A few days ago, Larian Studios announced that the release date for Divinity: Original Sin, barring some mishap, would be June 20th of this year.

And since it has been a year since their Kickstarter campaign for the game concluded, they produced the above video showcasing the many and various ways the game has changed, for the better, as a result of the $944,282 they were able to raise last April.

Sven Vincke shared his own thoughts on the imminent release as well:

I know we lost a lot of credibility in the release date department, but this particular deadline is pretty much set in stone now, if only for the reason that if we postpone releasing again, we’ll be taking turns at the divorce lawyer. Of course there’s also that other reason and that’s that we’re slowly approaching the stage where the game will actually be ready.

It remains hard for me to figure out what the correct deadline is for this game because it is after all an RPG, which means millions of data fields, and it would be easy to continue working on it for ages. Perfectionism is a disease many of us have at Larian, and it’s something the production-minded people over here need to fight constantly.

…

…in our minds Divinity:Original Sin is an adventure that runs on one version of our shiny new RPG engine, an engine that btw is in dire need of a cool name. The same engine will be used for making more RPGs in the future and as such it makes a lot of sense for us to continue to invest in it.

…

The core idea behind us going independent is that each RPG we make improves the quality of the next one, not only because it’ll give the studio more financial room, but also because we can draw on the work done in the previous game and don’t have to worry about any publisher *stuff*.

If better games mean better sales (which intuitively seems right, even if there are counterexamples) then it makes good sense to adopt the following strategy: make a good game, use the opportunities (both technically and financially) created by that good game to make the next game even better. Repeat. Enjoy increasing sales.

I know it sounds simple but I believe in simple.

So here’s hoping that Original Sin — even absent NPC schedules — is a commercial success for Larian. The core concept of the game is solid, and really does come closer than any game has come (in recent memory) to offering the same combination of features that made Ultima 6 and Ultima 7 great. Will it be perfect? No…but it’s a fine platform upon which to build, to iterate…and to continue to create worlds that feel alive.

The fact that it has a robust editing toolkit is pretty awesome too.