Oct 18, 2017

Our best stories from Divinity: Original Sin 2

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

We're still playing Divinity: Original Sin 2, and we're still loving it—it even featured prominently in our preliminary GOTY discussions. One of the things we love about it is its 'brute force' style of RPG design: fill the world with items and spells and NPCs and quests and scripts and things that you can do that theoretically all work together, and then watch the virtual dungeon master try its best to keep up. For every time that approach breaks something, it builds a bizarre personal story that makes up for it and then some.

Below are a few of our favorite anecdotes from our playthroughs of Divinity: Original Sin 2—times when we tried something, and whether it worked or didn't, we wouldn't change a thing. Minor spoilers are ahead (though nothing about the main story).

If you had something great happen in Original Sin 2 as well—which if you've played enough is bound to be the case—feel free to share your best story in the comments. If we get enough, we'll compile them into a new article next week.

Richard Cobbett: Fun with Teleportation

Easily my favourite thing about Divinity’s combat is that it’s consistent. Sure, occasionally you find enemies with elemental resistances and clever tricks, but it’s brave enough to avoid just outright letting enemies no-sell your best attacks. Enter a certain troll. Trolls are a real pain because every turn they regenerate, and my team wasn’t able to hand out quite enough pain to beat this guy and access the important, plot-critical cave behind him. Ah, but what’s that over there? A small river of lava? Fun fact—lava is the BFG of elements. And so, instead of beating him down, I just had one of my guys teleport his ass into fiery oblivion. Easy.

These semi-cheats are all the better because the game doesn’t draw them to your attention. That telekinesis spell (or glove, from the first island) never stops being useful, and nor does its partner, good old Netherswap. You can break so much with it, and the game’s happy—sometimes even calling you out on it. Along with combat, there’s a bit where… let’s just say you’re in a race. I won’t spoil the context, but it’s important. I quickly realised that my main girl Lohse wasn’t going to win… but there was nothing stopping me rushing to a good vantage point, waiting for someone else to almost reach the end, and casually swap places.

Yeah, I may be a bad loser. But I’m a Lohse-y winner.

Tyler Wilde: Soul searching

I'm facing off against three undead cranks somewhere beneath the surface of Fort Joy, disappointed I couldn't talk my way out of the fight. But there's been a nagging feeling of déjà vu leading up to the encounter: hints about a cave I already visited. This is one of those great moments in Original Sin 2 where you know more than the NPCs think you know, where their player-guiding hints are actually revealing their naivety. You think I didn't click on everything, including a secret cave on the coast, days ago? You think I ran away from a fight I was underleveled for?

The grumpy skeletons, at least before the fight, were trying to lead me toward a weapon stash I already conquered. And in that dungeon's final room, I had found a bunch of soul jars—for those who haven't played D:OS2, jars which literally contain the trapped souls of the undead. After a little back-and-forth between my companions about whether or not I should smash the jars and release their souls, I decided to stuff them into my backpack. And then I forgot about them.

Back in the present fight, I go a few clueless rounds with the skeletons before realizing my luck. These are the same damn ghouls whose names are inscribed on the jars rattling around in my inventory. What I expected to be an unremarkable battle turned out to be one of the best ways I've ever won a fight in an RPG: by chucking my opponents' own souls at them. Each time I fished a jar out of my bottomless backpack and smashed it, they wailed word of thanks as their spirit ascended and their bones clattered. Not only was it an easy win, I was doing something nice—aw.

Wes Fenlon: That time I made a poor pig explode

I really didn't mean to, honest. Divinity: Original Sin 2 has a pretty strange world: there are alligators that teleport, ancient skeletons that walk around without souls, and pigs that are eternally on fire. The pigs, it turns out, were actually people at one point, but they were turned into pigs as a curse and then double-cursed by being set on never ending fire, just to rub it in. When I learned a powerful Source spell to bless things, I was excited to try it out on those twice-damned pigs, and sure enough, I was able to put their fires out. Believe it or not, this is actually the start of a quest chain in Original Sin 2.

As you can probably guess, I didn't exactly follow that quest all the way to the end. Things were looking pretty good at first, though. Fires: doused. Pigs: talked to, with the Red Prince, my regal companion who can talk to animals. One particular pig was eager to remove the curse and become human again, so I directed her to a shrine of the goddess Amadia, where a pool of water would surely cleanse her of the remaining curse. Except… well, I'd already kind of pissed off Amadia by telling her about the demon living inside me and confessing some of the terrible things I'd done. Instead of blessing the pool, Amadia decided to turn it into blood. Blood that didn't really cure my pig friend, so much as cause her to spontaneously combust.

I still feel guilty about it, but I love how willing Original Sin 2 is to let you mess up, and how many of its quests let you succeed or mess up in totally different ways.

Bonus: here's an even better story I told on the podcast, about a demon erupting from my cursed helmet in the middle of a fight and making things difficult.

Fraser Brown: Beating up buddies

We had only just arrived in the Fort Joy camp, the first act’s hub, when my co-op partner and I started having serious differences of opinion. Some goons were trying to exploit some of the prisoners, demanding money for their protection racket, and I assumed we’d teach them a lesson. But no, not on my buddy’s watch. Before I knew it, we were in a fight with the very prisoners I wanted to help.

But here’s the thing about Divinity: Original Sin 2’s co-op—it’s not all about playing nicely with friends. Indeed, you’re ultimately their competition. So if you don’t like the cut of their jib, or maybe you want to express your extreme disappointment at their life choices, you can let them know with violence.

