'Divinity 2: Ego Draconis', perfectly mid

As all things should be

Larian is a studio that has had something of a meteoric rise; in the sense that they have gone so far, not that they've been rapidly granted success they haven't worked for. Because Larian have worked for it, bitterly and long from the beginning top-down RPG gameplay of Divine Divinity to the action adventure stylings of Divinity 2 and the strategy virtual novel game 'Dragon Commander' before finally nailing their style with the CPRG legend: Original Sin. That last couple of games were, of course, the slam dunks that won the team the dream contract of developing Baldur's Gate 3 which they have done with a unique attention to the source material which makes me so gosh-darn glad that these are the guys working on the game. Could you imagine how dry Baldur's Gate 3 would be if WoTC bought back modern Bioware to make it? I shudder to even ratify that thought with a serious contemplation.

But in their journey towards the CRPG genius that was Original Sin, Larian did take the short detour into more accessible action RPGs like the rest of the industry did. And the result? Well that would be 'Divinity 2: Ego Draconis' and it's second part 'Flames of Vengeance'. Now as is the case whenever a big studio lives long enough in the spotlight, the modern fame has attracted new eyes to rock up to the devs and analyse them, usually even going back and assessing their past catalogue to see if their modern success story was ever hinted at in the games that came before. Video game archaeologists with a shotgun approach to digging out any old game that still functions and immediately declaring it an unsung classic of it's age. Well, although I did not have the chance to follow this trend, I did actually get around to playing all the Divinity games around about the time that Original Sin was coming out. (With the exception of Beyond Divinity because I hated that game so much it made me quit after the first act.) So lacking the rose-tint of a dumpster diver; what can I really say about the Divinity 2 game that treats it honestly?

My god was it average. In all the best and worst ways. Whereas so many fantasy RPGs of the age were falling into dime a dozen heap in an attempt to emulate the greats of Oblivion and... well, Oblivion; Divinity was taking it's inspiration from Oblivion and... making it worse in an attempt to do something different. Look Larian had ambition, and if I tell you that this was a game where you balanced fantasy adventuring with regularly transforming into a fire breathing dragon then you're going to imagine something incredible, right? Well hold your nose for that cold water because Divinity 2 was one of those titles that was a tad too ambitious for it's own good. And yet, even then the game isn't a total dumpster fire like most 'too ambitious' projects are. It sort of hovers in this nebulous space of a game that I wouldn't ward you away from like it's the plague, but also one I don't really have any reason to recommend either. Like a double edged dagger, my critics balance themselves.

For positives I think that Divinity 2 has a simply great music scape, one that can almost trick you into thinking you're playing a more epic game than you really are. And that disparity is probably best bought up in the combat which is an open-action no-turns affair without stopping for tactics or any of that noise, and an ever present adjustable ability bar akin to an MMO or CRPG that becomes a little cumbersome to navigate in real-time action combat scenarios. (Unless you memorise your favourite moves and just tap the corresponding hotkey, of course.) The narrative shirks the stuffiness and over-seriousness that plagued some of the most boring fantasy RPGs of that generation, unfortunately Larian's humour is still eye-scratchingly dry by the development of 'Ego Draconis'. ('Flames of Vengeance' actually marked the first time Larian started to swing more hits than misses in their scripts.) It's like I said, every positive has an equally balanced negative.

Divinity 2, which is strangely the third game in the Divinity series, is a linear action adventurer game with pretty weak combat that is justified through the veneer of RPG slapped ontop of it. Enemies are lock on and slap-to-death affairs and most fights end up being no more skillful than 'make sure you have more health before you start so that you can win' affairs. Dragon sections, and you can only dragon-out in very specific areas, are a bit more dynamic and free-reign, but they suffer from a monotony that the game maintains throughout it's design for it's first half and fires into turbo mode for it's second half. Every dragon section is defined by turrets and air-mines that you have to blow up methodically and boringly. Most of the time you'll be ducking out of the action to wait for abilities to recharge, and most of the largest 'explorable' places you get to check out are literally copy and past challenge towers. Not the most inspired of design choices. In fact, every dungeon space in the whole game stretches on far too long without any significant visual disparity to keep the eye from getting bored, and are populated full of mindless hit sponge enemies that you'll end up groaning at everytime you see a group of them.

In fact, the entire world design of Ego Draconis seems cursed from probably being a linear set-up that was wrung together out of a proposed open world, which I think took hints from Oblivion. Not least of all because this game has it's own version of Oblivion gates, only so much worse because they are forced Dragon high-level sections set out across giant floating islands that are entirely flat to walk across aside from randomly scattered enemy patrols who litter it. Larian hide their indie status very well given the sheer quality of their craftmenship in most cases, but Divinity 2 was them at their most 'experimental'. Which is to say the game's garish design decisions stuck out like a sore beaten thumb. 'Flames of Vengeance', by the very nature of being much more linear, has a better time feeling like a professional product throughout, but not enough where I could consider the game a classic of today or of it's time.

And yet I would not call the package an awful game. Actually the fact the whole thing is standable is despite it's flailing rather than because of them. The raw beats of the story are fine, not great or good but merely fine. The environments are... actually rather ugly but ambitious. Larian tried to cover a lot of ground and it really did not work out for them, especially for some of their more open locations in the game. I despise some of the creature design, mainly their utterly bizarre goblins, and find the Dragon form to be more cumbersome than empowering. Seriously, you're more like a flying blimp than a soaring being of destructive might. To be absolutely honest, I do not know if I would have made it through the entire game if I hadn't had Original Sin waiting for me on the otherside. (And thank god I did. That masterpiece was a perfect palette cleanser.)

