Divinity Original Sin 2 is my most anticipated RPG of 2016. The first one caught me by surprise. I loved the turn based combat and the light tone of the whole thing. There was some room for improvements though so I'm hoping the sequel will turn out even better. The developer is from my hometown Ghent as well so I'm extra stoked. Get aboard the train, there is plenty of room!

Oh wow, I had no idea this was coming out in 2016! Shoot, I'm in money saving mode so I probably won't play it for a long while but I enjoyed the crap out of the gameplay of the first.

Too damn many good games this year. My backlog is getting bigger instead of smaller.

The original was damn close to making my top 3 games for 2014. The character customization was pretty good, and the combat may be the best I have ever played in a CRPG. However, the game was long, and the last 20 hours (out of 80) were a little anticlimactic. Though that may have been because my builds were a hair on the side of too powerful by then. I wasn't even going for power builds, so that may have been blind luck. Anyway! Can't wait for this game. I just hope I have more of my backlog cleared by then.

I liked the gameplay but I don't think it's enough to drag me through another 60 hour game alone... and I'm not really expecting them to have a good story/characters this time around either.

I really wished that whole game was a fantasy murder mystery like the first few hours.

Yeah the low key marketing strategy is kinda odd but I also appreciatie Larian for it. They got an amazing kick starter result of over 2 million dollar and they seem to spend it well so far. Also they gave everyone who bought the game their enhanced edition for free late last year. So if you're itching for some more divinity I can highly recommend playing trough that version again.

I sort of doubt this game is going to actually come out in 2016. As far as I know there haven't been any updates on a firm release date from Larian at all, and it's already almost September.

I backed the Kickstarters for both D:OS 1 and D:OS 2, and I've been a fan of Larian's since they got their start with Divine Divinity. So I'm definitely looking forward to D:OS 2.

I haven't been following their Kickstarter updates though, since I prefer to learn about games post-release rather than pre-release. Does anyone who's been following the game more closely know if they're still on track for a Dec 2016 release? That was the date they gave with the initial Kickstarter campaign, which was merely a year ago, and those initial delivery dates are nearly always underestimated for game Kickstarters, so by default I've been expecting the game to not make it out this year.

@mike: Yeah it might be early 2017 but I really don't mind if they take a little longer. They are not a super huge team and they have put out one of the most polished kick-starter games out there with their last game. I'll be super happy if I get to play this over the Christmas brake though.

Hopefully it's gonna be better then the first one?

THE FIRST ONE WAS GREAT!!!! GIT OFF MAH TRAIN!!!!111!!!

No, you can stay. Although the first one was good I can't deny it had some issues, mainly with the story which was just passable. I guess the game play is a bit of a love it or hate it thing. Battles could get a bit repetitive. To keep it intrestring you could change out your team once in a while but I hope they integrate that better in the sequel. I hope they force the player a bit more to explore all the mechanics they have to offer. It is a tightrope though, one of the things people love most about the first one is that it refused to hold your hand.

@bdead: My problems with it were pretty much what you mentioned. Story quickly became uninteresting, and side quests that started off so strong in the first area started to waddle later on. And combat while started off promising with tons of options and challenge, for me quickly became easy rote and repetitive with a couple of sets of combos that worked on almost everything and destroyed. Not to mention the character progression (that feeds into combat) likewise tapered off after the first area where you get lots of skills, but after it it's very few, I think my rogue got like 1 extra useful ability on his hotbar through the entire second zone and levels 10-20, if that.

This is of course with vanilla version, I haven't gone back and tried the enhanced edition so can't speak of improvements they made. Mainly because if I could not bring myself to finish the first game out of boredom (after getting to third main zone), going through it a second time was a definite no go.

Pillars of Eternity was much more my jam. :)

@tennmuerti: Yeah pillars is good as well. I kinda stopped playing it after 30 hours or so though (I think the WIthcer 3 happend then). And the story in Pillars is so dense it would be better to start over at this point I guess.

I've just started to play the enhanced edition of Original Sin. I'm 7 hours in. So far i noticed a lot more voice over and have found a few companions that I think weren't in the vanilla. I haven't done enough battles to know how much of an improvement they implemented there.

Story was super boring - I played 40 hours and I can't remember it. You're old gods or something? There's another dimension?

The combat and crafting were cool!

I'm very keen to see how they improve their UI and hope they got some better writers on board. I also really hope they expand on the abilities you can do in combat. The elemental effects were great but the actual skills your characters could do were very mundane and have been see in most RPGs since day zero. The game was pretty fantastic except those things I will definitely grab the sequel.