So as my pal laid into this innocent Elf that we’d only just met, I set him on fire and hit him with my axe. I turned on his new friends, the aforementioned goons, too. By the end, I didn’t know who was trying to kill who. It was just a giant tangled mess of summoned beasties, burning bodies, and pools of blood. Unfortunately, the Elf died. It’s OK. I got my revenge when I dragged us into a battle with teleporting crocodiles. He didn’t like that one bit.

Oct 14, 2017

What's going to be our game of the year?

Hollow Knight

Evan: OK everyone, let's have a civil, sportsmanlike discussion about the PC games of 2017. All jabs at Mass Effect: Andromeda must be above the belt, and aimed directly at its poorly animated face.

James: Thankfully it's quite simple: it's Hollow Knight. It’s everything I love in games: challenge propped up by excellent controls and character abilities that make traversing the huge map a joy. The level design is so subtle that it doesn’t rely on collectibles to tell you where to go next. Every environment is dense and alive, as lively and foreboding as any real forest. And the story uses the form of a 2D side-scroller with utter grace, embedding tiny revelations in the gorgeous art and filling in details through small doses of ghostly dialogue. Seriously, if this game had the marketing reach of The Witcher 3 or Call of Duty, you’d all be in this tiny bug bed with me. Am I sweating?

Jody: Bless you for suggesting an indie game right off the bat so I don't have to, James. But if Hollow Knight had more marketing reach I would just put off playing it for another year out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Hollow Knight's a good shout-out but I don't think it's going to be our GOTY.

We loved The Chosen, but can an expansion be GOTY?

Tim: Haha, it's definitely not Hollow Knight. Good try, though. I actually don't know if I'm allowed to pick an expansion, and I know PUBG is actually going to win, but for me it's XCOM 2's War of the Chosen expansion by the length of a comet's tail. It's not that I didn't love the game first time around, but the addition of these three gloriously annoying antagonists transports the experience to another level. Aside from the brilliance of sparring with them as the campaign unfurls, War of the Chosen also adds a raft of sweet new systems, characters and unique weapons. Sending two of your favourite soldiers out on a covert mission only for them to get ambushed makes for heart-stopping escape sequences, and the waves of Lost which assault you on some missions also create a zombie-style horde mode vibe that XCOM has never delivered before.

Evan: I'm grappling with the same thing. Moments of War of the Chosen were some of the happiest I've been all year. The Chosen are exquisitely annoying villains that enhance every aspect of XCOM 2. We'll have to talk about how we judge expansions in the context of these awards.

Anyway, is it PUBG? We don't hand out GOTYs based on popularity. It's still in Early Access, and it has plenty of issues. Half a year in, I've stopped playing it. I find the art direction lifeless, and I think they'd have to perform a League of Legends-grade facelift for me to feel differently.

PUBG is fun whether you win or lose, but does its Early Access status disqualify it?

Chris: I'll climb out on that shaky limb and say an Early Access game like PUBG can be GOTY. I played DayZ standalone like crazy during its first year in EA, and at that point it was basically just the framework of a sandbox. But despite glitchy zombies, buggy ladders, and a spotty ballistics system, it spawned so many great stories and interesting experiences for me that it became my favorite game that year (and one of my favorites of all time). PUBG is drawing people into a genre many of them have never played before and it's resulting in lots of fun experiences and stories, too. For my money, that's what makes a game GOTY-worthy, even if it's unfinished.

Jarred: PUBG could've only happened on PC first. I know it's coming to consoles in the future, but most influential genre changes come from PC games. Anyway, I would vote for Star Citizen, just for Chris' stories on the subject, but that's for 2020.

James: PUBG is going to be one of the most influential games of the century, but is it actually the best game of the year? The physics are still in complete rebellion, performance is far from ideal, and in the end it’s still another game about people shooting each other. It’s a very good one and features 100 people, OK, but I’m not sure it’s the game I want to scream about from our collective mountaintop. Are we still drunk on Divinity: Original Sin 2? We’re big RPG people here, what with a nude RPG man as our unofficial mascot.

Joe: Sort of echoing James, I’d say PUBG is my shout so far as influence and impact is concerned—but I think Divinity: Original Sin 2 deserves it, all told. Totally different games, but there’s just so much to D:OS 2, and everything it does it does so well. As Evan says, PUBG is still an Early Access game. I reckon there’s every chance it’ll top next year’s list, but I’m not so sure it deserves first place in 2017.

Jody: Games like D:OS 2 that come out later in the year and take like 60 hours to play are always going to suffer for it. I mean, my pick is Total War: Warhammer 2 but I know not everyone has time to play through even one campaign of that—let alone try out all four factions and, when the Mortal Empires update comes out, combine it with the first game to play again. That's a shame because everyone should have the chance to summon a swarm of angry rat dudes underneath a unit of archers or charge a dinosaur into some elves.

Evan: [initiates Steam download]

The addition of the Skaven and other fun races helped make TW: Warhammer 2 one of the best games in the series.

Jody: Look, I think PUBG is going to top lists when it comes out of Early Access, and D:OS 2 and Warhammer 2 are probably going to make the lists of "Games of 2017 we didn't have time to play until 2018". Or in Warhammer 2's case, "Games that took all of 2018 to actually play."

Tyler: Wait, Original Sin 2 is supposed to take 60 hours? I've played 66 hours and I'm maybe halfway through. I've also put 32 hours into the Divinity Engine 2, learning how to make my own levels. They give you everything you need to mod the campaign or make your own, if you can bear the crashes. It's so good. It's my game of the year for sure.

Jody: I looked it up on howlongtobeat.com and apparently a completionist playthrough averages 102 hours. Please talk me out of committing to that. Tell me some reasons I shouldn't spend more time in Original Sin 2 than Sunless Sea and Prey combined.