So was Divinity 2 some lost gem of the 2000's that we turn our noses up at unwittingly? No! Duh, have you been reading this thing? It's a largely mediocre game propped up by slight flashes of potential and the odd good joke in the second half. It's not particularly fun, nor memorable outside of it's soundtrack; and in fact I'd honest recommend Divine Divinity over this one for holding some great piece of early Larian charm in it's construction. As they sit now, Larian are an incredible RPG developer who are currently iterating on some of the most robust gameplay systems in all of CRPGs, without exaggeration. Divinity 2 was a stepping stone on that journey, no doubt; but in all honesty if we were to compare that place with where they are now, it would look like a pit in the road rather than a shining milestone. 

'The Abyss' Trope

Alternate title: It's okay to steal and why you should.

When it comes to crafting a narrative, even one that is made to be unique and explore untested waters, there are bound to be some basic themes and concepts that are borrowed from or inspired by other pieces of work; or maybe entirely separate concepts that line-up together from complete coincidence. These 'tropes' as we dub them may have a name commonly synonymous with a negative connotation, but they don't necessarily have to represent the mark of an unimaginative storyteller incapable of innovation and creation by themselves. Oftentimes, the fact that these concepts even become tropes in the first place is because they are so rich of ideas, with such range to them, that they can be used again in completely unique narratives, perhaps even to achieve a different purpose, and still be interesting. The very act of an idea becoming a 'trope' marks it as one of some value, worthy of revisiting or reconstructing time and time again. (I mean, as the adage goes: "Good artists take, great artists steal". Or something to that avail.) To celebrate and familiarise myself with that, I want to explore once such trope as it exists within a few prominent fantasy worlds; the 'Abyss' trope.

When it comes to creating various factions and world forces in a fantasy setting, purpose and function can really stretch the limits of the imagination as the storyteller can get to describing factions as mundane as trade blocks to forces as wild as governing bodies for the very laws of nature. 'The Abyss', as it most commonly exists in the examples I've noticed, generally leans towards that latter extreme; telling of a force, often somewhat conscious, made up of, or representative of, complete and total nothingness. An 'Abyss' between the material of reality whereupon nothing should exist, and yet does. Of course, it's not always called 'Abyss', that's just one of my more colourful names I've noticed for it, sometimes it has a more descriptive name in 'The Void'. A somewhat philosophical concept when you think about it: live substance representing the lack thereof, so you can already sort of see the legs of such an idea and how it gets around. Still, I've picked out four fantasy worlds who I believe all have examples of such a concept, to various extremes, to see the different ways one might approach it, and thus the variety with which any storyteller can approach any trope in general. (Savvy? Good.) 

First up, Genshin Impact. That's right, the game often accused of stealing it's very soul from Breath of the Wild, and the idea of various newer updates from other properties or games since. (I can definitely see the Windwaker comparisons for the Summer Island update) This game has it's own take on the 'Abyss' trope, and it comes in the form of the oft-ignored major enemy faction: The Abyssal Order. Rather than being anything as esoteric as a faction borne entirely from the lack of everything, there's an actual comprehensive, if still-in-process, explanation behind them that I think holds an interesting parallel to the Abyss trope. The order, as it is told, hail from the land of Khaenri'ah, the location of the upcoming penultimate chapter of the main Genshin story and the one land that doesn't actually exist in Teyvat.

That is because this land, unlike every other in the game, isn't ruled over by a god, or Archon, making it totally unique against everything else we've seen in the game so far and linking to the concepts of false god hood that keep being bought up in the story. This society ends up coming to ruin, and the Abyssal Order are it's remnants striking out at the god-ruled lands with some unknowable end in mind. For this instance, the concept of 'the Abyss' is synonymous with destruction, or even just the absence of Divinity. As though being without the guiding hand of some sort of god is to be lost, creating some interesting interpretations for the message; is freedom itself 'the abyss'? That questions like this can be even be derived by something as ostensibly straightforward as Genshin Impact speaks wonder for the effect of the trope on the narrative, although until the story of Khaenri'ah is expanded we're working purely with speculation at this point. 

Next I've bought up the Divinity franchise, classic Role Playing games that I've often lambasted for their callously noncommittal approach to worldbuilidng that leads to large swathes of the universe and the forces that govern it being rewritten on a dime. Point-in-case, it wasn't until the Original Sin series that the games suddenly decided that the big-bad entity you should be struggling against is 'The Void'. Here we're talking about a much more literal interpretation of the concept, with 'The Void' representing the absence of matter entirely, a place of nothingness between space and time wherein nothing can exist. 

Yet from that void comes agents intent on dragging all that does exist back towards nothingness, and thus the ultimate goal of this 'Void' always seem to lay down a blanket of nonexistence over everything. In this sense, the trope presents it's 'Abyss' as a force of primordial nature intrinsically opposed to all that is, almost in spite of common sense and reasoning. An approach that feels like it excludes deeper introspection but I'm sure we could wax lyrical about the meaning behind meaningless if we were really desperate to search for meaning. We're not, however, and I'd call Divinity's interpretation of 'The void' as the prototypical approach from which to compare all others.

And now onto my favourite; the world of Dark Souls. In this universe ruled by primordial flames, wisps of souls and the dark essence known as Humanity, it only makes sense that the approach towards 'The Abyss' and it's role in the overall narrative is atypical. This is one of those games that also, famously, has a highly interpretive foundation for the lore, thus nailing specific concepts such as this one are difficult without coming to one's own conclusions on the matter. 'Abyss' seems intrinsically linked the concept of 'Humanity', (otherwise known as 'shards of the Dark Soul') and seems to represent the other end of the spectrum to the 'hollowing' we see throughout the majority of the franchise. Hollowing represents someone who has lost all their souls and humanity and thus lost themselves in the process, whilst becoming consumed by the Abyss appears to be (again, up to interpretation) given oneself over to the chaos of Humanity and being overwhelmed by it's influence.

