Divinity: Original Sin Previews
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We have rounded up a few recent previews for Larian's Divinity: Original Sin, a very promising turn-based RPG slated to release this year, all seemingly based on the Early Access build of the title.
OnRPG:
This is a part of the game that really stood out. I initially gave the game a quick go for about fifteen minutes by myself before I invited a friend to join me and we got on TeamSpeak together to play. From start to finish, our two-hour play session was a blast and full of laughter. Sure, a bit of that laughter was at exploiting bugs for funny outcomes (such as being able to kill ourselves for exp), but most of it was because of all the fun we had playing the game. I usually don't play Co-Op games as it's often done horribly and isn't enjoyable at all. Usually, unless you're the (main) player, you're just there for the ride.
However, in Divinity, the game was made with Co-Op in mind. You can tell right from the start that the devs intended this game to be played with a friend. From the often-times hilarious conversations you can have with your fellow player that can have a beneficial end in one way or another, to working together in combat, it just works perfectly. In most games, you're forced to stay together on the screen, even if you're playing on two different machines with two different monitors. In Divinity, while we're in town I can go about doing my business (which usually involves teleporting poor citizens and vendors to their death) while my friend does his. Rather than just a tag-along experience, you're truly playing together with your friend and that's just not an experience that can be beat.
By allowing Kickstarter investors to play the game early, they have had a large pool of testers at the ready to help them prepare for the game's release at the end of February 2014, a date that had already been pushed back from their intended release of Autumn 2013. In addition to allowing Kickstarter investors in, they've also opened the game up to Steam Early Access, adding an extra source of income and testers.
I haven't played any of the past Divinity games, so jumping into this world is a new experience for me. With its three-quarter overhead view, I'm reminded of the Diablo series and Baldur's Gate among many other games from the 90s. You're able to point-and-click or drag your character around the map as you progress along your quests. The storyline is played out over a series of dialogue options, trying to find items you need, and combat.
Speaking of collecting items and movement, I would practice extreme caution when trying to click things. One wrong move and you're going to cause trouble for yourself, be it by accidentally stealing someone's pile of gold that they have sitting on their table or simply by touching a jail cell which incurs the wrath of the guards. You never have a reason to be in a hurry, so make sure that you're clicking on what you want to be clicking!
PC Gamer has an Early Access report that includes info on Original Sin:
The whole thing is full of clever little systemic nuggets, from conversations to the combat. Any mission has multiple solutions, and you can kill every single person you meet. I wish I had the room to write about it, but I'm also loathe to spoil it, so here's a small combat example: it's possible to cast fire onto water to create a steam cloud that'll confuse your enemies. You can then zap it with electricity to turn it into a deadly lightning cloud.
There's no doubting it's an early game: you can't name your characters nor select their gender, loading takes ages, and it has crashed a few times. More damningly one save game loaded my group of characters into a city of unmoving NPCs. I was lucky enough to have a working quicksave, or I'd have had to restart. Clawing back hours of progress is that clammy fear that we all hold when playing games, and it intensifies when you're playing a huge RPG that can claim it warned you this could happen.
But the biggest problem is that it's really moreish. The alpha features a fraction of the projected 100 hours of content, and if I keep playing, I'm going to hit a wall where the alpha ends. That's the problem with putting a scripted, quest-based RPG on Early Access. But I can't not recommend it - even at the £30 they're asking - it's a hell of a lot of fun, but if you get into it, you're doing so knowing that there's unlikely to be a resolution to the journey that you start for a very, very long time.
Finally, PCGMedia has a video preview.
