Divinity Original Sin 2 Catch-All

RnRClown wrote:
Vector wrote:

I've started playing the Enhanced Edition, since I never finished the first release. As much as I like the two protagonist set-up, the inventory management and way dialogue works is a huge chore. I'm glad they got rid of it for this.

I have not been keeping tabs on this one. They're ditching the two protagonist set-up?

I have the original, but I've yet to make a start.

From what I can tell they have. You can choose an origin that lets you make a completely unique character or a predefined character (where the class and other variables can be changed the but the gender, race, and name don't). All the pre-defined characters appear in the game as recruit able party members.

The biggest change I'm interested in is that it's a unified inventory now.

I haven't bought D:OS 2 and will hold off as long as I can. I prefe finished products.

Vector wrote:
RnRClown wrote:
Vector wrote:

I've started playing the Enhanced Edition, since I never finished the first release. As much as I like the two protagonist set-up, the inventory management and way dialogue works is a huge chore. I'm glad they got rid of it for this.

I have not been keeping tabs on this one. They're ditching the two protagonist set-up?

I have the original, but I've yet to make a start.

From what I can tell they have. You can choose an origin that lets you make a completely unique character or a predefined character (where the class and other variables can be changed the but the gender, race, and name don't). All the pre-defined characters appear in the game as recruit able party members.

The biggest change I'm interested in is that it's a unified inventory now.

I haven't bought D:OS 2 and will hold off as long as I can. I prefe finished products.

I found the dual protagonist approach of the first fairly ammusing. I played them as frenemies that rarely saw eye to eye. The rock, papers, scissors bit could be annoying but I'd always game it: typically, you'd have to disagree two or three times in a row on something important before RPS kicked in. So I'd usually (grumbling) have the other character acquiesce if I really wanted a situation to go the other way.

As to DOS:2, at least as it stands now, when you switch between characters they still maintain their unique 'tags'. So, potentially, instead of dual protagonists you can happily agree or bump heads across all four characters.

As to inventory, yes -- with a twist. There's one big pack that takes up the right-hand side of the screen. It's divided into named horizontal bands depending on who is holding what. If someone is holding more stuff then their area grows vertically. On the left hand side, in the top corner, are buttons where you can choose which party member is displayed. I wish Larian had gone all the way in this direction and, on the left-hand side, stacked the characters top to bottom with smaller 'paper dolls'. Or a square four-corner grid showing all party members at once. As it stands now, there's still some [depending on how OCD you are] minor inventory juggling if your main is always the same character that's grabbing everything.

edit: clarifications re inventory

Thanks!

I liked the dual protagonist stuff but am glad they're moving away from it. Mostly because, while unique, I'm happy to try this same game with a more traditional take on the main character system.

Seeing this has me diving back into #1 which I really liked but dropped for shinier things.
Highly likely I'll pick up #2, but don't want to until it's 'done'.

With multiplayer version, is it still turn based, with players sitting around waiting for their turn during combat? I like the idea of playong with friends, but waiting on others in turn based combat sounds like a nightmare.

damn...that's really tempting me to grab it now.

Also...is this some subtle foreshadowing that Larian are going to be / already making a licensed D&D game on the sly?

pyxistyx wrote:

damn...that's really tempting me to grab it now.

Also...is this some subtle foreshadowing that Larian are going to be / already making a licensed D&D game on the sly?

I know Swen said they had two projects going, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and an RPG he's wanted to make his whole career. So who knows.

I love how he's swinging for the fences though.

pyxistyx wrote:

damn...that's really tempting me to grab it now.

Also...is this some subtle foreshadowing that Larian are going to be / already making a licensed D&D game on the sly?

Last time I dove into the alpha|beta|whatevs-stage it was awesome and felt immeasurably better than the first D:OS -- which, while cool for it's unique combat, now comparatively feels like one big engine demo.

It is getting harder and harder to resist jumping into the early access version. I am desperately trying to wait for final release.

There thoughts of a GWJ coop (quadop?) play of this when the full version is released? I can see it being a challenge with schedules, but I would be interested.

Release date announced. September 14th, so still quite a while

^ Fine by me, plenty of backlog to crunch through. D:OS2 deserves it's own slice of exclusive, deep-dive, RPG game time.

So I missed this when it came out a week and a half ago. Voice Actor Matt Mercer (McCree in Overwatch among many many other games and master level DM on Critical Role and other D&D live plays/recorded games) runs a game of D:OS2.

bhchrist wrote:

There thoughts of a GWJ coop (quadop?) play of this when the full version is released? I can see it being a challenge with schedules, but I would be interested.

Absolutely. Co-op made the first game so much more enjoyable.

New trailer is

Wow, some of those environments are gorgeous. Nothing stops the 2017 train.

Wow that looks amazing.. kudos on the controller support as well.

Yeah that looks pretty damn spectacular. 2 weeks to go!

I was getting excited, but my system can't handle it

Oh well....I'll get to play it when it's been out a few years.

I picked it up last night and played about 15 minutes of one of the origin stories (no customizing the character). Did not make it to any fighting/casting points, so I really didn't get too far in. Lots of reading so far. Not a complaint, more of an observation, though not a surprising one. It has been awhile since I played the original, so I am just trying to remember some of the mechanics and the combine feature with items. Seems interesting, and the pop in and pop out option for multiplayer looks interesting, along with sharing/hiding journals and controller support. It is a very pretty game in the small space I have seen so far.