Some significant moments throughout the franchise present pockets of Abyss as this chaotic consuming force that constantly threatens to corrupt and/or swallow all around it. (Although, crucially, still distinct from the wild nature-tied force known as 'Chaos') 'The Abyss' is still represented as overwhelming darkness, but it seems to stand for something more than just total annihilation, more like pure selfish consuming greed, perhaps even the hungry tyranny of Humanity itself. There's a lot to be said for allegory and the way it works within Dark Souls, but the take away I want for this blog is the plain fact that even a trope ostensibly presented like normal can still underlie deeper and interwoven concepts and thus evolve the original trope.

Last but by no means least is the version of this trope that I understand least, as it comes from that font of lore just a little too deep for me to get a complete handle over it all; D&D. This Abyss, or 'The Infinite Layers of the Abyss, is actually a plane of existence, rather than just the space between planes, placing it line with other realms such as The Prime Material plane (main setting for most of DnD) and the various other 'building blocks of reality'-esque planes. This Abyss is actually full with a great deal of substance to it, being as how it's home to The Nine Hells and several other antagonist realms besides. It's not perhaps the singular source of everything bad within the worlds of D&D, but it certainly houses it's demons, and demons make for pretty tempting scapegoats in any story

Interestingly, D&D's interpretation of 'The Abyss' is a lot less matter-of-fact and passive than other contemporaries. Whereas the Abyss might still be threatening in other stories, it's usually out of unconscious compelling of nature rather than concerted malice. This Abyss, though not exactly a sentient force of it's own, still stands to represent some form of pure evil; giving us an actual tag of the antagonistic on this version of the trope.  

There we have different shades of the same concept in merely a handful examples that still manage to drastically change the form, role and even purpose of the trope in question; making the idea seem wholly distinct in many interpretations. Although the Void/Abyss always does seem to be something to fight against, perhaps indicative of that natural human desire to stave off oblivion and the call of the void, everyone had a different idea of what form that takes and even how active of a foe this Abyss/Void is. (I even suspect Genshin Impact might try to make us feel sympathetic of the Abyss for it's final chapter, whenever that eventually launches) Perhaps from that you've seen the utter deluge of complexity and choice still available to a storyteller from a single borrowed idea. In conclusion; don't be afraid to steal an idea, because the way you choose to bring it to life can rewrite it's entire identity.

The Great CRPG struggle

 Infinity or Divinity?

It's safe to say that I've fallen into a bit of a genre landslide of late, something I tend to do every now and then and absolutely the reason why I haven't gone back to my Xcom challenge of late. (I'm looking at this like training, okay? I know that doesn't make sense but neither did the stupid challenge anyway.) Ever since I started played Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity back at the end of 2020, I've had this itch at the back of my neck for more goodness of, what I'm learning to be, the CRPG variety. Now CRPG, for the uninitiated, means 'Classic Role Playing Game', and it's typically used to refer to those RPGs where stats, classes and choices are very much an important factor of the world, as usually are the factors of the game being isometric with party-based strategy. Of course, having said that when I type 'CRPG' into Google the search engine chucks up Skyrim on the results page, which is wrong. Skyrim has neither a party system, classes or stats. Not any Elder Scrolls game really fits into that mould. Think, instead, of classic Fallout and you'll be closer on the mark.

CRPGs are perhaps some of the most lauded and venerated role playing games that there are, born in a time before every game started throwing a basic progression levelling system into their game and calling it an 'RPG system'. (No Ubisoft, you can't join the club.) They go back to the days of gaming royalty, back to Baldur's Gate, a game that I've actually only recently started playing for the very first time. (Feel free to rip me apart all you want, veterans, at least I've got around to it eventually.) And I've found myself totally in love with the genre these past few months, to the point of obsession. Coinciding nicely with my recent interest in D&D, CRPGs are starting to line up my library to the point where I'm actually growing worried that I'm going to run out of them, because despite their notorious length, their number isn't inexhaustible. I'm already got the Shadowrun games, the old-school Fallouts, Wasteland 1 & 2, Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, Pillars of Eternity 1 and Deadfire, Planescape Torment and Tide of Numenera, Tyranny, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale and Pathfinder Kingmaker as well as many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. (I know about Solasta too, but I'm undecided on if I want to pull the trigger) That's pretty much all the big ones, I'm going to have to start scrapping the barrel unless I work off this obsession soon.

But I find myself in plenty of company in the meanwhile because plenty of gamers flock to these sorts of games and will continue to in the future for their shared love of challenging but rewarding RPG titles. Yet, even within that shared love there lies a little derision and division among the ranks, and this wasn't something that I'd become aware of until I was swept up with and was actively following Baldur's Gate 3. You see, BG3 isn't being developed by the same team as 1 and 2 (obviously, those games were years ago, that team has moved on entirely) but by Larian, creators of Divinity. This is all well and good for they totally created a masterpiece in Divinity Original Sin 2 and if anyone has the scope and ambition to take Baldur's Gate 3 and turn it into the most high-quality production CRPG of all time, it's Larian. (And they seem well on the way to doing just that.) But in doing so Larian took their style of CRPG and transported it onto Baldur's Gate, rather than using what is known as the 'Infinity' style, which has caused a little derision amidst fans.

'Infinity' is in reference to the engine used for Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, thus games that take after the style of gameplay those titles made popular are typically referred to under that moniker. (Even though I doubt modern CRPGs are running around with a two decade old engine in the trunk.) Essentially the difference, and thus the friction, is thus: Infinity CRPGs feature large parties, usually 6 members, and have full action gameplay to them, whilst Divinity and it's like are turn-based affairs and are thus generally slower paced. Despite sharing the same overall genre, this division splits hearts and minds down the middle and even sparked some genuine anger towards Larian for their decision away from what Baldur's Gate originally stood for. As one who has had a chance to dabble a lot in both, I have love for both side and thus I want to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of both.

