Divinity: Original Sin Preview

PC Gamer UK has put online their magazine preview for Larian Studios’ recently-announced Divinity: Original Sin, the first Divinity title to feature a turn-based combat system. Here’s an excerpt:

(I wanted to play it with my girlfriend. We’d played World of Warcraft screen next to screen, we played Diablo screen next to screen. They were fun because we were playing them together, we were fighting over the items.) Original Sin lets players fight with the items. Sven picks up a barrel and chucks it at David to emphasise the point. This interactivity isn’t just for show. David explains the systems behind the game. (In a typical Divinity game you can move and pick up anything that isn’t nailed to the ground. I can throw a barrel at Sven. I can also look inside the barrel. I can decide I don’t like the barrel and smash it.) There is a tactile simplicity to this philosophy, and it allows for a deep but easily explained crafting system.

(I’ve picked up a mushroom and a sword, and if I combine these two simply by dragging them over each other I’ve created a poison sword.) David draws the parallel to Sven’s favourite game. (In Ultima, you could bake bread if you found the right ingredients. If you can find grain and water and an oven in Original Sin, you can eat your own bread.) Sven promises (hundreds and hundreds) of these item combinations, from bread to silver coins coated in gold paint to sneakily increase their value. Sven wants to let you interact with everything in the game including the code itself. Original Sin will come with the editor used to make the game, so modders can create their own campaigns and maps (see ‘˜Make a house a home’), and eventually, Sven says, sell them for money via a sanctioned marketplace.

Original Sin’s level of environmental interaction is impressive for an RPG usually the most static of game genres. To raid the aforementioned drug dealer’s house for evidence of her duplicitousness, Sven had to poke around her bedroom. But wade straight in and she’ll scream. The solution: David went first, jogging into another room and looking suspiciously at the woman’s valuables. Sven then took the time to poke around under a polar bear skin rug, exposing a trapdoor to the magic meth lab below.