Update: And that's it funded. It took around four hours to hit the $160,000 goal.

Original story: Divinity: Original Sin 2, which took the coveted top spot in the PC Gamer Top 100, is getting the board game treatment. Divinity Original Sin: The Board Game is a story-driven adventure for four players. While based on the RPG sequel, it promises plenty of new stuff, including skills, locations and characters. 

Original Sin 2 itself leans heavily on D&D and tabletop roleplaying, so I'm surprised it's been adapted to a more structured board game than a tabletop RPG. It's a pleasant surprise, though, since Original Sin 2 already does such a great job capturing tabletop roleplaying and a physical version might be a bit redundant. 

Players will choose from characters drawn from the videogame, along with a new lizard person and another walking corpse. After picking a path from the story book, which can depend on traits and skills like the all-time best skill in its videogame counterpart, Pet Pal, location cards can be plonked down on the board and visited by the party. They might contain treasure and crafting ingredients—we can't even escape it in board games now—or you might become the victim of an ambush. 

The broad stuff doesn't sound particularly evocative of Original Sin 2, but combat, elements and skills seem a lot more familiar. Fights use an AP system again, which determines your actions and movements for the round. During combat, you'll use skills that damage or have elemental effects, after which they'll have a cooldown. So you'll still be able to soak monsters and then freeze them with some ice or stun them with some lightning.

Check out a playthrough by developer Lynnvander Studios below.

The board game is also attempting to replicate its inspiration's branching, choice-laden story. You'll be able to reach four different endings and take different routes through the story book and as you visit new locations. These also depend on the character you're using, as they each have tags, like scholar or outlaw, that will unlock new options. 

It uses the Chronicle System, too, so what choices your party makes can also impact future expansions. Every copy of the game will come with a one-time code that lets you submit your choices to the developer. Those choices will then be used to determine what happens in the next expansion, based on what the most players did. This doesn't mean it's a Legacy board game that you throw away once you've played it once, however, and the branching story is designed to be played multiple times. 

It's on Kickstarter now and will probably meet its goal by the end of the day. It's already been funded for more than half of its $160,000 goal, so it seems like a pretty safe bet that it won't take much longer. 

Larian Studios started giving out "gift bags" to players this year (not to be confused with loot boxes) that each bring free new in-game features to Divinity: Original Sin 2. The third gift bag, called "Order & Magic" arrived this week. It includes several new convenience features that you can independently turn off and on in the game's menu. Check out the above link to Larian's blog for its version of the update. We've summarized the new features for you below.

Pet Power: Cast infusion spells on all available summons, not just your own Incarnate.

Combat Randomizer: When entering combat, one or more random enemies will receive one of the new special statuses created specially for this feature.

Nine Lives: Transforms the Black Cat into a follower. Once rescued, a whistle will appear in your inventory. You can use this if your cat gets lost or if you want to change who it follows.

Improved Organisation: A collection of special bags that allow you to better (and automatically) organize your inventory.

Sourcerous Sundries: In every major hub a new vendor will sell artifacts that can upgrade a character’s gear with immense power, bringing them up to the players' current level.

Hagglers: The reputation and skill of your whole party can help you wrangle the best prices. No need to start conversations with the proper party member.

Improved Organization seems like a great addition for me, as I was prone to manually organizing keys into a particular inventory bag, books in another, and quest items in a third. I often got them mixed up, so the fact that Larian's newly-added bags have icons to remind you of their contents and automatically sort new items into the proper bag is quite handy. That being said, if you turn on Improved Organization you'll be stuck with all of the bags shown above. Your inventory will be a bit less cluttered with loot but more cluttered with bags. It will take extra clicks and a bit of looking to dig out that Summoning skill book you're looking for. If the extra layer turns you off, you'll want to just stick with using the "auto sort" button in the vanilla game.

If you have mods created by the community that perform the same functions, remember to remove them before enabling these new Larian mods. When activating these Larian Modifications in-game, it also warns you that including them will be baked in to your save game. To fully remove them, you will need to revert to a save prior to activating the mods. You'll also have achievements disabled, even with Larian's own mods activated. The Order & Magic gift bag (and other gift bags) are only accessible in the Definitive edition of the game but not Classic so make sure you launch the proper version. 