For the Infinity style we're talking game like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny and the original Baldur's Gate titles, and the gameplay to be expected is real-time and dynamic. But don't think that with the 'real time' some strategy is lost, these games come with a pause button so that you stop everything and give individual orders because of how overwhelming some fights can be. This style works well with letting the player at large fights without clogging things down too much, managing huge parties, and really embodying that sense of the powerful party of adventures who can steam roll over tribes of Gnolls that try to get in their way. Although on the flipside this style of gameplay tends to mostly lose all tactics in positioning besides the utterly basic, micromanaging party members can feel like babysitting when fights get hairy and not everybody is doing what you want and encounter planning rarely feels like it gets even a fraction of the attention that the other half of this genre does.  

The Divinity style encompasses games like Wasteland, Shadowrun and, of course, Original Sin, and it caters to turn-based combat with initiative orders and infinite thinking down time between every action. Tactical planning is at the heart of every encounter, and typically placing everyone in the exact right position can be the difference between putting up a good fight and being steamrolled. Spells and abilities only even factor in after positioning. These games can be hardcore like that. This style works great for games with a plethora of skills and items to use for each encounter because you have plenty of time to consider and weigh up the benefits each time it's your go. Also, some of the encounter planning can be really indepth and factor in how each encounter can be uniquely challenging. (at least for the best of this genre's offerings) However, this style of CRPG can go from slow to tortuous depending on how many enemies and allies are involved in the fight. (Fallout 1 has this one fight between two large factions where you'll literally be sitting a full minute between every turn.) Additionally, it's not really worth the time of having those small enemies clumps chucked at you in order to make you feel good as you crush them, and so you don't get throwaway stomp fodder like you do in Infinity style games.

Picking a preference between these two styles is as subjective as it gets, because in my opinion they both have their charm and their place in the CRPG field. Yet if you hung me over a spit and forced me to pick I'd ultimately land with the Divinity style of game simply because I cherish both the time to really 'solve' each and every encounter like a puzzle master (see my Hitman coverage for explanation on why I adore that) and Original Sin demonstrated what a masterpiece experience it can be to have an entire game full of thoughtful encounter placements, I never felt tuned off by the amount of fights I was having and honestly felt excited for the next. Additionally, my love for this genre coincided with my recent interest in D&D, and if we're talking about the style of CRPG that most closely replicates that tabletop goodness than it has to be Divinity style, no competition. 

Of course there are no right answers in a debate like this, and I'd wager fans will continue to fight over and debate the pros and cons for as long as CRPGs are being made, though as long as neither side is totally dismissive of the other I think it all makes for healthy discourse for a great genre of games. I've always felt that Roleplaying needs that hard edge of tough which really makes the player break things down to the basics in order to squeeze out a victory, and that's something both types of CRPG manage with gusto. May the industry never run out of this new golden age of CRPGs for the foreseeable future, as I still feel like we're missing some decent modern Sci-fi offerings. (I can just imagine the opportunities there.)

Divinity: Original Sin Review

Seven grants abundance 

The end of the Journey

'Divinity: Original Sin 2' was a game that pretty much tore up the scene when it was first dropped upon the unsuspecting masses of the RPG world all the way back in the bygone year of 2017. It won multiple award shows, topped many people's 'best Modern RPG' list and remained there, catapulted the slowly rising Larian Studios into the stratosphere, got ported to just about everything with a hard drive and even won its developer the highly sought-after contract for Baldur's Gate 3. That last one is the stickler, because it seems as though the entire CRPG genre had been vying to make their own version of Baldur's Gate for years now for want of a third title that was assumed to be forever lost. No one really ever expected that game to be made, but Larian had it dangled in front of their faces and they jumped at the opportunity so hard that they had to literally drop a project mid marketing cycle in order to focus fully on BG3. (RIP 'Divinity: Fallen Heroes'. We'll never know thee.)

So with all of this fame and adoration, I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about for myself. Join in on the Original Sin 2 fun and all that, but there was one problem; I'd never played a Divinity game in my life. Now if you're a normal person this isn't really a problem at all, because you'll just throw yourself into the game and expect to pick up the relevant context and world as you go along, but I've never worked like that. I need to know context, I thirst for context, and if your series has a rich backlog of games and stories that led up to this one, it feels like my duty to familiarise myself so that I can fully appreciate the journey this franchise has gone through. It was the same loop of 'buy the entire series and work my way up' that I went through when I got a passing interest in 'Splinter Cell: Blacklist' a while back, and I simply loved that summer of Stealth military action experiences. (Apart from Double Agent. Screw Double Agent.) I figured I'd just do that again. I put that plan into action about three years ago.

Turns out that there's quite a lot of Divinity Games, don't you know, and they go back a very long way. In fact, this was a very long laid out series of Role Playing games (mostly) leading all the way back to 2002, and I would be catching up on all of that history as quickly as possible, whilst taking the time to appreciate the games as I went, of course. So what was my journey like? Well these aren't full blown reviews or anything but it went something like this; Divine Divinity (2002) was a beautiful little old-school RPG gem that surprised me at how fun it was even in the modern age. Beyond Divinity (2004) was an ugly and garish follow-up which focused on all the wrong aspects of the series and turned me off so much that I actually quit playing after Act 1. Divinity 2 (2009) was a deeply average, through charming, jump to third person action adventure RPG; fun enough to play through once but lacking depth and story quality. 'Flames of Vengeance' (2010) was the second part of Divinity 2 and was a surprisingly marked improvement in every way despite only being a year's work; it wasn't enough to make that game amazing, but the series' signature jokes were at least landing the majority of the time now. (Beyond Divinity's 'humour' was gut-wrenchingly bad) And Divinity Dragon Commander (2013) is a real-time tactics game and I really don't feel comfortable enough in that genre to give a full assessment. I will say that I liked the game, and all the 'kingdom management' and 'personal relationships' stuff you're asked to do between fights was great. (The fights themselves just got frustrating by the end.)

