Editorial RPG Codex Report: Divinity: Original Sin 2, or, A Visit to Larian Studios

[Ellef]

It is incredibly shallow in all aspects save for the writing.

Sounds like the opposite of DOS, then. Lets hope they sincerely follow throw and improve their writing with the four new writers (+Avellone!)

Very good stuff, Bubbles.

 

[Sensuki]

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I am intrigued by the positivity regarding romances in Dragon Commander.
I haven't play the game, is it gud even if you suck at RTS?

I loved Dragon Commander though I am probably one of few on the Codex. It was a very (perhaps too) ambitious mix of different gameplay elements and unfortunately they decided to cut development short (to gain income for DivOS) so the different elements ended up a bit short, or shallow, if you will. However, if I may use that tired phrase, the end result ended up greater than its parts imo. As long as you don't go into the game expecting Divinity: Total War you should be fine, I had a lot of fun with it anyway. The RTS element is focused on light and fast paced gameplay which some people didn't really like, but if you suck at RTS, you can always autoresolve those. Where the game really shines is in its writing and all the fun political choices you can make.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Well done Bubbles - what a great article, another example of Codex journalism at its best.

 

[MicoSelva]

Good one, Bubbles .

human thief named Hudson

Someone on the team likes obscure movies.

Watch: Why are there romantic options in the game?

Nailed it. :D

Sarah: The setting remains the same, but we're very aware of this – I read it all the time and cry, I read the Codex.

New tag for RPGCodex: making developers cry since 2002.

 

[Volrath]

Hudson Hawk. Obscure. Okaaaay

 

[Eyestabber]

7/10, but clever and interesting, so 9/10, would stalk.

Also:

Diversity and Inclusivity

Bubbles: How are you experiencing this system of indirect dialogue writing? So--

Sarah: I love it!

Bubbles: --it feels strange.

Sarah: Well, I don't know. For me, it's an opportunity to do something a little bit different that I haven't seen a ton of. It's a way to write more dialogue, because the descriptive speech allows us to write from the perspective of any of the player characters. We don't have to account for how they talk or how they would save a certain situation; we just write a wink or "[you] sneer and respond that you don't wanna have anything to do with them" or whatever. So this is a way for us to increase our output and also give a little bit of flavour. In DOS, sometimes we had to keep the player characters neutral, which affected our ability to characterize them. With this system, I'm hoping we can put a little bit of flavour into the text, but still let the player role play how they wanna role play. We're not giving them the character that they have to play; they can kind of imagine how the character is sneering and walking away from the conversation.

Watch: I have heard you write with five people, two seniors?

Sarah: Yeah, I think so.

Watch: Are there women on the writing team? You and... Char[lene Putney]?

Sarah: Yes, just us two on the writing team.

Watch: Often it's the male perspective in games; do you think you can add something different to the game with two women?

Sarah: It's a good question, yeah. It this is true, it was evidenced in Original Sin. That was just me and Jan, so it was half and half. Compared to some of their earlier games, I think there's a bit of my touch in there. For example, if I'm imagining an NPC, I imagine her as a woman and [inaudible] her a woman, and the woman goes in the game, and so the gender balance is a little bit more balanced, I guess. I'm also reading some of the female characters written by our male writers, and I find them very cool, fully fleshed [out] people, fully realized, not cliches, so, I think ultimately it's kind of a matter of the intent of the writer to put themselves in somebody else's shoes. But it's nice to have another lady on the team.

Watch: I can imagine, if you are writing something, that it might be lost while producing [the game].

Sarah: Yeah, that's occupational hazard, I think. You imagine it one way and... gameplay is king; so it's always gonna be gameplay first, story second. We come up with a [character] design, or the scripters come up with a design, they tell us the character, we rewrite it, it gets put in, then the character get changed because of gameplay events, we rewrite the character, it kind of goes back and forth like this a lot.

Watch: It's nice to see a Captain who's female [in the prototype]. It's not just because I'm female – on RPGWatch, several men have also said "We like more women – realistic women – in games."

Sarah: Yeah, it's true. I mean, you don't wanna walk into a town and have it be a cliche of everything you've seen before – women are only doing certain things, men are only doing certain things, the men are all drunken boors, the women are all prostitutes, like, we've seen that a thousand times. It's kind of time for everybody to...

Watch: ...grow up.

Sarah: Yeah! For the characters to expand their roles, to have a more realistic or interesting world, I think.

Kieron: I think speaking from the perspective of a man on the team, we do have a strong desire to make sure that... if you look at the NPC list on a spreadsheet, we're actually spreading [the genders] quite evenly. There's a few of us, myself included, that have a passion to make sure there's really strong female characters in there. And we're also sensitive enough to make sure that we're not being cliched.