If you want more community mods, check out our list of best Divinity: Original Sin 2 mods.

Divinity’s history has been defined by inextricable partnerships, from the chained-together protagonists of Beyond Divinity, to the demon that shares a head with Lohse—the fantasy equivalent of the nightmare flatmate. They’re a reflection of Larian’s own symbiotic relationship with the series, which has been its primary vehicle for pushing the RPG genre forward over two decades.

Now, though, the chains have loosened. With Larian understandably preoccupied by Baldur’s Gate 3, the next Divinity sequel won’t be an RPG. Instead it’ll be a tactical battler co-developed by Logic Artists, the Copenhagen studio behind the turn-based combat of Expeditions: Viking. 

It’s tempting to mentally file any spin-off under ‘non-essential’—that new Baldur’s Gate won’t play itself, after all. But there’s reason to believe Fallen Heroes will be a fantastic tactics game, not least because there’s already one of those buried in Divinity: Original Sin 2, just waiting to be taken by the hand and persuaded into the spotlight.

You’ve probably scrolled past Arena mode numerous times on your way to the ‘Continue’ button. Such is the scope and grandeur of Original Sin 2’s campaign that you’d be forgiven for never touching its competitive multiplayer, but it’s every bit as accomplished as the story mode—a focused XCOM-like that bodes well for the new spin-off.

Part of the appeal of Fallen Heroes is that it throws together characters from the campaign, and Original Sin 2’s Arena mode offers a similar premise, but steers left into fan fiction. On the screen where you pick your fighters, Radeka the Witch can take up arms alongside Braccus Rex, who’s been dead for over 1,000 years. Canon feels a distant concern when he’s commanding the dead to reach up through the pools of blood that drench the battlefield, grabbing at your combatants’ legs.

Yet it’s Arena mode’s distance from the campaign that makes it such a strong companion piece. In the main game, your strategic options are limited by the NPCs you’ve managed to strongarm into service and the spellbooks you’ve bartered for. Here, you’re commanding a full toolbar of attacks and buffs tuned by the experts at Larian.

It’s a little like looking up a recommended deck in Hearthstone; once you see those abilities together, their complementary possibilities become clear. Erratic Wisp, for instance, can teleport the archer Ryker randomly every time he gets hit - perfect for providing distance from the big blokes with swords. The Arena is an advanced level teacher, covering the kind of combos that don’t come up in Larian’s tutorials.

It’s also the ideal environment in which to muck about with Original Sin’s elemental combat, which has always felt part magic, part science. The experienced spellcaster looks out over the battlefield and sees reactions waiting to happen—barrels filled with oil, begging for a fireball, and clouds of steam ripe for electrification. It’s experimental and irresponsible, like the work of early physicians and alchemists, and the results can be explosive.

These systems aren’t exclusive to competitive multiplayer. But taking them away from the wider concerns of the campaign frees you from worrying about whether or not to save your knockdown arrow for the next battle. In this contextless skirmish, the only fight that matters is the current one, and you get to throw everything at it.

By the same token, you don’t need to save your heroes for another day either. In Arena, you’re encouraged to sacrifice the pieces on your board if doing so enables eventual victory. Nowhere is that more true than in Kill the King, an option Larian added last year which designates a character on each team as a VIP. That unit becomes your queen, and the other fighters your pawns. A rogue might be terminally exposed when they leave cover, but if their backstab cuts a VIP’s health in half, the trade-off might be worth it.

The other highlight from last year’s revamp are mutators - dramatic changes that momentarily influence the entire arena. It’s not unusual to see every hero on the field simultaneously sprout wings for a turn, allowing them to flap safely over pools of bubbling acid, before Sudden Death reduces their health to almost nothing. It’s the principles of Worms applied to RPG combat—an everchanging map where not even the ground you stand on is a given.

The skill is in weathering the turbulence long enough to reverse a dire situation. Yes, a burning pit might be a disaster right now—but it’s just one blessing away from tickling at the victims caught in its blaze with healing flame. 

