It makes sense that Larian, the mischief-makers of the modern CRPG, would create an entire set of mechanics that enable trickery and encourage playful deviation from the usual roleplaying flow. You see, even if we were to play together, we wouldn't necessarily be on the same side. It means that if we were playing together, I could kill an NPC that you were hoping to talk to, interrogate his ghost and then use the information I discovered to cause more trouble down the line. Bloodstones, when charged, can be used during combat to provide a Source Point. It's also possible to consume their soul, which will top up an empty bloodstone if you have one handy. That's still true but now, dead NPCs leave behind a ghost and characters with the right trait can communicate with those ghosts. In the first Original Sin you could kill any NPC and finish the game without them. The last method we were shown ties back to the wider mechanics of the world. The second method involves Channelling, which freezes the character and allows other characters (including Source-powered enemies) to draw points from them, chipping away at their health as they do so. What the consequences for that shift are, I can't say yet, but I can say that making corpses explode into a bloody mess during a fight is A Good Thing.

Bodies can be 'consumed', in and out of combat, which provides one Source point but also shifts the player's karma. We were shown three abilities that allow players to gain them. To use them, you burn Source points and these are hard to come by. The second change relates to Source abilities, which are the strongest powers in the game. It makes the game far more tactical, flexible and legible. Rather than calculating how many action points will remain if you choose to move or use an ability, now your characters speed determines movement range for a single action point while skills take up one or two points. When Larian announced that, it seemed like a minor change but in practice it's akin to a rewrite of the entire system. There are fewer action points to use in a turn. Fighting is still turn-based but there are two major changes. There's a whole lot more to come.Ī few quick paragraphs on combat before moving on to the main course. For crafting, the big addition is the ability to combine skills, allowing for the creation of a stealth spider (stealth + spider summon) or a rain of blood (rain + blood heals characters with a vampirism skill). I spent a couple of hours playing an early build set in a single town last week, and while the new origin stories and cleverly branching subplots are the big news, the changes to crafting and combat are just as smart and exciting. The stand-out fresh feature in Divinity: Original Sin 2 is inter-party competitive questing, which should not only allow for diversity in narrative and objectives, but also allows the studio to build on the systemic simulation of the world. Is that a stick of dynamite in your pocket or are you just pleas-įor their sequel to the extraordinarily inventive Divinity: Original Sin, Larian are seeking to elevate reverse-pickpocketing and other chicanery to an artform. Most people don't use reverse-pickpocketing to leave a surprise gift in an NPC's pocket though - they use it to drop armed explosives into peoples' trousers.

This unlikely skill can be used to arm NPCs or to mess with their dress sense by replacing one item of clothing with another. In the Fallout games, it's possible to reverse-pickpocket, using your sleight of hand to plant an item in an NPC's inventory rather than removing one. As well as bringing about the life and death of the party, Original Sin 2 brilliantly overhauls its predecessor's turn-based combat and introduces multiple playable races and an origin system that defines each character's evolving place in the world.īold and inventive, it adds complex layers of overlapping narrative consequences to Original Sin's world of interlocking systems. It's an ambitious sequel, supporting up to four players who will now be able to compete as their objectives overlap and diverge. Divinity: Original Sin 2 has just landed on Kickstarter but we've already played an early build.

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