Tyler: I can't do that. I mean, it could probably be debugged forever, but most of Original Sin 2's problems stem from its commitment to freeform play. There are a lot of incongruities, like how my friends think necromancers are evil but never seem to mind when I raise a bloated corpse, but that's the price paid for how often it makes me say, "Wait, that worked?" Even if we don't all finish it, I hope everyone plays enough to have at least one or two experiences like that, where they accidently do a quest backwards and it all somehow works out amazingly.

Jody: Tyler, that is the opposite of what I asked for.

Tyler: Let me tell you about the time I got into a fight with a bunch of undead guys, and then realized a few turns in that I was carrying jars containing their souls in my backpack. I'd picked them up in a cave hours earlier and forgotten. So I defeated them by chucking their own souls at them. Perfect.

"A rousing tale of rebellion and exceptional boss fights aren t just exquisite by MMO standards, but rival even the most beloved Final Fantasy games," according to our review.

Steven: Listen, I would love nothing more than to take this moment to begin shouting madly about the virtues of Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood and how bonkers it is that an MMO expansion almost made me tear up at one point because the story is so emotionally captivating. But who are we kidding here? No one cares. And that’s fine, because Original Sin 2 is clearly our GOTY. The only way I’m changing my stance is if Jody agrees to go all in on Total War: Warhammer 2 with me (maybe after the mortal empires campaign is out?)

Wes: I'm still enamored with Divinity, but let's not forget about Nier: Automata, one of the most weird and creative games of the decade. Also, if Shaun was here, he'd remind us all that the Nazi sniping in the underappreciated Sniper Elite 4 is extremely good.

James: [Gives everyone voting for D:OS2 a wedgie] It’s Hollow Knight, nerds. But because your dragons and dungeons and wizards and whatever will always win, I’ll at least drop a few names before dipping out. What Remains of Edith Finch just about made me cry from chopping off fish heads. Cuphead looks incredible, but also contains some really intricate boss design and the best soundtrack of the year, easily. And Thimbleweed Park was one of the funniest games I played this year, and it’s a throwback point-and-clicker. I’m going to close by typing OIKOSPIEL in all caps here too, because it’s my actual GOTY. Describing it is futile. (Psst, dog opera.)

Between Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, PUBG, Quake Champions, LawBreakers, and meaningful updates to games like Overwatch, Day of Infamy, and others, it's been an amazing year for FPSes.

Tyler: Fine, I'll play Hollow Knight. But I'm not sure anything could pull my vote away from Original Sin 2 at this point. I did enjoy Absolver and Rising Storm 2 this year, but only enough to nominate them for awards in their genres. On that note, the shooter category is going to be a tough one. PUBG was already mentioned. I don't want to forget about Sniper Elite 4 from February—it was really good, though I don't think Evan believes me. I'm betting he'll pull for LawBreakers.

Steven: I’m sure that vote will be appreciated by the eight people still playing it.

Evan: PC gaming isn't a popularity contest, buddy. Anyway, I'd actually give my FPS vote to Quake Champions, even with its imperfect netcode. It's the second coming of the railgun and rocket launcher!

Tim: On the topic of second-comings, if you'd told me earlier this year I likely wouldn't be voting for Destiny 2 when GOTY rolls around I'd have assumed the explanation was that I had died. (RIP me.) But the truth is that although it offers a peerless alien-shooting experience, having sunk ~150 hours into the PS4 version I've been startled by how hollow the endgame feels. A huge part of that is due to the switch from random rolls on loot drops to static perks, which as I feared has all but completely sucked the grind for gear out of the game. It's far from the only issue too, and this video by Destiny YouTuber Datto sums up a lot of them neatly. I expect Bungie will gradually rectify the problems with patches and the December DLC, but it really is baffling how for every quality of life improvement the sequel makes, another system has been made demonstrably worse. Be warned I'll be writing quite a bit more about this towards the end of the month.

Destiny 2 will be best on PC, but will it have enough endgame to keep us playing?

James: I’ve already put about 100 hours into Destiny 2 on PS4 because I couldn’t wait two goddamn months, but I’m ready to put hundreds more in on the PC in a few weeks. It’s going to really land with PC players, I think. Finally, we get to complain about a thing we begrudgingly love on the best platform there is.

Tyler: Aside from Destiny 2, there's a lot still to come this year. Looking forward to anything?

Tim: Tom's piece on how the new Assassin's Creed is now a bona fide RPG has me interested in that series for the first time since Black Flag, particularly as Origins is being developed by the same team. Plus I'm a sucker for the Anubis-flavored setting, as Evan can confirm.

Evan: Who doesn't love Anubis, wolf god of the afterlife? Anyway, speaking of canines, I think Wolfenstein 2 is probably going to be great, given that BJ will have Inspector Gadget-style extendable stilt-legs. And though we've played a bit of the multiplayer beta, Battlefront 2's Empire-focused campaign could be special.

James: Well, I’m glad we decided Hollow Knight is the winner so far. Great work, everyone. Until next year!

Despite James' manipulative last-word, this is only the beginning of our GOTY discussions.

Oct 9, 2017

Swen Vincke on the future of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and the pros and cons of open development

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

Larian Studios' Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a fantastic RPG that Fraser couldn't get enough of.

I met the developer's founder Swen Vincke at this year's Gamescom and, with just two weeks to go before launch, he seemed calm. I caught up with him again last week, three weeks following Divinity: Original Sin 2's launch, to see how he feels the game is doing, what he wants from its flourishing mod scene, and what it's got planned into the future.

PC Gamer: How are things at Larian Studios at the moment?

Swen Vincke: Quiet. Most people are on their holidays and [patch 3] is a big one. We're start working on patch four next and slowly people will start returning from their holidays and we're gearing up for our next things.

