Divinity: Original Sin Is Now in Beta

This is old news, which on the Internet means it was posted four days ago. But it’s true: Larian Studios’ Divinity: Original Sin has moved into its beta testing phase, bringing with it a whole host of changes:

  • 28 exciting new talents, including such fun things like the Lone wolf perk which gives an avatar super abilities but makes it impossible for him or her to hire a companion(s).
  • More than 60 new skills, allowing for a new brand of synergies, such as combining Invisibility skill with Pickpocketing.
  • A new witchcraft skilltree that can be combined with other skills to deadly effect
  • New areas to explore, new foes to fight, new items to find & new secrets to discover
  • A brand new character creation screen with new presets such as the shadowblade or the wayfarer, and an enormous amount of customisation options
  • More environmental interactions – you can smash or burn doors, pickpocket characters & use staffs to electrify pools of water. Or how about burning wooden chests to get the loot inside?
  • Improved AI, user interface, graphics, loading times, performance and stability mean playing Divinity:Original Sin has never been this smooth
  • A truckload of new sound effects & music tracks

You can discover the full changelist here.

You may all recall that Original Sin is Larian Studios’ and Sven Vincke’s attempt to create a modern spiritual successor to Ultima 7, chock-full of open-ended gameplay and an open, fully-interactive sandbox virtual world. And while it seems that the game is still poised to deliver on many of the gameplay and world features that made Ultima 7 special (well, after Ultima 6, of course), one key feature will not be making it into the game. Larian founder Sven Vincke explains:

We’re a bit over budget and over time, but I have no regrets whatsoever about that. The game’s quality is a lot higher than any of us originally expected, so we’re very happy about that. Obviously I now hope that this extra push for quality will transform itself into extra sales, because in the end it’s going to be those sales that will shape what opportunities we’ll have for our future RPGs, but even if that doesn’t happen, I’m sure that somewhere along the line we’ll reap the benefits of all the effort we poured into Divinity:Original Sin.

My main regret for D:OS is that we didn’t manage to do the day/night cycles. Killing your darlings never is fun, but it is an inevitable part of production. I guess we always figured that, if anything, this would be the one we’d cut. Up until not-so-long ago however, I did have some hope that we were still going to be able to make it happen.

The thing that forced our hand in the end is the size of our buglist. Despite having made quite a few RPGs already, I’m still impressed by what’s being reported.

It’s not the quantity that’s scary per se (we’re used to large numbers like this, and we are making an RPG, after all) – but the types of bugs we’re seeing are in a category of their own.

That’s why it took a lot for me to commit to dropping the day/night schedules and stick with the NPC routines we have now.

It makes it all the more difficult to disappoint those who were looking forward to NPC schedules reacting to day/night. But the realization that we need all of our energy to polish the game is strong.

That’s a bit of a bummer, since (as Vincke notes above) it will detrimentally impact NPC scheduling. Vincke doesn’t come out and say that scheduled NPCs won’t be a feature in the game, and I would assume that Larian will include NPCs who follow some manner of scheduled behaviour…even if it doesn’t include closing up shop for the night and heading home to bed. But, even saying as much, I’m illustrating the major shortcoming of this change: NPCs won’t close up shop (presumably) and head home for the night (because there won’t be a night).

So…that’s a bit of a downer, which I admit has somewhat cooled my enthusiasm for the game. Not that I won’t still give it a go upon release…and hopefully it will still amaze and impress in a variety of ways. But certainly it won’t be claiming quite as much of the Ultima mantle as it set out to. And that’s a bit of a shame.

6 Responses

  1. Infinitron says:

    I was wondering when you would get around to posting about that.

    Yeah, it’s a shame, but do note that the capacity for creating mods with day/night cycles and schedules using the game’s editor is still there. So D:OS should still be the prime Ultima modding platform (unless you really don’t like turn-based combat)

  2. JasonNH says:

    Yeah, personally I would have preferred less reactivity in some other areas than the decision to forgo the day/night schedule. This is the hard thing about introducing a complicated mechanic to the game that was not originally prepared for it. I remember the look on the scripter’s face during the Kickstarter and his hope that it didn’t happen.

    I will echo Inifinitron’s opinion though about it being the next gen modding platform for Ultima fan creations. The tools will be there, and in fact one of my first experiments may be to introduce elements of a day/night cycle bits at a time and see how it goes.

  3. Cromulus Prime says:

    More than a little disappointing given that I bought into the game early based on the promise that it would be Ultima-esque.

    I can’t remember the last time I played an RPG that didn’t have day/night. That’s kind of a basic expectation for the past 20 years or so at least.

  4. mark says:

    I am not being snide when i say this, but if they intended to capture the feel of U7, this should have been one of the first things on their list (um why co-op?). I had a few reservations when I saw it so high on their list of stretch goals. Well, all this means to me is that I delay purchasing the game until the day-night mod comes out.

  5. Micro Magic says:

    Oh that makes sense. If you’ve played the alpha, they had only just begun balancing combat and I remember seeing a reoccurring bug where moving NPCs would disappear. Since the alpha didn’t really have schedules.

  6. ZephaniahGrey says:

    Having played the beta, I can still say that it is an AMAZING game, this however is bad news. I still remember returning to Britannia long after sundown after a grand adventure! …and slipping into the bakery to “borrow” their equipment to feed my party. <_< In any case, it's the first RPG I've played in a long time that actually makes me feel like I'm role playing, and maybe if things go well we can see the day/night cycle slip back in later in patch.