By stripping away the dialogue, dungeon-delving and cheese-trading of the campaigns, Arena mode presents Divinity combat in its undiluted form and reveals its central characteristic: volatility. If Fallen Heroes follows the same formula, it’s going to be a game defined by lurching shifts in fortune and last-minute surprises—as gripping and dramatic as it is daft.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the best game you can play on PC right now, according to our recent top 100 (and according to me too, for what it's worth). It released on Nintendo Switch today, which wouldn't be of much interest, were it not for the fact that it supports cross-saves with the Steam version of the game. This is excellent news for any Switch owners who fancy the idea of continuing their Steam save in portable mode.

Anyone who has dipped their toes into the sequel will know that it's a game of frankly baffling scale. Upon it's launch in 2017, Fraser awarded it a score of 92, writing that "Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a sprawling, inventive adventure and one of the best RPGs ever made".

In other news, Overwatch was also confirmed for Switch today, though that game doesn't support cross-save between any devices at present. Oh, and if you happen to be a Switch owner, Deadly Premonition also launched for the console today, along with the announcement of a sequel which will hopefully also come to PC.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 contains a few sad quests, but there is one that stands out: Buddy and Emmie, two dogs separated when Emmie is forced into working for the Magisters, can't be reunited no matter how you will it to be so. Although you can meet both dog mates and tell them they miss one another, you eventually leave Fort Joy knowing that they'll be apart forever now that Emmie is a source hound. 

Modders Windemere and Nimue saw this for the travesty it was and created a mod called Happily Emmie After that extends Buddy and Emmie's quest. It adds new dialogue and quest states and, as the name implies, allows you to eventually get these two smoochy pooches (do pooches smooch?) back together again.

Although the mod doesn't add any voice acting to go with its new dialogue, the new lines written for Buddy that I've seen so far match the spirit of my favorite hapless pup. You'll still find Buddy on the beach of Fort Joy as in the main game to begin the Finding Emmie quest. From there, follow the new quest clues in your journal to devise your extraction rescue mission.

You can download Happily Emmie After from the Steam Workshop or Nexus. The modders recommend that you begin a fresh save file (as if I needed a reason) in order to play Buddy and Emmie's quest. To keep you from going through the tutorial and all of Fort Joy's quests, you can also download the Furry Tails Adventure Guide which gives you a special book that will teleport you to relevant locations and advance the story so that you can play through Happily Emmie After more efficiently.

Both mods are for the Definitive Edition of the game, so be sure to choose it in the game's launcher instead of Classic if you want to try them. Activate both under the "Mods" part of the main menu before beginning a new story and you should be off to the races. 

Looking for more Divinity: Original Sin 2 mods? Click that link to see the rest of our favorites. 

Yesterday, Larian's website was plastered with a big number three. That might cause one to assume the Divinity studio is about to announce Divinity: Original Sin 3 (or maybe even Divinity 3), but evidence actually points to something a little different. Poke around in the video file, and you'll find references to Baldur's Gate 3 and Wizards of the Coast.

Today, Larian replaced that video with a new one featuring tentacles wrapping around the Roman numeral. Naturally, I immediately downloaded it and opened it in a text editor to hunt for more clues.

The studio was more careful this time. There aren't any references to games or companies in the metadata that I could find, but there are lots of mentions of kraken, squid, and calamari. 

There's also a reference to a Photoshop layer called "Swen's Birthday Party." I wasn't sure what to make of that one until Andy pointed me to a tweet from Larian CEO Swen Vincke:

You tricksters, you.

Like the font of the logo, references to kraken imply another Divinity game, as Divinity: OS2 opens with a tentacled sea creature ripping apart a boat. But that doesn't explain the very clear Baldur's Gate 3 data in the first video, which Larian declined to comment on yesterday.

Maybe the tentacles are just a misdirection?

The great thing is that I'll probably be happy either way. Larian is making Baldur's Gate 3? That seems pretty certain given yesterday's leak, and that's cool, sounds good. But if Larian is making Divinity: Original Sin 3? Hell yeah, also good. And if Larian is making both? Yes, I would like those videogames to be made.