I played the original for 10 hours prior to SFV being released, seems like a wonderful game (even the amazingly terrible voice acting), but for whatever reason haven't had the motivation to keep playing it.

There is a ton they need to improve upon going from the first to the second. Besides the combat, which was really good, other parts of the game were lackluster to bad.

I backed the Kickstarter for two copies worth whenever that was but it totally fell off my radar

Man, i'm in the first dungeon of the first game and honestly it didn't grab me at all. I started playing Grim Dawn and haven't been back since, how long until the first game picks up and gets interesting?

@oursin_360: I thought it got really interesting once you hit the first town.

Despite backing the sequel, it's kinda fallen off my radar. I'll play it when it comes out, but I'm going to let the hype train leave the station without me. I'm too old to ride that train and the destinations are never as nice as they look like in the brochures!

@oursin_360: The first dungeon is just a tutorial level. The game starts when you get to Cyceal. If it doesn't click for you then it might not be a game for you.

@zelyre:You will get cake if you stay on board though. Also you might get shot in the knee when you get off now...

I'll get my coat.

I could see it coming out in Summer/Fall 2017, but there's no way it'll be out by the end of this year. I wouldn't be surprised if there's another lengthy alpha/beta period on Steam Early Access, since that seemed to work pretty well for them last time.

Despite being a backer, I never finished the vanilla version of Original Sin because of computer problems, and then when the Enhanced Edition came out I didn't finish that because other computer problems. I picked up my old save recently, now that I have a half-decent computer again, and yeah, I still think the combat in that game is pretty fantastic. If they can improve the writing in the sequel (which I also backed) I think it could be something amazing.

@bdead: Vanilla sheetcake with prune frosting? Will it come with a cup of Sanka to wash it down? The last time I got first class tickets on the hype train was with the PS2. For the first year and a half, it was used to play FF9, Tekken Tag, and Madden. I had my Dreamcast hooked up via VGA at the time, so those launch PS2 games looked bad...

I'm sure I'll get more excited as it comes closer to release. I really enjoyed the combat aspect of the first title. If it's more of the first, but with more races? I'd be satisfied.

The subtitle of "Original Sin II" is terrible. I hope they come up with something better.

@eddiephlash: I don't think they'll change it as it is kick started with that title and it is recognizable as well. But yeah "original sin 2" is kinda silly. Maybe "second sin" would have been better?

A trailer, and the game is out on 9/14. Cool! Although I have a lot of issues with the first game, the core gameplay and combat were awesome. I am hoping this one grabs me. The character creation looks like something I should spend like 10 hours on, paralyzed in fear. Can't wait.

Just wanted to throw one more exciting element they just showed off, Undead. You can make any race undead and they have weird special rogue-ish abilities and also have to hide themselves (with a helmet or hood) in most civilized areas or people flee and don't talk to them. There are some areas where that isn't the case. They also use poison for healing and of course in classic style take damage from healing magic. Seems like a really cool wrinkle to bring life into the world. The art for them is also very cool.

I'm super hyped. OS1 is one of my favorite games. When I saw that you can play nonhuman undead I lost my mind. Larian goes above and beyond in everything they do! I'm there day 1.

@artisanbreads: I saw this a few days ago and am now extra keen on this game, it's been awhile since I've played an RPG and my experience with the early access portion of the game they released addressed a lot of my problems with the first game.

I also notice they've done several art passes on certain things I didn't like visually in that art build too which is great.

@ivdamke: Yeah it's funny to look on how down I was on this game earlier but I think it has improved a lot from the first game. More depth in all the good areas, I think the art is night and day better, and hopefully the story will be good. That's the part to see with. As is I think I will really enjoy it at the least to grind through. It could be a really great RPG though. Excited to play it.

Oh right! This comes out next week! Other than reading the kickstarter updates and a brief peek at the early access version, I've kept myself mostly in the dark. It seems like people are pretty keen on it, so I'm excited to see what they've done. At the very least, it sounds like the writing is better.

Hmmm, I suppose I should check out some of these videos. While the last game kinda left me sour, there is no reason for this not to be good if they managed to patch up all the weak spots, especially the quests and writing, and the itemization, and the progression curve. They had cool ideas and the foundation wasn't bad so there was something to build on.

Plus it's something major to dig into until the PC version of Destiny 2.

The first Original Sin is one of my favorite RPGs from the last 5 years. I played Original Sin 2 a little when it his early access and I am super excited to get back into the game.