Which brings me to 'Divinity: Original Sin', the topic of this blog and end of my Journey to Divinity Original Sin 2. I honestly didn't know what to expect, apart from that this had some how spawned a sequel which many people lauded as a modern classic, so I couldn't have been a total disaster, right? What I ended up discovering just before starting to try and play it was the world of CRPGs which sort of drew me down a rabbit hole and away from the Divinity Series for a bit. I played and loved Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity, grew an eye for games that took classic sensibilities with a modern eye for storytelling, and only with that experience came back around for Original Sin 1. But now I've finally come full circle and Original Sin is behind me. It feels like the zenith of a great entertainment journey as I've watched Larian grow in size and talent throughout the years, all to reach their greatest triumph. (You know, before Baldur's Gate 3 which is shaping up to be the gold-standard for CRPGs going forward)

Original Sin

'Divinity: Original Sin' is a prequel to the entire franchise- (Wait, so I didn't need to play all of those lead-up games? Son of a bi- why did no one tell me this! That took a year! Gah-) anyway. Taking place before all of the lore of the previous games and thus disregarding all those events, (with the exception of Dragon Commander which technically predates Original Sin but invalidates itself through one of the most stupid self-imposed retcons in history. Also the greatest, I love that they did that.) Divinity recontextualises a lot of what we would come to know from later (earlier) entries through information that ultimately doesn't really have all that much of a baring and doesn't change the overall narrative. Yeah, that's sort of the problem with the Divinity Series in my eyes; the series seems to redefine itself so often that there doesn't really feel like there's a consistent universe being adhered to here. One day Source is the route of all healing, then it's evil sourcery something juice; one day undead and Orcs are your stereotypical badguys, the next Orcs are almost thrown to the back burner and Undead are one of the major races of the realm. (What? How does that even make sense?) One day all the races are laid out before you, and they next they throw in an entire species of aristocratic lizard people as though they've always been there and we just never paid attention to them. I think if aristocrat lizards had existed in Divine Divinity's day, they'd have factored in somehow!

Now this does sort of make sense for a series that's almost 20 years old now, because the game has to evolve in order to fit the evolving industry, I understand that. But Divinity almost feels identityless a lot of the time because the rules of the universe just seem to change so drastically with little to no explanation a lot of the time. Elder Scrolls, by comparison, has bent over backwards (from Daggerfall onwards) to ensure that the world feels like the same one you experienced from the classic games so that there's a sense of progression and consequence for the journeys that you go on and the time you spend in Tamriel. When TES turned around and made a prequel MMO, that meant something because it was exploring a world we knew so well and would expose it in a light we'd never seen before. Original Sin's prequel prospect just seems by the numbers. "Sure, okay. Not really sure what Rivellon even looks like on a map to be honest, let alone care about it's history. Fine, whatever." I mean, Original Sin throws in an incredibly important goddess to the plot whom I've fairly certain had never been mentioned before in any of the 'preceding' games. How am I supposed to take any of this seriously?

But if I put that relatively unaffecting personal gripe aside, I can say that on an individual level the worlds that the Divinity games build is entirely serviceable, if lacking the tangibility of some of it's contemporaries. If there's consistency at least in the Original Sin series, then I can live with that at least. Call these games a 'soft reboot' if you will. (Although Original Sin 1 does, inexplicably, cut out every single race apart from Humans, Wizards, Orcs and Imps for some reason. Not sure what Elves, dwarves and Lizardmen did to upset you guys so much. Maybe there's some forty minute catch-up video I need to watch to bring me up to speed.) So with that put to rest, what exactly is this game about?

Divinity puts us in the world as an duo of 'Source Hunters', an elite order of knights tasked with purging the world of the toxic influence of 'Source'; a corrupted (and undefined) magic which has a history of plunging the world into chaos and destruction in the past before being mostly put down by the original Source Hunters. Now you're tasked with smothering out any Source embers before they can grow into something world threatening again, and are on the search of just those rumours when you stumble upon the small water-port of Cyseal and the story starts from there. Of course, there's pretty clear parallels between this set-up and the Grey Wardens from Dragon's Age, so if you like that sort of 'specialised group of  heroes devoted towards a single goal', then you're in luck because that's exactly where Original Sin lies.

Playing with fire

 

One of the big selling points of the Original Sin games is that they are actually mutliplayer affairs, allowing for yourself and one friend to trek through a turn based RPG in it's entirety together, settling differences through 'Rock/paper/scissors' style showdowns. (JANKEN!) I don't personally have the social circle to be able to say how it works out in multiplayer, but I have seen accounts from others who have and say it's a really cool and unique experience. As a singular player you still get to enjoy the game just as much, although it's just like controlling two main characters where every now and then one will decide to object to your quest decision for the most inane reasons. (Thankfully you can just force them to stand outside the room to relieve yourself of these forced conflicts.

Having two protagonists does mean, however, that you get to create 2 heroes in the customizer, and it's here where Divinity actually disappointed me. Of the CRPGs that I've played, some of my favourite parts is creating a character for the sheer amount of game-changing variety involved in the process as you choose races and classes that transform the abilities available to you throughout your playthrough. Original Sin airs towards a more accessible iteration of character customisation, and in that pursuit losses a lot of the potential depth. The plus side is that new players will never find themselves married to a build that they just absolutely hate and don't want to stick with, because you can retrain into just about anything with enough effort. The down side is that none of the starting classes feel utterly distinct from one another. Also, Original Sin 1 has no playable races other than human. That seems reductive as heck, what's wrong with racial bonuses? I can't even figure out a narrative reason why this would be the case, I can only assume it was a feature they just never got around to adding before they wrapped up 1 and started development on 2. All and all, I'd call Original Sin's character customisation one of the weaker of the CRPGs that I've enjoyed recently.

