Rules are established principles or guidelines that dictate how something should be done or how situations should be handled. They are used to regulate behavior, ensure fairness, and maintain order in various contexts, such as society, organizations, games, and social settings. Rules can be formal or informal. Formal rules are codified and enforced by a governing body, such as laws, regulations, or contracts. Informal rules are unwritten and enforced by social pressure, such as social norms or etiquette. Rules can be helpful in many ways. They can: Ensure fairness by creating a level playing field for everyone. Protect people from harm by setting standards of behavior. Maintain order by providing a framework for behavior. However, rules can also be seen as restrictive or unfair. It is important to consider the purpose of a rule before deciding whether or not to follow it. For example, a speed limit may be seen as restrictive, but it is also designed to protect people from harm. A dress...
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is rich with possibilities. There are countless interactions to consider, to exploit, or to stumble into, and so far that’s been as exciting as it’s been exhausting.
I often find myself thinking about the limits of the games I play. When a game offers me three paths and I’m keening for some ideal fourth, I tell myself that developers can only anticipate and account for so much. When an object or an NPC behaves unrealistically, I remind myself that not every potential circumstance can be accounted for.
But I’m over 18 hours into Divinity: Original Sin 2, and in that time I can’t say that I’ve thought about its limits once. Of course it has them, as every game does, but they just haven’t leapt out at me the way I’m used to.
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 - THE FIRST 20 HOURS
From the very beginning Original Sin 2 feels wonderfully flexible. Players can customize their own characters (down to picking an instrument to highlight their personal soundtrack) or choose from several pre-made origins. Choosing an origin character doesn’t mean sacrificing any chance at customization, though. Players still have complete control over the origin character’s class, abilities and appearance, so there’s wiggle room even if you love a character concept but hate their weapon/hair/cannibalism-related clairvoyance.
Origin characters will become companions if they aren’t picked as the player character, meaning that their stories and the unique interactions they can have aren’t completely locked off. Better still, they offer players the option to influence their class when they do join up, so a party that’s already brimming with magic users can nudge a new companion in a different direction to fill a skill gap. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this, since a more diverse set of skills can ensure a party is ready to deal with anything.
IT’S AN RPG THAT IS OVERWHELMINGLY ABOUT PLANNING AHEAD YET STILL BEING COMPLETELY TAKEN BY SURPRISE
Isolated into their most basic elements there’s a predictability to everything, a logic that can be employed in some situations (particularly combat) for perfectly unsurprising outcomes. Conversations, battles, and quests are all scenarios to be solved, one way or another. Of course murder’s always on the table, but maybe the real key is in an innocent red ball looted from a previous encounter (which hopefully no one traded for a lockpick). Maybe it’s in a healing spell cast over the wounded. Maybe it’s in the character themselves. Origins as well as tags (some of which are set at character creation, while others can be acquired) can impact a character’s options in many different situations. There’s a lot to be said for knowing who an NPC may or may not want to deal with.And that’s incredibly valuable. A lot of different things can happen in Divinity: Original Sin 2; it’s an RPG that is overwhelmingly about planning ahead yet still being completely taken by surprise. A seemingly inconsequential conversation with someone can lead to them dropping dead from some unholy and unknown force. An arrow shot astray in a fight can cause an unrelated and cascading loop of fire, poison and electricity to render a nearby area completely impassable. A teleportation glove can lead someone too clever for their own good somewhere they’re absolutely not prepared to be.
But that density and complexity can have its costs, too. There are just so many pieces in play, so many potential points of failure or at least complication, that it’s an impossible feat to try and stay on top of them all. Even rolling back to older saves hasn’t been enough for me to undo some of my more disastrous accidents. It’s like standing in the middle of a sea of dominos, but only actually knowing where half of the lines start. Inevitably, someone’s going to make a mess.
Learning to accept that mess has been my biggest challenge. I’m absolutely the player who needs to fill in every area of the map. I need to open every crate, talk to every NPC and solve every problem before I feel ready to move on from an area. I want clean edges and perfect solutions. And in that way, Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been somewhat suffocating for me, in spite of how much fun it is to poke and prod at all of its moving parts.
It wouldn’t be fair to call its world mean, because it’s not malice that’s standing between me and that perfect, clean save. It’s more accurate to say that the world is indifferent to player intent. It doesn’t necessarily matter if I want to be the hero, or if I want to do everything right. It doesn’t matter if I want to save the dying man surrounded by enemies. The second one of them ignites the oil around him, intention goes up in smoke just like the rest. Fire doesn’t care who or what it burns, and neither does Divinity. That degree of neutrality is uncommon in an RPG and I can appreciate that, even if it is simultaneously very stressful.
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