like where that was leading us.

The best open world games for me are Ultima IV, Ultima V and ascii roguelikes, which tell simple stories on the surface but have compelling world and gameplay. Unfortunately translating these games into modern form is hard as you always seem to lose a lot of their appeal. The abstraction in these games is a really powerful tool for unlocking player's imagination. Ok, but now I'm starting to ramble...

As a fan of the Ultima series himself, it's possible that Swen has something similar in mind.
 

CryptRat

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It's not about money. LOG1 and LOG2 are how they are because of our preferences and vision of what kind of game we wanted to make. Even if we had 10x the budget, Grimrock games would not be modern open world (quest-based) games, which I personally don't find very interesting. In the early days of LOG2 development we tried to move into this direction, but found out we didn't like where that was leading us.

The best open world games for me are Ultima IV, Ultima V and ascii roguelikes, which tell simple stories on the surface but have compelling world and gameplay. Unfortunately translating these games into modern form is hard as you always seem to lose a lot of their appeal. The abstraction in these games is a really powerful tool for unlocking player's imagination. Ok, but now I'm starting to ramble...
:incline:
 

cvv

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Codex+ Now Streaming!
What do you do when you're shit at designing skills and quests? You let the players craft their own skills and also say quest-based RPGs are so 1990s. Next, we're bad at itemization so why not let players craft all the weapons and armor?

Divinity 3 will be just a massive crafting editor. Oh good, I should've said it out loud.
 

Aenra

Guest
What do you do when you're shit at designing skills and quests? You let the players craft their own skills and also say quest-based RPGs are so 1990s

Agreed, this has and will continue to happen as long as there are retards, ie perennially :P
At this point however, we need also remind ourselves that:

i) this happens everywhere, in anything. Possible and probable are two different concepts.
ii) (unless one is a fucking retard) no one forces anyone's hand, informed purchases are still a possibility, exceptions eventually apply, or at least may.
iii) contrary to entirely inappropriate examples of snake oil salesmen mentioned above, Swen has yet to attempt to fool anyone, let alone actually fool. Precedent is a factor in such matters; or should have been.

Hence my saying, two or three times by now?, that time will tell. Whether we're in for a disappointment, and to what an extent too.
Now if one wants to go full /edge, in advance, with fuck all to base one's edgy posts on, one is of course entitled to. Likewise, if one feels the need to identify someone as agenda-driven (again with fuck all to base it on) simply so as to feel self-justifed, fine too. Problems occur when said retard(s) confuse edginess with criticism/capacity for critical thinking. Do you see anything illogical in this statement?
 
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