I never finished the original, but I still got in on this as I seem to remember I quite liked the first apart from a bit of a slow start. Can't remember why I never finished it. Probably something shiny and new coming along.

This looks fantastic and I absolutely will be in on day one.

Outlandish wrote:

I never finished the original, but I still got in on this as I seem to remember I quite liked the first apart from a bit of a slow start. Can't remember why I never finished it. Probably something shiny and new coming along.

Same here, along with Pillars of Eternity. My issue has been two fold. First, I plow through a good chunk of it, get interrupted by IRL stuff, and forget what path I was on and was trying to do. Second, I became an absolute idiot and start reading character build guides and got stuck in that stupid rabbit hole rather than playing and enjoying the game. Making a concerted effort not to do the latter anymore.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Update #43: Undead Revealed! Collectors Edition Unboxed!

Damnnnn, the Undead look really interesting, so much so that Swen recommends playing them once you have a firm grasp of the rule set.

- Can be any race.
- Healing spells/potions damage them (AI is smart enough to heal you to damage).
- Poison and poison potions heal them.
- Can feign death to get out of combat.
- Can rip the face off of people, put it on a mask and then wear the mask to masquerade as alive.
- Can pick locks with their bony fingers.
- Chris Avellone pitched the Undead origin story :O

Missed some stuff too.

Definitely going to be stuck in character creator for 2 hours.

Okay that's just awesome, can't wait!

So I am about 6-8 hours in. Have 3 party members and am starting to get into the mechanics of the different classes. Not sure that I want to go much further at this point before the full release. A couple of early observations:

One thing that is a bit of a pain is still the inventory and trading with NPCs. One of my party members has a better barter score than the others, so they get better deals buying/selling/trading. You can use gold and/or items in buying and selling items, however, only items that the current active party member has. Unless I am doing something wrong, the gold and items are not shared. Now this makes sense in a multiplayer mode, but not in a single player mode. I suppose I could have the barterer carry stuff around, but they are not the focus character. Fiddly and a bit frustrating over a shared system. I would prefer all items/gold be available except equipped items or have a box to include or exclude equipped.

Second, you can trade with any NPC you interact with by clicking an icon in the top left of the chat box without beginning the dialog. I met NPCs that were in prison and they had gold and some items to trade. I guess they could have hidden or smuggled gold in, but that seems a bit strange.

Otherwise, I am enjoying it and remember how brutal some of the combat encounters can be. I lack the ability to sneak at the moment or effectively pick locks and makes things much more difficult.

bhchrist wrote:
Outlandish wrote:

I never finished the original, but I still got in on this as I seem to remember I quite liked the first apart from a bit of a slow start. Can't remember why I never finished it. Probably something shiny and new coming along.

Same here, along with Pillars of Eternity. My issue has been two fold. First, I plow through a good chunk of it, get interrupted by IRL stuff, and forget what path I was on and was trying to do. Second, I became an absolute idiot and start reading character build guides and got stuck in that stupid rabbit hole rather than playing and enjoying the game. Making a concerted effort not to do the latter anymore.

Yeah, this is me as well.

I dive in with both feet and obsess over every nook & cranny, logging dozens upon dozens of hours before getting distracted by something else. Returning back weeks or months later to a 50% complete game file with no idea what's going on or how to approach high-level combat systems that I've long since forgotten.
Steam says I have 160(!) hours across two saves in Pillars, yet I've never even touched the end-game, LOL.

As for Divinity 2, I'm ultimately waiting to see the reception of Chris Avellone's contribution to the project. That will likely dictate when (not if) I pick it up.

Yeah I grabbed it and had a very quick poke around (just the initial boat stuff and a little bit into the island) and it feels much improved over the first game. Apart from the inventory, which sadly looks very much unchanged.

I like that we only have ONE character to deal with up front. Creating a pair of them was an interesting approach, but I'm just personally a fan of having one main character and a bunch of fleshed out NPC's to recruit. And roleplaying two characters constantly bickering/agreeing with each other on my own was just a bit...weird.

Big fan of the Dwarves though, looking at the character creator. I really like the look of the heavy armour classes in general. Bit of an eyebrow raise at the Elf characters though, they don't seem to have...gotten their fair share of armour next to the other races.

Also I'm assuming the set characters with Origin stories are all in the game as recruit-able NPC's anyway, going by what happens on the boat? Which is good, because I like the idea of having origin stories for characters, but not to the extent that I'm forced to "roll" one of them at character creation and miss out on making my own custom character instead.

Not going to touch it now until the final version is out in a week or so though.

pyxistyx wrote:

I like that we only have ONE character to deal with up front. Creating a pair of them was an interesting approach, but I'm just personally a fan of having one main character and a bunch of fleshed out NPC's to recruit.

I either like this approach or the old early 80s Wizardry games approach of a blank slate where backstory and personality are what you create in your own mind. Yes, I realize that the most recent Wizardry game was released in 2001 and actually uses the one character creation with recruit-able NPCs.

I tried to give feedback on how under dressed the elves were on the feedback forums and got told that I should spend less time trying to censor devs and go read 1984 on a nude beach to get over my SJW ways. There were also some gross posts on how tribal cultures just dress like that and other nonsense and the whole thing briefly made me lockdown my internet presence when it got posted on Kotaku in action. Fun times!

Game looks neat and I already own it so I guess I'll give it a go when it comes out but I do have mixed feelings on it unsurprisingly.