Divinity: Original Sin: 10 Interesting Facts About This Awesome Game

Updated:

24 Jul 2015

Kickstarted into Action

Divinity: Original Sin was largely funded through kickstarter. Now, it is a highly acclaimed RPG. By the end of 2014, it was Larian Studios’ fastest-selling game.

So what is all the fuss regarding Divinity: Original Sin about? Well, it’s a single player or co-op multiplayer RPG with turn based combat. It also features a co-op dialogue system and the ability to interact with just about everything.

You, as the player, can make choices that lead to consequences minutes or hours later. There are endless hours of gameplay in this open-world RPG. Plus, the game comes with an editor that allows you to create your own adventures and publish them online.

Gameplay trailer for Divinity: Original Sin.

I describe it as a beautiful blend of Dungeons and Dragons and Dragon Age. It’s a beautifully crafted RPG with tons of fan support.

And that’s just the beginning. Stick around as I dig deeper.

1. You are a Source Hunter

And you’re pretty bamf once you’ve levelled up.

You and your partner (both controlled by you in single-player) are members of an organization trying to get rid of the dangerous “Source” magic and all of its followers: the “Sourcerers.” The game starts when you’re told to go to Cyseal and check out if there’s a Sourcerer in town. The Sourcerer may have killed the town councilor, but that’s in the air when you start.

Reviews and gameplay.

When you get there, you’re met with an unbelievable amount of undead and the knowledge that a Sourcerer is, indeed, behind all of it. Great way to start a game, right? Your actions in Cyseal will set up events for the rest of the game.

Interested yet?

2. More info about the Source

Guardians protecting the god-box with the Void in it.

Eons ago, the Source was pure and untainted magic. The Void was kept inside a box to keep it from corrupting anything else. Astarte, the goddess of life, was tricked by the demon Trife to open the box.

Upon opening the box, Astarte released the Void into the world and the Source became tainted. Meanwhile, the Void took the form of a giant dragon and becomes an enemy that you will have to fight in Divinity.

3. Classless Character Development

Character creation screen.

If you’re playing by yourself, you’ll create both heroes. If you’re playing with a friend, either online or in couch co-op, you’ll each create one character and control only them. The initial character creation involves distributing stat points and choosing the first skills.

After that, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve chosen your character to be a Battlemage or a Fighter. The level-up system is fairly classless. You have six main stats: strength, dexterity, intelligence, constitution, speed, and perception.

In addition to those main stats, there are some sub-stats and social attributes that you get during the game. You can also choose skills from any of the six schools.

There are a lot of options, and subsequently a lot of ways to mess things up. Don’t let that scare you though. Feel free to experiment a bit.

The best thing to do is to have a heavy hitter with swords and then your other character be a magic user.

4. Conversations and Choices are Important

Steam early access trailer with some good teaser points.

This is perhaps the biggest RPG element of the game and why I liken it to Dragon Age. Your choices have an impact on your party and the world around you. Sometimes, the consequences of the choices will show up in minutes and sometimes it’ll take hours for them to play out.

The game encourages you to converse with the other hero, as well as other members of your party. If you and the other hero are constantly disagreeing, it might make things more difficult. Every decision adds to a social stat and will influence how the heroes behave towards one another.

Thanksgiving Special including arguing heroes.

Do you want the two heroes to be friends? Lovers? Accomplices? Competitors? You choose.

5. Interact with Literally Everything

Character sheet and items.

This is another one of the best RPG elements in Divinity. If you’re the type of player that likes to interact with everything, know that you will add 80+ hours of gameplay to your playtime if you have to turn over every stone. If an item’s not bolted down or too heavy for you to lift, you can pick it up and interact with it.

You can even interact with things you can’t lift, just in different ways.

Items that you can carry in your inventory may seem useless, but if you get into crafting, you might be surprised with what you can create. You can make your own mace out of a stick and nails. Or if you find a doll, you could make a Voodoo doll out of it and those very same nails.

Halloween Special with some interesting item combinations.

6. Side Quests and a Main Quest

Starting a side quest.

Naturally, you have your main quest of tracking down Sorcerers, gathering Star Stones, and eventually taking care of the Void problem. However, like any good RPG, there are tons of side quests that you can complete alongside your main quest. Side quests are where you’ll end up getting a lot of good loot, find out about the world around you, and level grind.

The unfortunate thing about side quests in Divinity, is that they can be picked up long before you can finish them. So, don’t get distressed if you have a lot of incomplete side quests and you’re still early in the game. The time to complete those side quests will surely come.

The side quests in Divinity are vast. You’ll do everything from resolving an orc blood-fued to assisting with arguing ghosts. Of course, you don’t have to take on every side quest if you don’t want to.

7. Turn Based Battle—Old-School Style

Awesome part about this game.

The turn based combat goes back to old-school RPG roots. Like other RPGs, turn order is determined by initiative, which is based on what your stats are.

You have a certain amount of action points to utilize during your turn. When you’ve used all of those action points up, your turn is over. This is how it’s kind of like Dungeons and Dragons.

Of course, you don’t always have to battle. There are ways you can get yourself out of battle through conversation. If your reason skill is high, or your intimidate skill, or perhaps a charm response will do it sometimes.

Then, naturally, there are the enemies where there is no reasoning with them. You will simply have to fight them. It’s not like you’ll be able to talk your way out of the final battle.

8. Who you can Control

Yay more party members!

Given the amount of options Divinity gives you, you can actually do some battles and quests completely solo. As in, you only use one of your heroes. I wouldn’t recommend it though.

So, I’ve already said that there’s the option to control both characters, or to control one character and have a friend control another. In addition to that, you (or you guys) can hire on more party members to help you in battle or aid in questing. Your party does cap at four players though.

Additionally, you can hire additional henchmen, but they’re really not much more than cannon fodder.

Throwback to when Divinity: Original Sin was still in alpha and co-op mode was newly activated.

9. It’s a Huge Open World

Exploring time!

This is kind of self-evident, once you consider the amount of items you can interact with and side quests you can do. The world is massive. It also feels real though, the more you play it.

With the choices you make, the items you interact with, and the people you talk to, the world begins to take shape and evolve. It really does add replay value to this game.

At minimum, Divinity: Original Sin is a 20 hour game to complete. And that’s what the developers who’ve been working with this game for years say. If you want to interact with every item and complete every quest, you’re looking at more than 100 hours of gameplay.

Sounds like fun, right?

10. Create Your Own RPG

Using the toolkit included with the game.

This was somewhat unexpected as far as RPGs go. What other RPGs can you name that include a toolkit that allows you to create your own adventures based on the RPG? None that I can think of.

It’s the same set of tools that the designers used and it comes with the game. Now, you can make your own mini-RPGs that you can play, and have your friends join in. How cool is that?