Sarah: One thing we discussed – you know, the team is really growing, at the moment there's 90 people, which shocked me when I found out – and we're trying to develop a vision of the kind of games that we wanna make, around the world, and one thing our lead designer was saying was "Make it diverse! For each character that you have, before it's been fleshed out by the writers, flip a coin for their gender, make sure that we have skins for a variety of looks, so that everybody can be realistically represented in the game," and that's something we're all thinking about all the time and it's important to a lot of us.

Watch: When you start the game, you create only one character, right?

Sarah: Yeeee.....eees. It's still on the table... but so far, yeah.

Watch: And you've got three you pick up or select.

Watchers deserve to have their faces set on fire, then eaten by monkeys.

Spoiler

In case some idiot lacks a sense of humor: the stalking part was a joke

 

[jagged-jimmy]

From glancing at the pictures I thought the older guys were the pro writers and the kids the interviewers...

Oh well, at least Bubbles knows what needs to be photographed. Which reminds me, that we do not have a proper "Legs Thread" on the Codex.

Also fuck the guy above me for being so cautious about cute dev girl and stalking - on the 'Dex.

 

[Eyestabber]

Also fuck the guy above me for being so cautious about cute dev girl and stalking - on the 'Dex.

2 months ago I wouldn't add a disclaimer, but now with all the doxxing/stalking controversy going on, I'd rather play it safe.

 

[Bubbles]

The Codex has had a "stalking controversy" since at least May 29, 2010. Has only done moderate harm, imho.

 

[Eyestabber]

The Codex has had a "stalking controversy" since at least May 29, 2010. Has only done moderate harm, imho.

Ahem...

Joined: Jan 14, 2015



Srsly, tho, dem looks + the job = I'd bet my balls that this person is treated like royalty in her workplace.

 

[Bubbles]

Actually, your join date is listed as Jan 15th for me. Looks like you've just doxxed your time zone

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Actually, your join date is listed as Jan 15th for me. Looks like you've just doxxed your time zone

But then, the same could now be said for you couldn't it?

 

[Bubbles]

Oh, I'm way past that already. I had to give Infinitron my real name a few weeks ago; I expect it to pop up in a news post any second now.

 

[Xenich]

If only there were some sort of written information to accompany that picture.

Yeah, I mean like... who would have thunk to actually read the news on this issue? /gasp

I swear, the codex has become RPG Watch more and more every day.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Oh, I'm way past that already. I had to give Infinitron my real name a few weeks ago; I expect it to pop up in a news post any second now.

That's nothing, wait until your mug appears in a news post.

 

[Xenich]

By the way an interviewer doesn't finish the interviewee's sentences

Says who? Is there some fucking academy where you must pass a test where if you don't interview according to the establishment, you are wrong? For fucks sake, it is journalism, not a science. You go with what works. So far, the interview seemed fine to me, but then this is journalism, open to fucking subjective interpretation.

 

[Tigranes]

this is journalism, open to fucking

Bubbles understands.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Odysseus balls those Dragon Commander waifu choices... If they put similar choices in divos2 I forgive the writing.

Seriously... I think.

 

[Bubbles]

Oh right:

This is a Bubbles interview. Odds are 50-50 he made the whole romances section up to troll you guys. I'd be disappointed if more than a third of the interview is things Larian actually said.

Heck, if you check out their account, romances aren't mentioned once: http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/divinity-original-sin-2-preview-344.html

http://www.rpgwatch.com/articles/divinity--original-sin-2-interview-345.html

Not only does the Watch article mention romances, but it also confirms that my transcription is extremely exact. Compare:

"you can play as a married couple [married characters] or as two people who have history together, to see if their relationship can grow together or decline [...] That's something we're talking about now, a system to implement that from the beginning, so that it's very organic from their backstory"

two of the characters will have already a history together or are a married couple, where their relationship could grow or decline [...] They are talking now about a system that implements romances from the beginning, so that it feels very organic from the backstories that they have.

My transcription was based on a voice recording, their summary was based on memory. Both methods arrived at almost the exact same end result, because we are all highly professional journalists.

 

[Infinitron]

Bubbles has a kick-ass name.

 

[Roguey]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...propaganda-review.100012/page-26#post-3986862

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=140#post449477541

I also did a preview and interview for the Kickstarter, though your likely response will be "tl:dr".

*twitch*

 

[himmy]

Sarah: It's open arms. If Swen ends up bringing in Chris Avellone, he'll get a big bear hug from everyone.

The Codex be like:

 

[SwiftCrack]

Great read.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Bubbles has a kick-ass name.

I'm intrigued as to whether he had to wear an ID badge with 'Bubbles' on it. Particularly with professional journos around, who presumably have to have actual names.

...but you can call me Bubs...