I presume these were well-deserved holidays.

Absolutely. They gave their everything to make the game as good as they could.

When we met at Gamescom you seemed pretty chilled out for someone who was on the cusp of releasing a game. Were you as calm inside as you appeared outside?

[Laughs] Not really. I actually wasn't planning on being at Gamescom and then a couple of things happened that got me to be there. And then I was there for a day and a half. The madness was at its peak at this point and at that particular time we were focused on bug fixing. Given how large the game is we were trying to get as many players through it as possible.

According to SteamSpy, you sold somewhere in the region of 700,000 sales in less than three weeks.

I think we're over 700,000 now.

That's not bad going.

No, it's not. We could definitely do worse. I mean, we had the early access players before that too. Lifetime total units: 748,000 on Steam, and then you have to add the pre-release ones on there. Wow, that's higher than I thought, that's really good.

Ahead of launch you must have had forecasts. Where were you expecting to be at this stage, or before Christmas—I guess you've surpassed those numbers now?

Yeah, we have. I was hoping for 500k before Christmas, so we're way above that right now which is really good.

Did you have any forecasts in the first month?

No, not really. I figured that if we hit the 500k before Christmas then we were going to be okay. This has been a nice bonus.

Is there ever a point during the development and testing of such a big game where you realise: Hang on, this is really good, this might do better than we expect?

I think any developer will tell you that, first of all, you fall in love with your game. But then the relationship lasts so long that you start focussing on all the negatives. A very classic phenomena means that by the time you're ready to release, the only thing that you're aware of is everything that's still wrong with it.

Then somebody reminds you of how much good stuff is in there. We're busy focusing on: We need to fix this, we need to fix that, this is not good, man we need time to sort this, we need more resources to do that', and that basically dominated the conversation over the course of the last six months. But then there are moments where you're playing and you forget you're hunting for bugs and realise: Actually, this is a lot of fun.

With Divinity: Original Sin 2, this was particularly true. I don't know how many times we redid the beginning of this game. Every time we presented it it was different, and every single time I enjoyed myself. Luckily for us, this seems to have rubbed off on the general gaming audience.

But then there are moments where you're playing and you forget you're hunting for bugs and realise: Actually, this is a lot of fun.

If you had to pinpoint one specific thing over the course of development—what would you say the most challenging thing about making Divinity: Original Sin 2?

Making sure that everything we were doing with the Origin stories meant you could play as both an avatar and a companion, and you still had the main story that all made sense. We had to make sure everything worked together, where all the different permutations made sense to the player. That was very, very hard.

That was the biggest ambition of this one. The previous game was criticised on the story front, rightfully so I think. But part of that was because it was so bloody hard to tell the story in the way that we're doing it—giving the player the freedom that they have, and the ability to kill every single person that you encounter. It's a very hard game to make when you say: Okay, here's a protagonist, oops! You killed him. We still have to tell the story.

One of the game's greatest achievements is its vast amount of voiced dialogue. You said at Gamescom implementing this was a result of shifting its launch date—tell me more about that.

Yeah, it was because the launch date was pushed back and we saw the opportunity to do the voice recordings. It was very clear that people wanted us to voice everything, despite a number of people writing on the community forums that they didn't care about voiceovers. We looked for opportunities to do so, but there was so much voicing to be done that initially it was not going to possible had we stuck to our original release date.

But then when we pushed it back to the end of the summer we thought that it would be possible, providing we could find someone who could be creative enough to do it for us… We did and it was very late in the process, it took a whole lot of effort, but I'm really happy that we did it.

An interesting tidbit of information is that we actually redid the voices at one point. We started recording and eventually realised that the way that we were doing it was not going to work. We were well into recording at this stage and knew that we didn't have too much time. But we knew we had to redo it. The staff deserves every single mention that they get—they did a really awesome job.

Through your Kickstarter and Early Access phase you've had a pretty open development cycle—would be players got regular feedback throughout. With the first Divinity being received so well, did this make dealing with expectation easier or harder?

That's a really good question. Because it puts a lot of pressure on you, that's for sure. But you also can't make diamonds without pressure, right? I think that it's both. It is harder because the moment that the community figures out that they want it and you've said you're going to do it, it's very hard to change course—even if you later discover what you're doing won't work. We did actually change course a few times, but if you explain exactly why you're doing it, most people will listen. You're always going to have some people who don't, but that's just the way it is.

At the same time, things become easier because you instantly know what's wrong. You put it out there and you don't even have to wait a day, you know right away what's wrong. This type of feedback can be very hard to get, unless you have a large community playing. Another thing that's easier with a large community is that there's a large amount of them and can in turn let statistics speak for you.

You may have a very vocal minority screaming how badly something is done, but then you have 95 percent actually enjoy what you've done, so you say: Well, we can certainly say that that feature is okay because so many players are having fun with it. If you didn't do that, and that vocal minority were represented by, say, a couple of developers inside your company, you may wind up going in the completely wrong direction. That's where and why I really like the early access model.

I spent hours in Fort Joy. Someone beat the entire game just under 38 minutes. How is that even possible?

Well, there's a bug [now removed via the game's latest patch]. Other than that we actually put a couple of shortcuts in there for speedrunners. But they can only do it once they've completed the game in the first place. As a side note, because you can kill everybody in the game, we always have to have fallback solutions. This is a spoiler, I guess…

[Warning: slight story spoilers ahead.]

… Okay, I'll tell you anyway and you can decide whether or not you use it. I'll put the responsibility in your hands. There's a city at the end of the game, and the guy there uses Death Fog, which you find at the beginning of the game. Skeletons are immune to Death Fog, which we were well aware of, and it's perfectly possible to kill everyone in that city. If you do so, you can still finish the game because you can talk to all their ghosts. It's one of those fallback solutions.