I am avoiding new games until it releases cause I want to play it so bad.

I almost made this exact same post just now, but Year-Ago Me has me covered.

Well I gave the early access version a shot after seeing some encouraging gameplay, but unfortunately I will be refunding the game unless a specific change is made in the release version (which is highly unlikely).

The reason in question is massive eye strain. Now my vision is not super hot, I've had lasik a few years ago but my vision has started to degrade again. Still I have not had the problem with a game be this severe yet. Normally I don't get eye strain playing games outside of the usual expected one when you just sit at a monitor too much. Shooters, actions games, 0 issues, even strategy games like Endless Space 2 or Total War Warhammer are fine or other rpgs like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny. The only major offender to this point was actually Xcom2 where I would notice an uncharacteristic tiredness and strain on the eyes a few hours in when playing it's new expansion. (oh btw I play on a 1440p monitor for reference).

But Divinity:OS2 takes it to a whole new level, I get massive and I do mean massive eye strain to the point of near pain after 20-40 minutes of playing it. And not only that the strain is so strong and damaging it does not go away even after stopping using the PC completely for hours. I can spend hours playing some Heroes of the Storm or some X-morph Defense (cool new tower game btw ppl should check out) with no problems. Half and hour of Divinity:OS2 and I am fucked.

Now I don't know with 100% percent certainty the precise cause, I am no optometrician. But I highly suspect it is the combination of the UI scale which at 1440p in this game is very small on my monitor and the UIs choice of color contrast of text on background. The size of the UI is a given obviously. The reason I mention the text color contrast is because for example Endless Space 2 has almost the same UI size, maybe 15-30% bigger at most, yet i have no real problems with eye strain playing it for hours. So I do think it's not entire down to just the font size and their selection of contrast makes it worse for me.

Still a UI scaling option that many games these days have started to adopt as the industry is moving beyond 1080p displays, would go a long way to making the game playable for someone like me (and a few others as I have seen on the forums). Unfortunately the EA version does not have this feature and the developer has not responded to questions on this topic.

I know this is a specific me problem, but it's a very significant one. There is no way I can afford to play a systems and text heavy RPG that literally breaks my eyes for the rest of the day after 30 minutes of play.

PS: oh and they still have the situation where physical skills scale off weapon dmg while magic skills don't for some reason

It's been a long time since I was this excited the day before a release. There goes my social life!

Interested to see how much party members are fleshed out like some other RPGS, because right now I want to (with a workaround that still works I think where you literally launch the game 4 times and join a local multiplayer match) make a whole party because I'm crazy like that. I love the control and sitting down for hours to make a party. I know I'm sick. But if the story for party members is well integrated and they are fleshed out, I may bail out of that plan.

They've put out little videos introducing each character with dialogue but I'm not sure how much it goes beyond that.

I hope it's the exact opposite because thats what I enjoy. But it wouldn't destroy me if it wasn't the case, since so many games have the whole "interact and deepen relationships with your party members" thing going on. I'm just the type of guy who enjoyed Baldurs Gate more than Icewind Dale.

I have kickstarted both, and i was blown away by Original Sin. Its one of my favorite RPG's to date. I have only completed it once though but i did spend over 80 hours on it. I'm really excited about Original Sin 2 i haven't played it though i have had access to the various builds over the many months. So release day will be the first time of me booting it up.

@tothenines: I tend to prefer it as well but the first game wasn't like that at all so it would be a change. I love making a whole party though too, when a good gameplay system is at the core like these games have, so I'm mixed. With the last game I didn't give a shit about the story because I found it terrible so that's my thinking right now anyways. Unless there's a change, it'll probably not be a party/companion focused game at all. It also has a focus on co-op so that's another knock (although, Baldur's Gate come from the same place actually interestingly enough, it was supposed to be all co-op originally and the party was an afterthought to appease solo players).

Personally I also think party focused RPGs have been incredibly stagnant. Bioware just focuses on you being able to fuck everyone in weird shallow wooden relationships and calls it a day for the last several games now.

I'm really looking forward to this. I can't wait till tomorrow! I think this is a good starting point for new players too. They made a mistake with the first game.. the starting area was loooooooong and slow.

makes me sad that it isn't even on the GB front page. It is by far the best game this week! (month?) :)

hint, hook your xcom friends with the tactical combat :)

it officially release tomorrow, September 14 at 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM PDT

I can't wait! (but i am super stressed, like with all RPGs, what toon i'll roll :)

just make a whole party like me and totally lean into it