And yet, even with that misstart, I must say that I absolutely adore the meat of the Original Sin gameplay. Built as a turned-based RPG, (my favourite type) Original Sin's combat is all about positioning, ability points and hit percentages. (like a fantasy X-Com, if you will.) Each fight will choose an initiative order based on your stat sheets and you'll have a certain pool of AP points each round to do a certain number of actions, whether that be attack, move, cast a spell, drink a potion, read a scroll, equip some armour, or (rarely) interact with some environmental tool. I prefer this to the whole 'move and then do an action' set-up because it allows you to build some really agile and high damage dealing characters really at the discretion of how you want to handle levelling up. It's a robust system with a lot of room to excel and Original Sin does a great job of achieving that potential.

If there's one element in particular I feel I have to single out as the single biggest combat triumph, it's the encounter design. That's because Larian did a simply fantastic job in designing every single fight so that there's some sort of substance there. Typically games like this will be littered with a lot of 'inbetween fodder' where you roll through low level enemies for EXP or just to feel powerful, but Original Sin cuts down on this as much as possible. I remember having to seriously consider skills for almost every fight and it gets to the point where you really start to look forward to the mental challenge of 'solving' another fight scenario using the tools available to you. Even at it's most challenging and frustrating, there's something deeply satisfying about figuring the tactic that works for you, or pulling things back from the brink because you've really taken that step back to analyse each moment to the most minute detail. I simply loved D:OS combat.

I think that love comes from a certain 'robustness' imbued in the game design wherein game rules are established and are upheld unerringly to decently creative results. In particular I'm applauding the element system here, because many of my favourite fight moments has been playing with that. How things work is that elements are designed to imbue consistent relevant effects universally, and then the player is given access to a bunch of utility-esque opportunities that allow for exploitations of those elements that feel natural. For example, coming into contact with water imbues the 'wet' status for a limited amount of time, obviously. Well, 'wet' isn't just a cosmetic effect; being 'wet' allows for a small resistance to fire attacks, a negation of the 'burning' status effect, an increased chance to be stunned and even a synergy with the 'chilled' status effect to cause the 'frozen' debuff. Mechanically, this means that if you get ahold of something like the rain spell (which summons a cloud of rain over a large area for a decent number of turns) you can use that to put out companions on fire, set-up an electric stun or air freeze attempt or just weaken enemies for an elemental follow-up. That's just one example and the game is built to maintain a lot of them, it's one of the most dynamic systems of it's kind that I've seen and it truly opens up the combat to be this more puzzle-like affair. (and anyone who has read my Hitman blogs knows how much I love a pseudo puzzle game.)

Whatsmore, these rules work outside of combat and in the open world, which works great for moments of solving world puzzles that the developers have laid out. For example, you may come across a floor covered in poison which is impassable. Well, fighting with poison might have revealed to you how it's liquid and gas forms are flammable, (making for some great, and some terrible, dynamic combat moments) so you know that you just fire a fire-enchanted arrow into the pool of poison to set it ablaze and then summon rain down upon the blaze to put it out. It's this sort of utility to spells that I think is deeply routed in the Dungeons and Dragons influence for the game and executed wonderfully. And don't worry, the developers devised the lava surface for the puzzles they don't want you to find a clever work around to so that there's no way to entirely trivialise the puzzle solving process.

Guardian Hunters

In narrative is unfortunately where I think Divinity Original Sin is at it's weakest, although considering how highly I rate the rest of the game that actually still leaves the story as rather decent. As I've already detailed, this is a series that trips up on world building between entries and that makes it hard to really come to care about core elements of this world, and as such every narrative feels like it has to start from scratch. Yet even with those road bumps to overcome I found myself decently invested in the story of the Source Hunters and the way that it evolved, only really furrowing my brow and rolling my eyes at the minutiae which bordered on 'get the Mcguffin of the week!' for some parts.

As the name of the series implies, it doesn't take long for the story of the game to became embroiled with the realms of the gods, which is fine and all even if I think the pantheons of this particular universe are criminally underexplored for some reason. There's also a constant question as to what exactly constitutes a 'god' in Divinity, because none of them seem to posses a particularly creation-ism vibe, all seem actually killable for some reason and in this game it's even explicitly stated that the gods aren't even omnipresent and that there are some entities older than them. What can be older than a god? What even is a god at that point? (How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence.) Are we just talking really powerful people with glow eyes, because in Divine Divinity that was literally all it was.

Ultimately, however, I was disappointed with the direction the narrative went; although that's because of what I perceive to be falsely promised potential. This game's hubworld is literally called 'The End of Time' and appears to be some fallen version of the world torn about by some evil entity that you've got to stop. I perceived this as some Dark Souls 3 situation where you're literally moving through time each time you go back to the Hub and seeing the results of what happens to the world if you fail. (Except, of course, in Dark Souls 3 there is no 'this can be prevented'. Because everything always dies in the end.) Whatsmore, there's some playing around with the heroes and their role in 'The End of Time' that really made it seem like we'd be going through the journey of discovering how the world was destroyed like this and working to prevent that.

Or so I assumed. In reality, and this both took me a while to figure out and disappointed me greatly once I did, 'The End of Time' isn't actually related to time at all. Yeah, despite it's name 'The End of Time' is actually just some metaphysical realm who's state of disrepair has no bearing on the wider world and there's no 'learning the world you'll soon experience' here to speak of. In a choice-based (somewhat) game it would have been simply wild to show off a glimpse of what will happen and show the way your bad choices led to it, before given you the context to change fate. (You know, like Dragon's Age Inquisition did to great success!) I think that would have actually made for a much stronger and more imperative-driven plot over what we ultimately received. Which to be clear was still good, but it could have been great. (severe missed opportunity that was literally staring the team in the face, in my eyes.)

Going out with a bang?