Having a creature in the game that can bypass the major blockers—such as Death Fog—automatically means that you have a whole bunch of shortcuts, and if you know the fallbacks, you just have to go from fallback to fallback—which is essentially what the [38-minute speedrunner] is doing. Our design approach is going to give you that kind of flexibility. Speedruns aren't good to look at, it spoils the game for you, but it's good to know that it's possible.

Do you do speedruns of your game?I do all the time.

And could you beat 40 minutes?No. Absolutely not. We do speedruns all the time when we want to test that all the critical paths are working in the game. But 40 minutes? I don't think anybody should want to do that. We're not that concerned about racing through the game, we're more interested in the classic narrative experience.

This level of engagement underscores community interest. I checked the game's Steam Workshop page ahead of this interview and found there to be 600+ mods out there already [there are now over 700]. Are you looking forward to seeing what people come up with?

We invited several modders into the office during development so that we could tweak the modding tool together with them. They are the guys that released the soccer mod, and they devised a number of more expansive mods which launched pretty much at release because they had the modding tools. It was really cool to see what they could make in one week. One of the things that we're doing now is to start a whole bunch of tutorial videos and we're expanding all of the tutorials. Hopefully we're going to see some cool shit coming out of that.

For sure you can do a lot of stuff with the engine and they have pretty much everything that we had in our hands when we were making the game. But it takes effort, it's an RPG system so you can't do it too quickly. I'm very curious to see what else they're going to come up with.

Is there anything that didn't make it into the base game that you secretly hope modders add?

What I really hope is that we're going to see adventures appear. Somebody made the noisy crypt, that was one of the guys that came here, he made a 40-minute adventure. I hope we're going to see more and more of those come up because I really want adventures that we can play in co-op where I actually don't know what the story is. That would please me tremendously. But again there's already loads of really cool stuff in there.

What have you enjoyed seeing players messing around with most? Fane's face-ripping is great fun, for example.

For sure, there's a streamer called CohhCarnage who's one of the bigger Twitchers, he played the entire game for 12 or 13 days or so, eight hours a day. And it was amazing to see—how they were figuring things out, things that they were trying to do, the things they were talking about in the chat, it was pretty much on everybody's screens over here.

That's very rewarding, which I think is the cool thing about Twitch whereby people watching can help contribute to how the streamer is playing.

You've mentioned the patch, however what does Larian have planned in the long run for Divinity: Original Sin 2?

We have a couple of things that are in the works but we'll only announce them when we're ready. There's stuff coming, for sure.

To that end: It's early days yet, but I assume the success of number two means we're in line for a Divinity: Original Sin 3, 4 and 5?

[Laughs] We have a couple of surprises planned. But we're going to work on the patch just now, then we're going to work in silence for a little bit so that we can get our shit together and then… yeah, I'm pretty sure there will be at least one big surprise in there.

Oct 6, 2017

Major Divinity: Original Sin 2 patch is now live on Steam

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

The third patch for Larian's hit RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 is now live on Steam, and it's a big one. "But big is good because this update should address the most important issues you’ve been flagging," Larian wrote. "In addition to the obligatory bug fixes and balancing changes, this patch contains a number of content changes that should make your journal clearer and your journey through Arx smoother."

A few highlights, chosen solely because I find them amusing out of context: Spider legs will now properly prevent players from being webbed; Voidwoken chicken should not be able to absorb Source points; fixed a crash "if you choose to sleep again with lizard after you put on all equipment and the thieves were already killed" (what?); reduced the Chicken form running distance to six meters; and "made Siwan bleed because dialog says Siwan is bleeding."

Hey, if the dialog says Siwan is bleeding, then Siwan's gotta bleed. The full patch notes are below.

Improvements and changes:

Improved and added several quest status updates in the Journal
Fixed several quests not closing properly or when expected
Spider legs now correctly prevent player from getting Webbed
Tweaked frequency of certain automated dialogs
Fleeing from combat now pops up the waypoint menu instead of moving you to nearest waypoint
Added several improvements and hints in Arx that tie people together, and that introduce places and characters (e.g. added a thief corpse/ghost in the death-fog storage room)
Save/load screen has been reskinned
Removed camera shake from poison damage over time
Smoke now blocks Attack Of Opportunity
Lowered Persuasion difficulty in Arx
Pressing the right mouse button now stops all characters’ movement chained to the current character
Reskinned lobby and serverlist
Improved Taunting in favour of the Taunter
Optimised performance on certain AI actions
Filter states on inventory are now saved
Made the surfaces created by intersection temporary, but long-lived, instead of infinite (also fixes some surface puzzles)
Reactive Shot now uses equipped weapon stats to calculate damage
Reduced survivability and base damage of Bone Widow
Reduced Chicken form running distance to 6 meters
Small reduction in XP gain in Reaper’s Coast and Council of Seven areas
Fixed melee and rogue archetypes ignoring characters with Stench talent
Fixed Windego’s skills if you meet her in Council of Seven
Made several changes to Captive Deep-dweller in the third round of the Arena in Reaper’s Coast
The puzzle to get to Reimond now has a perception check on the hidden wall, and the wall supports lockpicking
Voidwoken chicken should not be able to absorb source points
Updated stats, skills, loot and archetype of Zaleskar
Lobby browser now shows map names alphabetically
Controller UI shows button hint in dialog windows when you can scroll
Controller type can be auto detected and button hints are shown accordingly
There is now a button to immediately go to the Recipe window (H by default)
In the rune screen, you can now see all runes in all your party members’ inventories

Bug Fixes:

Fixed crash that could happen when putting parent containers into child containers
Fixed crash when you accept a party invitation from a client that has left the game
Fixed crash when attacking ground with a projectile strike type of skill (via script or modding)
Fixed a crash that could happen when loading game or returning to main menu (destroying AiGrid)
Fixed crash if you choose to sleep again with lizard after you put on all equipment and the thieves were already killed
Fixed a Story Patching issue. This prevented certain previous storyline fixes to not be applied correctly.
Fixed a blocking issue in the Hall of Echoes: not having the cloud appear after completing the third part of the ritual and talking to a God
Fixed a blocking issue with characters playing dead during the Kraken combat
Fixed a blocking issue when selecting the option “pick up” when talking to the Parrotplant in Arx
Fixed a blocking issue when saving during Braccus’ dialogue in the endgame scene
Fixed a blocking issue that could happen in a dialogue with Dallis in the endgame scene
Fixed a blocking issue where characters would still be considered in combat in the endgame scene, and nothing would be clickable
Fixed blocking issues caused by story scripting setting items offstage
Fixed a blocking issue with the Pilgrim Door not opening in Arx
Fixed a blocking issue with the crypt puzzle where blocks would rotate 45 degrees instead of 90 degrees in multiplayer or in savegames
Fixed a blocking issue that could happen when being teleported while in the middle of casting a skill
Fixed issue where Gwydian could end up being non-interactable (kill magisters without triggered Gwydian and voidwoken)
Fixed an issue where some companions would not be recruitable after the attack on the Lady Vengeance
Fixed magic mirror portrait rendering
Fixed magic mirror showing encumbered icon
Fixed scrolls not scaling with primary attribute
Fixed desync when using Enrage which could cause lack of crits
Fixed a bug where instakill surfaces would make it impossible to resurrect a character inside them
Fixed several instances where Reactive Shot would not trigger correctly
Fixed Reactive Shot being triggered by invisible characters
Fixed Dome of Protection ignoring vision blockers
Fixed melee attackers sometimes being able to still attack enemies on a higher ledge
Fixed issues with statuses not being set during dialogues which could cause other issues in turn
Fixed some quest markers not showing up for all party members
Fixed a bug with the cat following the last of the players, not the first one
Fixed an issue with Malady having the wrong alignment
Can no longer unassign all characters from a player
Fixed clicking through NPCs, picking up items (often by accident)
Fixed certain limbs not triggering the correct dialogs in Council of Seven
Fixed jump skill issue that allowed players to end up in unintended locations
Fixed combat turn order being broken after character could no longer get a turn
Fixed Magister Julian sending the player East instead of West
Fixed several minor dialog text issues
Fixed several dialog flag issues
Fixed certain waypoints not being activated correctly
Fixed several issues with nodes in dialogs not playing voice file
Fixed several issues with Lovrik encounter
Fixed issue with spirit vision sometimes not working after save/load
Fixed incorrect gender in certain cutscenes
Fixed being able to teleport into the Magic Mirror room
Fixed bartering screen where “Balance offer” would show incorrect gold amount after something was changed in offer
Controller mode: fixed summons not being able to delay their turn
Fixed not getting up after being knocked down or teleported after using Play Dead skill
Fixed issue where disarming a knocked down character would cause character to stand up straight
Fixed issue where certain origin moments were queued one after the other
Fixed issue with story call ItemTemplateRemoveFrom not searching recursively through all inventories inside of the parent inventory
Fixed wrong vision cones (shift) when player has points in Sneaking ability
Fixed issue with White Magister ship not always moving correctly
Fixed pipe exit to escape Fort Joy being easily destructible
Fixed a repeating issue in Beast’s recruitment dialog
Fixed pathfinding issues on Lady Vengeance
Fixed issue with poison surface not spawning correctly under undead party members
Fixed evidence chest not having a tooltip
Fixed several issues related to stealing
Fixed previews of Attack Of Opportunity not always reflecting execution
Fixed AI endlessly complaining about doors being stuck (they will only nag once, e.g. in Arena’s treasure room)
Fixed issue where character could be stuck in combat mode and could never sheathe their weapon (desync issue)
Fixed queueing actions not always picking up item by default
Fixed an issue with skills disappearing from Skillbars or being un-memorised when dragging them around in the skillbar
Fixed make war issues near Gods in Hall of Echoes
Fixed not having anymore source if you want to bless each God in the Hall of Echoes
Fixed notification being sent about un-memorising skills even if character was not under control of the player
Fixed issue when attacking Gareth as he is carrying Jonathan
Fixed possible endgame combat blocker (combat would not start automatically)
Fixed recipe categories
Fixed dead characters getting stuck in Arx Arena combat due to horror sleep status
Fixed turn order issue in the fight for the Lady Vengeance
Fixed a bug where mask of the shapeshifter could shift you back to original shape
Fixed Dream Undone and All-Father, Life-Shaper achievements triggering incorrectly
Fixed several issues with Lohse’s shapeshifted form
Fixed volatile voidlings having incorrect level in Reaper’s Coast
Fixed Arx Death room having puppets that endlessly spawn and die instantly during combat
In multiplayer, use client language setting for showing origin names
Fixed mirror image of a hero character sometimes being wrong
Disabled trading with Kemm when he arrives at Arhu’s
Fixed being moved to a different region altogether after teleporting into Windego’s cell
Fixed Tarquin not telling you about Godslayer and not showing up at the Graveyard
When Malady mentions Tarquin, now set map marker on Tarquin instead of Graveyard cause Tarquin could be at 3 spots
Fixed bug where clearing a keybinding would not be saved
Fixed “glass weapons” not breaking when using with a skill
Fixed issue with Arx pipes puzzle: blessed blood would not propagate correctly
Fixed resurrecting sometimes not adding you to combat
Fixed not being able to receive skill from an item if you already memorised it but don't meet requirements anymore
Fixed a bug where dismissing henchmen seemed to give them a free talent point after you spent it already
Fixed being able to use projectile strike skills on items or characters that were out of sight range
Fixed characters teleporting automatically
Fixed being able to cast Swap Ground out of sight
Fixed not being able to talk to Gwydian Rince under certain conditions
Fixed being able to use fast targeting to find invisible characters
Fixed leaking PPGammaCorrection shader
Prevented party management tutorials from playing inside split screen character creation
Prevent flee tutorial if no waypoints available
Fixed creating water on top of electrified cursed blood: now leaves electrified water
In controller mode, fixed talking to ghost when ghost was on top of his corpse
Fixed visual effects (e.g. camera shake) playing eternally for second player if he joins game in the middle of the effect
Fixed issue with the camera not going correctly to the origin presentation camera in controller mode
Fixed AI still using taunt when near death or when no allies left
Smoke cloud after using laser ray is now blocking vision
Fixed source lich alignment issues and repeating dialogs
Made Siwan bleed because dialog says Siwan is bleeding
Fixed Almira trade table sometimes generating items of wrong quality
Fixed a bug where Illusionist dungeon objects could become invisible after save-load
Fixed Qanna fighting and talking while petrified
When memorial dig sites are unlocked on map, difficulty check now turns to trivial so you can find them