With E3 2019 just over a week away, and lots of announcements sure to come before and during it, we're probably going to find out what this is all about very soon.

A lot went wrong during the development of Divinity: Original Sin 2. In the end, it was hard to tell: Larian's RPG was our 2017 game of the year, and is one of the deepest, most enthralling RPGs in years. But in a GDC panel last week, Larian founder Swen Vincke went over the challenges his team faced during development. It turns out writing a massive and extremely open-ended RPG is pretty tough.

Vincke talked in detail about working out the writing process for Original Sin 2, issues with game balance, the controversial armor system, and other issues they ran into. The most interesting detail to me was the world Larian had initially planned for OS2's multi-act structure. In the finished game, Act 1 takes place on the prison island of Fort Joy. It's a huge sandbox, dense enough to last for 20 or more hours of adventuring, with multiple avenues to eventually win your freedom. Act 2 takes you to the mainland and another large area called Reaper's Coast. In Act 3 you travel to the Nameless Isle, and in Act 4 you're mainly in the city of Arx.

The original plan, though, called for all of these locations to be connected on a huge world map. Here's a picture of that map from Vincke's talk.

But that's not the really crazy part: This wasn't even going to be the only map in the game!

"Once we started realizing that we were in trouble and that we weren't going to be able to make everything that we planned on, we had to make cuts," Vincke said. "Originally Original Sin 2 had a map for the human lands, one for the dwarven lands, one for the undead, basically for each of the races present in the game. What you're looking at here is a map of the human lands, which contains the city of Arx, Driftwood, and Fort Joy, all on one map. Which is essentially the entire game. That gives you an idea of the level of cuts that we had to do."

Each of the major playable characters in Original Sin 2 has a lengthy origin story that ties into their questlines throughout the game. Those origin stories were originally going to be depicted in locations in those characters' homelands.

"Each of these maps had a lot of action going on, and when we cut it, we suddenly started cutting into what was supposed to be the real estate for the origin stories," Vincke said. "So that meant that we had to go and change our origin stories again. This constant ping-ponging between adapting to the fact that we were going to be late and having to make cuts had an impact on the story. The fact that it had an impact on the story meant that the rest of the production was going to be delayed. We struggled quite a lot with that, but eventually managed to have it under control."

Every game ends up with cut content during development, as the realities of what can be done in time and on budget rarely line up with early plans. Even without those other maps, Original Sin 2 is a massive game. It took me 104 hours to finish a single co-op playthrough, and I could easily play it two more times to see the many paths I didn't take.

But it is cool to think about how different the game would've been with a single unified map for the human lands, and how that would've impacted its multi-act structure. I think it ended up for the better—being able to go back to previous areas would be cool, but making them reactive to changes later in the story would've been an impractical amount of extra work.

Since it launched in 2017, the quite excellent Divinity: Original Sin 2 has seen a steady stream of updates and additional content added. While Larian founder Swen Vincke has said the studio is ready to "make new stuff," Original Sin 2 owners can still expect to see additions to the game over the course of 2019.

Today, the first of several "Gift Bags" is getting released. Gift Bags are different from loot boxes, the studio points out, because loot boxes are hard and contain loot, while Gift Bags are soft and contain gifts. Those gifts include brand new character customization options, such as new faces, facial features, and hairstyles to use in your next campaign.

Gift Bag #2 will be coming out at a later, unannounced date, and will include more new customization options and other content that’s "inspired by our modding community." Larian is working with European developers Fools Theory and Anshar Studios to assemble the new content.

Larian says there will be more Gift Bags added as free updates throughout the rest of the year, but they’re keeping the details on what those will include close to the vest for the time being.

Free new stuff for Divinity: Original Sin 2 is always good news—it was PC Gamer’s 2017 Game of the Year, and that was before the free Definitive Edition update launched last August, which added a ton of new dialogue, performance improvements, and a reworked third act. It’s already a lot of role-playing goodness, and around these parts we’re always happy to see more of that kind of thing, especially when it’s free.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is secretly a brilliant tabletop RPG, as well as being our Game of the Year 2017. Sitting alongside the gargantuan main campaign is an entire platform for creating new tabletop-inspired romps. Today, Larian Studios announced a collaboration with Dark Eye creators Ulisses Spiele, bringing the popular German tabletop setting to Original Sin 2’s Game Master mode. 