The endgame of CRPGs like this is where they really sink or swim in my eyes, as these are the sorts of games that are built upon the promise of what you'll become at the end of the adventure, so once you reach that end you need the space to be as cool as you've be working towards being. In this vein, the combat scenarios for Original Sin ramp up and as they do the combat just becomes ever the more exhilarating for me. Playing on the hardest difficulty, I did get the impression that there was a little bit of a scaling drop-off towards the end of the game, to the point where I was breezing through some encounters just a bit easier then I can tell the fights were being set-up as, but that could just be because I was a stickler for completing most quests before the end and thus was practically max levelled.

And yet I really did come to get frustrated as I got closer to the end because of the increase in puzzles that were thrown towards the player out of nowhere too. Now I remember what I said about the versatility and dynamism of these puzzles, but that was in the early game. By the late game Larian start using exclusively lava-puzzles so that you have to solve them in the uber-specific fashion that they've laid out, and this saps a lot of the freedom out of these parts of the game and thus they start to feel like tedious time sinks nearer to the credits. It doesn't help that some of these puzzle solutions are simply just about trying to discover a lever or button that's hidden on the wall textures, which doesn't even make sense in the lore of the world. If I were in the eyes of my player and looking, I'd have clearly seen that button on the wall, but from this isometric distance it's more of a struggle, so why did this dungeon designer build a secret switch that was hidden only from omnipotent sky gods? In fact, why did this designer build a trap with an off-switch on the infiltrator's side anyway? Who does that keep out? See what happens when you over expose this nonsense, Larian? Questions get asked and then the entire fabric of the world begins to unravel!

Finally, and spoilers for these two paragraphs alone, I want to talk about the final boss and the big choice that was made here. So as far final enemies go, conceptually the Void Dragon was a good choice. Classically Dragons make for good final enemies as they were originally constructed as literal devices to represent the apex of things, most famously in Beowulf as a personification (or 'Dragonification' if you will) of all the troubles of life; something we battle with all that can, but something we can never ultimately utterly overcome, and who only dies with us. (Although modern sensibilities might question the folly of a philosophy which dictates that all problems die with you; Kiryu Kazama would certainly label that as 'childish') That was me justifying the Void Dragon, did it work? Now let me tell you why I didn't like the Void Dragon. Icara was the main enemy we'd be fighting the entire game. Yes, she wanted to use the Void Dragon to destroy existence; (which seems like a bit of an overaction to losing against your sister in a love triangle, but I'm not going there today) but that makes the Void Dragon just a means to an end then. Although he was there for entire narrative technically, the dragon didn't feel personally invested in the stakes of the plot and so I didn't feel so invested to stop him as I did for, say, Thaos in Pillars of Eternity. (Although POE had it's own problems with it's main villain and character motivation, let's not forget.)

But that's just the narrative issues with the final boss, how about the fight itself? Who in their right mind thought it was smart to have the final fight be an escort mission? Having to kill the Dragon whilst protecting Astarte came right out of left field and was just plain annoying. It's like the way in which the game immediately ends if both heroes die; why would that be the case when there's others still fighting? Why should Astarte losing her health points instantly end the fight? It's never been that way in any other fights for the game. And to play devil's advocate I get the desire to provide a unique challenge for the final boss, but typically fans want that achieved through clever boss design rather than implementation of a game design trope that's largely considered one of the worst in the industry. At the very least, for the final version of the game they stopped Astarte being able to move because apparently that was a thing she did in the original version. (Charging right at the Void Dragon and getting mauled to death? Thank god they ended that.) Aside from the whiplash of the set-up, however, the final fight was alright. (The AI was kind of dumb on both sides)

In Conclusion

Divinity Original Sin was a game I didn't expect the world from, because I assumed Divinity 2 would be the one to knock it out of the park. However, Original Sin managed to really stand up on it's own legs and prove itself a solid entry more then I expected. Even as a lover of turn based combat, I was blown away with how simply ingenious Original Sin's gameplay setup was and I think that if anyone going forward is looking to make a CRPG they need to look at what Larian did and either copy or improve upon that formula. That's a level of dynamism it's hard to come back from. The narrative was a letdown, however, and that is a shame when you have so much space to tell a story with a text-heavy genre like CRPGs. (Then again, I suppose that is the rope which hung them in many ways.) With all factors taken into account then, I'd have to give Divinity Original Sin a grade solid B, neither plus nor minus. It was an above average title with shades of genuine greatness to it, sullied by other parts of the package. Yet I can definitively say that this was the best Divinity game I'd played so far, so I'm practically giddy to see what awaits me for Divinity Original Sin II. Larian have come a long way in their development history, and following them along the ride has made it abundantly clear how deserving they are of the success in their hands right now, making them the rare modern game studio I have no qualms in supporting. Now if everything goes to plan that's a view I'm going to retain on the other end of Original Sin 2. (Que my drastically unpopular opinion blog 3 months from now)

Hubs'n'Homes

Now I lay me down to sleep.

Yesterday I discussed how the inclusion of player building mechanics help to establish a personal bond between players and the game. I wanted to expand upon that today, there is another mechanic that video game developers sometimes utilize in order to establish a layer of immersion between the player and their avatar: Player hubs. Often times these appear as a very ancillary feature to the game that they're coupled to, offering very little in the way of tangible or tactical value. That makes it easy to shrug off the transformative effect that player hubs and homes can have on the cohesion and accessibility of the game world. An effect I intend to highlight.

Player hubs are an important element of world building and storytelling in open-world roleplaying environments. Whenever the player is told to suspend their disbelief and accept that a strange new world exists, there is a small list of qualifiers that typically needs to be met in order to establish that world as feasible. (Of course this is only 'typically' the case. There is no irrefutable guide to perfect world building or storytelling.) The storytellers need to provide a comprehensive society, a grounded perspective and a coherent world space. Player hubs help fulfill the last category and answer that most simple of questions: Where does the protagonist go when they aren't saving the world?