UI Fixes:

Fixed journal map camera clamping
Fixed controller journal marking read quests as new when changing tabs
Fix Take All button sometimes missing on containers
Fix context menu displacement in splitscreen controller UI when opening inventory
Fixed text cutoff issues in some UIs
Fixed AP bar sometimes disappearing in controller mode when switching characters
Controller mode: now show HP bars of characters while it’s not your turn
Controller mode: “invite to party” no longer bypasses the diplomacy manager
Fixed bug where icon of dismissed character would still be shown in party manager
Scrolling through more than four characters in the character-sheet UI now looks good and understandable
Selecting a stack in the crafting UI now shows item splitter
In controller mode, the Skillbar can now be used in combat when it’s not your turn (for browsing, previewing)
Fixed issue when in controller mode player would teleport character or use waypoint while in selector mode, camera would not follow character but would still be locked on selector
Fixed item tooltip still showing after opening a book, blocking the view of the book
Overhead damage numbers displays are now offset, reducing overlap
Fixed missing strings for loca in Roll UI
Fixed text cut offs and button positioning in Inventory and Character Sheet
Fixed scrollbar in inventory sometimes not showing
Fixed message boxes with really long text
Fixed adding to wares sometimes moving wrong item when shift clicking item in inventory
Fixed up/down key assignment confusion on keyboard hotbar UI
Fixed close buttons in controls options not showing warning if there are unsaved changes
Fixed width of statuses in examine UI
Made longer enemy names fit enemy health bars
Fixed max gold amount not fitting in icon slot
Fixed some cooldowns in skillbar showing zero when it should be one
Fixed how main menu and some UIs in GM would handle the Escape button
Fixed dialog cutoffs in split screen when players are in different dialogs
Can now copy paste in direct connect message box
Fixed magic mirror throwing an invalid error message about tags
Fixed “mute sound” option in controller mode menu
Voice label in character creation was sometimes showing wrong name when choosing origin character
Updated backgrounds in the credits screen

GM Mode:

Fixed issue that dragging items to inventory went directly into equipment slot
Fixed issue with loading a savegame while having new active mods
Fixed a crash related to equipment
Fixed broken stats for spawned equipment
Fixed names and labels of several building blocks
Fixed crafting being interrupted by global pause
Fixed Music Assets in mood panel
Fixed several issues on level binding screen
Removed some items from GM menus that shouldn’t have been available
Fixed an issue that could happen where a GM couldn’t seem to place an item or character in a certain spot when not using drag and drop
Fixed issue with adding physical and magical armour to characters
Fixed roll dice UI not showing up on top of some other windows
Fixed copied GM Campaign not showing in the list of My Campaigns until player launches GM Campaign Manager screen
When GM possesses creature, fixed UI showing tags instead of custom stats
Fixed duplication and saving of a shapeshifted character
Fixed issue when GM possessed a creature and could use the party management screen (invite/make war)
Character sheet in GM now uses shortest possible names for stats
Fixed Vignette half showing after spamming show/hide
Fixed being unable to make choice on vignette screen if skill bar is active in controller mode
Fixed player slots drawn outside of the border in the connectivity UI
Fixed ambiance not being saved in GM level
“New vignette” string can now be localised
Fixed "delete" button of exported monsters and items
Fixed groups update after exporting any monster or item
Fixed dragging newly created monsters to encounter pane
Fixed magnifying glass not opening sticky UI when expected
Fixed MoodPanel sometimes breaking after loading

Sound:

Closing inventory / stats now makes sound
Fixed some drop item sounds
Fixed drop sound when splitting items
Trying to equip item without meeting the requirements makes sound now
Fixed music changing to wrong state when switching party members
Fixed voice of black ring reaver ghost in RC

Modding:

Fixed: not being able to publish campaign after user sets dependency add-on for GM
Added extra osiris call CharacterResurrectAndResetXPReward() which resets the resurrected flag of the resurrected character.
Fixed having to create stats twice before it would be committed
Notify user of mods without valid story

Congratulations on making it all the way to the end—as a reward, here's information on how to set up Divinity: Origin Sin 2's mod tools, which can make the already excellent GM Mode even better.