If you’re not familiar with the Dark Eye RPG, you might still recognise the universe, as it’s one shared by several video game spin-offs, like Blackguards and The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav. 

The Prison of Shadow campaign is a new adventure for three to five players, sending them into an abandoned dwarven city where they’re hunting for a magical artefact. Oh yeah, and they’ll meet a bunch of new friends: the crazy cultists of the Nameless God. Lovely!

I’m convinced this has all been an excuse for Larian head honcho Swen Vincke to dress up like a knight and launch spells at his employees, as evidenced by the trailer below, but I won’t turn my nose up at a professional GM campaign. It saves me trying to finish my own campaign (it’s about a magical pig king and some stolen souls) at least. 

Larian almost made a Dark Eye game before Divinity existed. It was kind of thrust upon them by their publisher, who informed Larian that the game they were designing was suddenly part of the Realms of Arkania series, which was the English name for the setting at the time. And they had to make it 16-bit instead of 8-bit to compete with the upcoming Diablo 2. Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t have the cash to back up its ambitions and it never happened. From the remains, the very first Divinity was born. 

The Prison of Shadow will be automatically added to the game on November 21, and Larian’s going to be streaming the campaign on the day, at 7pm CET. 

The Steam Halloween Sale is underway, with discounts on hundreds of spooky (and non-spooky) games through November 1. There are a lot of deals to sort through, so we've waded through the Steam store to pull the best deals out of the muck—including several games that are currently cheaper than they've ever been on Steam, plus a selection of games under $15 that we'd recommend even at full price.

If you find a great deal on a game you love and it's not on this list, feel free to drop it into the comments. Happy hunting!

Games that have never been cheaper on Steam

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition — $30.14 (33% off). One of our favorite RPGs and our 2017 Game of the Year recently got even better with the Definitive Edition update, and now it's the cheapest it's ever been on Steam. 

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 — $15 (50% off). One of the better Left 4 Dead-style co-op shooters of late. Now might be a good time to convince a few friends to pick it up with you. Check out our review for more.

Killing Floor 2 — $9.89 (67% off). Our favorite recent wave shooter, made extra special by modded servers and seasonal updates. Here's our review. 

Devil Daggers — $2 (60% off). One of the strangest shooters on Steam, Devil Daggers explains nothing before dumping you onto a flat arena and mobbing you with demons. Lasting 30 seconds is a feat, and the current record is just 18 minutes.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance — $36 (40% off, its lowest price ever on Steam). Or the Kingdom Come: Deliverance Collection for $51.49 (39% off). 

Outlast 2 — $7.49 (75% off). Good scares for the price of cheap ones. James enjoyed being terrorized by Outlast 2 quite a bit, as he recounts in his review.

Kingdom: New Lands — $3 (80% off). This sidescrolling kingdom building game is intentionally opaque, but discovering how it works is engrossing.

Tacoma — $8 (60% off). This underappreciated story adventure game is a steal at eight bucks. Head over to Andy's review for the details.

Night in the Woods — $12 (40% off). One of our favorite games of last year. Charming as heck.

$10 to $15

Dark Souls 3 — $15 (75% off)Prey — $15 (50% off)Arma 3 — $13.59 (66% off)Dead by Daylight — $10 (50% off)Alien Isolation — $10 (75% off)

Under $10

Hollow Knight — $9.89 (34% off)Viscera Cleanup Detail — $9.74 (25% off)Gorogoa — $9 (40% off)Lone Survivor — $9 (40% off)Darkwood — $9 (50% off)Darkest Dungeon — $7.49 (70% off)Alan Wake Franchise — $5 (80% off)The Norwood Suite — $5 (50% off)Regency Solitaire — $3.39 (66% off)Stories Untold — $2.49 (75% off)