Divinity: Original Sin is a strange animal. It's so loaded with dialogue, quests and secrets that I'm pretty sure it would have scared me off if I had played it all by myself. When a game throws 20something quests at me only two hours in, I tend to get overwhelmed. To be fair, Divinity is really meant to be played cooperatively with a friend, though I didn't trust that feature a whole lot. I like to be in full control over what happens in my RPGs and if you introduce another human player, there's bound to be a certain amount of unpredictability. Long story short, I tried the Alpha with Claire and was fully expecting us to hate either each other or the game or both by the end of our first session. Instead, we ended up playing till the sun came up.
Our first murder case
Divinity features two customizable main characters, meaning you get to choose their starting class, looks, names and gender. So I did what I always do and picked a warrior. Claire made her character a rogue. These choices really just affect your starting abilities. I was free to raise my character's intelligence upon level ups and teach him how to use magic whilst Claire's rogue could learn how to whack stuff with two-handed weapons if she so desired. We didn't, but the possibility was there. The protagonists have fixed background stories, so we started our journey as Source Hunters, sent on a murder investigation.
The game starts on a beach near the town where the murder happened. And I got paranoid the second Claire decided to walk off and explore while I was still trying to figure out how to interact with the shell I had just picked up. What if she gets killed? What if she talks to an NPC and I miss something important? Instead, we ended up uncovering opposite sides of the map, looting some loose change out of random broken crates, picking up more shells and finally running into a bunch of angry crabs. Our first battle!
Divinity switched into a turn-based combat mode when I got attacked, while Claire was still running around in real time until she caught up with me and joined the fight. Playing my warrior was pretty much the way I expected it to be - I had my turn, I hit a baddie, ran out of action points, ended my turn, rinse, repeat. Claire's first move was to charm one of the crabs, which now fought on our side. She also silenced one of them, all in the same turn. During her next turn she basically stabbed the shit out of everything with what felt like half a dozen attacks or so. Meanwhile, I had enough action points to punch one crab per round. Which was usually enough to score a kill, but my abilities didn't go beyond the usuall stuff such as the "Punch harder but hit less" stance and what have you. Hmm.
Batman & Buckethead
A little further into the game I was stopped by a couple of drunk guards, who tried to order me around, so I bitched at them, which resulted in a fight. And again, my warrior felt a bit weak. Claire was charming, stabbing and silencing stuff left, right and center while I did my usual one punch per round routine. Of course she got all the aggro. Of course she died. Either there's no taunt ability or I'm too stupid to find it or I just haven't unlocked it yet, but I couldn't stop those suckers from attacking her. I gave her a battle-rez with a magic scroll I had in my inventory and we kicked their asses.
Something interesting happend immediately after the fight: Exclamation points appeared above our avatars and Claire's character chewed me out for attacking innocent guards. I agreed, saying they didn't really have to die. Which is true, I just wanted to moan at them, not start a fight to the death. We both got a +1 to "compassion". Weird.
Also: Interactive items! Fucking awesome! Turns out you can move all the barrels, crates and just about every other random object you find in the world. And since my character is strong like an ox, I could even move the really heavy shit, whilst Claire could not. I've also put some points into my intimidate skill, so now I had three things I was good at: Punching, moving stuff and threatening people. Yay!
Meanwhile, Claire picked locks, snuck around stealing everything from spoons to portraits to stinky panties. Her rogue is basically awesome at everything while my character, well... Let's just say there was this burning boat and I wanted to help put out the fire, so I picked up a bucket and this happened:
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| Fucking buckets! How do they work? |
We came to this town, which basically plays the soundtrack to Doc Martin. And while I was originally paranoid about the whole splitting up thing, this is exactly what Claire and I ended up doing in order to cover more ground. We both went for tasks that matched our particular set of skills. Or something. Basically, I threw a water barrel onto the burning boat, Claire shot it and sadly, nothing happened. Also tried an oil barrel, just to see if we could blow the thing up. In the end, we settled for Claire's rain spell, because my shit never works.
I then proceeded to spend our gold on some new gear, threatened the living shit out of some guy who tried to steal a fish and interrogated the locals about the murder whilst Claire broke into houses, basements and attics, digging up important clues and evidence. Whenever one of us made some progress, both our characters would receive some experience points and both of us received updates in our journals, so nobody had to miss out on anything.
Three hours into the game we had only seen a total of three fights. We've earned most of our experience points talking, exploring, role-playing. I've spent a skill point to upgrade my awesome sword-swinging abilities and Claire learned how to talk to Animals, because of course she did. And five minutes later we've received a quest from a random cat, who fell in love with another kitty and just couldn't understand why she didn't love him back. I'm not making this up.
Name, Job, Rumors
Divinity has this undeniable Ultima-awesomeness about it. I can walk into any house and start fucking around with people's belongings. Claire picked a lock and ended up interrupting a very angry lady's bath. I like ripping random portraits off the walls to see if there's anything hidden behind them. You can move around, steal, destroy, interact with just about every piece of furniture, every container in every house. Claire is carrying around wheat, cups of water and tomatoes and I just know she'll end up making a pizza at some point if the game allows it.
Even the dialogue is basically Ultima. You can ask random NPCs to tell you about themselves, inquire about events relevant to your quest and some of them can be asked to join your party. Many of them are a little more fleshed-out than that, though. We walked in on a cook, who was just about to butcher a chicken, when Claire insisted we help save the stupid bird's life. I was looking forward to having the damn thing cooked, but I got overruled and had to go hungry.
I want a cat to join us. We can communicate with animals now, so a berserking cat is a must.
We had to interrupt our first "let's fire it up real quick and test if multiplayer works" session when the sun came up this morning. We're both eagerly waiting for Claire to come home from work so we can play some more. The main reason why we're enjoying Divinity so much is because it's so incredibly close to a Pen&Paper role-playing experience. The game lets you act and talk in character. Before every major decision, our characters talk and we both get to state our opinions. We also get to choose whether we want to be angry, charming or reasonable about the topic at hand. This is an incredibly fun, powerful feature, which gives life to the protagonists.
Another important factor is how combat is not the single-most important thing in Divinity. We've spent hours looking for secrets, talking to NPCs, finding work for a bunch of shipwrecked sailors, unlocking secret doors and so forth. "You go dig up the guy's corpse at the graveyard, and I'll talk to the rooster, who is having his portrait painted. Maybe he knows something." Cooperative gameplay made our experience a million times better, not despite, but because of our entirely different personalities and play styles. I have never played an RPG in this manner before, but the idea of playing a game like Divinity solo seems infinitely less rewarding.
If you have a friend or a loved one, who is ready to sit through a massive, complex RPG in jolly cooperation, you may already grab the game via Steam Early Access. I have also recorded footage of most of the events I'm describing in this blog, which can be found here.
-Cat
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