In most mediums this question doesn't need to be asked let alone answered, in fact is doesn't need to be asked in most video games either. But open world role-playing experiences are a different type of beast to any of those other types of stories. A lot of the time, open-world games have the player taking control of a character throughout their daily lives 24/7, allowing the player to feel as though they have become one and the same with their avatar. This is the reason why open-world RPG's tend not to be as perpetually action packed as one might expect from an FPS. Action is still usually guaranteed, but you need to experience the slow moments too in order heighten the disparity when everything goes to heck during the action moments. Player hubs are an expansion upon that philosophy, granting seconds of respite to juxtapose against the hours of strife. 

Just so that we are all on the same page, when I say 'Player Hub' I am referring to a space that the protagonist(s) can return to. A place that serves as some sort of home base. I have no more identifying criteria than that, although I believe what I do have is adequate enough grounds upon which to understand today's focus.  Although, this does mean that there are a lot more examples then I could ever hope to list in a single blog. Therefore, I will instead describe what type of player hub I am referring to and explain the effect it has on the wider game. With that in mind, Let's start with one of the more clever examples of player hubs that I have seen in recent years.

A GUI (Or Graphical user interface) in the context of gaming, is most commonly an overlay on the screen that gives the player useful information about the character and their world; such as how many hitpoints remain and how much ammo they have. This specific use is called a HUD. However, GUI can be also be used to refer to inventory menus and options screens. Obviously, this is an essential part of almost any modern video game; afterall, interactive coherence is a core pillar of game design. However, for years now they have been almost universally identical to one another. Developers usually value functionality over presentation when it comes to these elements and we rarely see something truly unique done with the idea. But Sometimes, there are those developers who go above and beyond and marry essential GUI elements into their player hub in a seamless environment.

One of the best examples I can think of for this would be Fable 3. Early on in that game you are introduced to the world space known as 'Sactuary' that you can enter at any time. Whenever you go into 'Sanctuary', you have a 3d world space that is essentially a traditional RPG menu bought into an interactive setting. You have the room where your outfits are stored, the room your money is displayed along with a transaction log and a map you can use to fast travel. Divinity: Dragon Commander does something similar with 'The Raven'. Whenever you are between tactical turns the player is thrown back to their ship 'The Raven' where they can interact with ambassadors, unlock research, and go learn about crew members. 'The Raven' is essentially another set of menus that you have to click through only these are 3d animated. Then there is the Clocktower in 2014's Thief. Here Garrett can look at all the impressive loot he's stolen, essentially acting as an interactive 'collections' menu.

These 3D spaces all transform traditionally bare bone menus into canonical spaces to explore. This way, when the player is doing what is usually busywork (tidying inventory, planning tech trees and viewing treasures) they are never taken out of the immersion of the world they are meant to be inhabiting. It is a clever way of allowing players the respite of home without having to worry too much about the effect on pacing it might have. The more immersed the audience, the easier it is for the storytellers to build trust with that audience and invest in rapport.

The most traditional use of player hubs in RPG's is in the common player home. Places that the avatar can call their own that they can return to time and time again when the mood takes them. Oftentimes in open-world RPG's, player homes aren't even essential destinations but rather optional undertakings that the player can pursue if they so choose. RPG's like Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls and Fallout,  make great use of player homes as immersion vehicles. Those are both games where the avatar spends all their time in the presence of their player, therefore the player home fills a gap in the world's logic that tugs at the back of your mind. Narratively, the locations are inconsequential and left entirely up to the player to acquire, much like a lot of elements in Bethesda games.

Home spaces like the Highwind from Final Fantasy VII, The SSV Normandy from Mass Effect and the camp from 'Dragon Age: Origins', are essential narrative locations that playable characters all meet at. In party-based RPG's like these, the home hub is a gathering place for all the party to interact. Oftentimes in these games it is rare for the player to have their entire roster in action, so having the chance to interact with them on peaceful ground is a good rapport building mechanism. Players have the chance to unwind in a relatively peaceful area and assume the role of team leader like the game implies that you are.

Finally, there the types of hubs the players visit in Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying games. MMORPG's have player hubs that fulfill vastly different roles than other games, for no other reason then the fact that they are online experiences. It is harder to find a quiet spot for yourself in an MMO and that's not what these kinds of hubs are designed for. In MMO's, these spaces are used for a variety of different purposes both designed and adopted. Sometimes they exist for ease of access between different activities or world spaces and they sometimes they are utilized as meet spots between players. MMO hubs are supposed to serve as a sort of communal lounge, or a clubhouse, where a variety of people meet and interact with each other in a casual space without the stress of min-maxing, monster fighting or mob grinding to interrupt.

Due to their communal nature, MMO Hubs generally take the form of communal areas like the city in Neverwinter or the fleet in The Old Republic. In Neverwinter, the hub space allows for players to meet vendors, quest givers, craftsmen and all manner of useful functions. All of these could potentially be replaced by menu's but, similar to the GUI replacement hubs, the 3d environment is more fun and immersive .The Old Republic's fleet has a more practical role, it serves as the nexus point between all of your adventures. Whilst, yes, the bulk of your travels will be conducted from the player's ship; the fleet is the location from which players will connect with a vast majority of the community events and endgame content. Raids, events and boss-slaying parties are all conducted or built from the decks of the fleet.

Player hubs and homes are one of the small, but appreciated touches that we find in games. They are one of the individual elements that add up to create a believable world for the audience to interact with. That is why we see them represented so often in modern games, especially in RPG's. Video game's are a much more involved venture then movies or books meaning that the creators often have to go that extra mile in order to keep the player attached. Anyone who has given up on a hundred hour RPG knows the struggle to stay interested all too well. Immersion and context are the lynch pin that, when executed well, gives the player the reason to stick around for the long haul. Some may think the presentation of something as universal as a hub seems insignificant to that equation, but you'll often find that small details are all the more meaningful than the large set-pieces when it comes to keeping players happy. Keep your end-of-the-world threats and your eardrum shattering explosions, I just want a place to lay my head.