Oct 4, 2017

How to set up Divinity: Original Sin 2's mod tools

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

Divinity: Original Sin 2 includes a brilliant GM mode, and it's great for storytellers who want a tabletop RPG experience sans the tabletop. It's plenty powerful, and pretty easy to use. If you want to, though, you can dig much deeper.

Every copy of Original Sin 2 includes a graphical development environment which you can use to mod the main campaign—say, by adding a new weapon or spell—or to make your own original campaign, with custom levels, characters, or anything you want. You can also use the engine to make levels for GM mode, if you want more than the included templates. Essentially, everything used to make the base campaign, which we loved, is available to you for your own mods and adventures.

If you want to jump in without my help, Larian has already documented the basics on its wiki. Below, I've collected the most vital information from Larian's documents (and my experience) to help anyone get started making a mod for the main campaign, or an entirely new story.

How to set up the mod tools

Larian has put together a simple guide to getting the tools working—it's not hard, but it's understandable if you missed them while focusing on, you know, playing the game.

1. Download the game data

If you own Divinity: Original Sin 2 on Steam, you'll first need to find the game in your Steam library. Right-click it to open the Properties menu. In the DLC tab, check the box next to "Divinity Engine 2 Data." The game should begin updating.

2. Download and set up the tools

Once the data has downloaded, switch to the 'Tools' section of your Steam library. You should have a copy of The Divinity Engine 2. Install it and run it, and it will prompt you for a path to the game data. This is the "Data" folder in your Divinity: Original Sin 2 installation folder, typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Divinity Original Sin 2\Data.

If you set this incorrectly, you will not get a warning—the engine will just crash when you try to load a level. It's no big deal, though, as you can fix the setting without causing a crash so long as it's the first thing you do in the engine.

Alternatively: Setting up the tools through GOG

If you bought Divinity: Original Sin 2 on GOG, you just need to download the tools (listed as "Editor" under "Game Goodies"). Extract the "Editor" folder to Divinity: Original Sin 2's 'Data' folder. Run DivinityEngine2.exe, and set the game data path to the Data folder.

How to make a level from scratch

Unless you turned yourself into a fly and lived on the walls of Larian's office for a few months, the mod tools will likely to be a bit daunting at first—it's a system for people who already understand the inner workings of Divinity's engine. But it's actually not too hard to get started, and though documentation is a little lacking at the moment, Larian has a few guides that helped me a lot.

In the video above, you'll learn how to make a level from scratch and use it in GM mode. I suggest watching the whole thing, as it cleared a lot up for me.

How to add a skill to the campaign

Consider this a basic primer for adding a skill and skillbook, but not a comprehensive guide to everything you can or should do when making skills and items. There's a lot of data to explore to make sure your objects work with every system in Original Sin 2, but this will at least get you from launching the mod tools for the first time to testing a new skill in the game quickly.

1. Create a new Add-On

Make a new project, and choose 'Add-on' as the type. Also tell it to load data from Story, and to target Story. This will load all the levels, characters, items, and so on from the campaign, and set your mod to modify the story campaign with your changes.

2. Load a level

After creating your project, you'll be prompted to load a level. Click the 'Show Inherited Levels' button in the top right to see levels from the main campaign. I loaded Fort Joy. (You don't have to load a level to start editing skills, but you'll need one open later.)

3. Create your skill

In the upper-right hand side of the menu bar, you'll see a bunch of different icons for opening editors. We want the Stats Editor. Here, you can see (but not directly modify) all of Divinity: Original Sin 2's items and skills. You'll also see a dropdown for your mod with nothing in it. Anything you add there will be added to the game (or modify something that already exists) if your mod is active.

Under your mod's dropdown, hit the + symbol next to 'Skill Data' and select the type of skill you want to add. I chose to add a new Rain spell. This will create a big blank spreadsheet, which is a bit daunting. Since I was just creating a test skill, I opened up Divinity: Original Sin 2's Rain spreadsheet, and copied all the data from the basic Water spell into my Rain spreadsheet. I then changed the name and display name, and set it to create Lava surfaces instead of Water surfaces because I'm a bad person. Make sure you hit the save icon after you're done, and then close the Stats menu.

4. Create a new Root Template for your skillbook

Root Templates define the base version of all the items (and everything else) you see in the game. In the Root Templates window (by default it's below the level view) search for 'BOOK_SKILL' and you'll find all the skillbooks in the game. Right click on one and choose 'Create new from selected...' This will make a copy of the skillbook that you can use for your new skill.

You'll be prompted to modify your new Root Template after you create it. At the least, you need to change its name before saving it, otherwise it will conflict with the template you're copying from. Do that, and change the display name. Now scroll to the 'Item State' section and click on 'Use Action.' Hit the little '...' prompt to open a new window: this is where you'll tell your skillbook what spell to teach. Open the SkillBookID dropdown and select your new skill. If you don't see it, you may have to go back into the Stats Editor and resave it—make sure you've given it a new name, as well.

5. Put your skillbook into the world

There are lots of ways to populate the game with your new item, whether through enemy drops or as rewards in chests, but for the purposes of testing and this basic guide, I just dragged an instance of my new book onto the ground in the middle of Fort Joy. When you're done, save everything and publish your mod locally from the Project menu. In-game, select it from the mods menu and then load a save or start a new game (you could drop your item in the very first room, if you wanted to test it with a new character). As you can see above, it worked, horrifically.

Where to get help with modding

You may also want to create an Object entry for your skillbook, or change your skill's icon, or add a new effect to the game—there's a ton you can do, so this is just the first step. I'm learning as I go, mainly by referencing Larian's guides and references on the wiki, and that's where you'll want to start.

If you have questions that aren't answered there, however, check out the mod troubleshooting forum. I've found everyone to be very helpful so far, and your question may already be answered in a thread.