RPGWatch Feature - Divinity: Original Sin II Review

Originally Posted by Maylander
No, I never actually got into them. I'm not even sure why. I think it's as simple as nobody having a copy of the games around here, and it's not like we actually bought games. People talk about piracy as a fairly recent problem, but back in the 90's I barely owned an original copy of anything. It was always X amount of floppy disks from someone's colleague, uncle or something similar.

In 1980 I was part of the C64 club in our area. I was the only person in the room, most of the time, with legal copies of games. People would spend hours making copies of my floppies and nobody thought anything of it. We did it in the public library next door to the cop shop My first load of games all came from these folks too, I just started buying them because I liked having the manuals and stuff.

While I wouldn't rate DOS2 game of the year, it's not because of the quality. I just prefer single-character games over party-based.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
In 1980 I was part of the C64 club in our area. I was the only person in the room, most of the time, with legal copies of games. People would spend hours making copies of my floppies and nobody thought anything of it. We did it in the public library next door to the cop shop My first load of games all came from these folks too, I just started buying them because I liked having the manuals and stuff.

While I wouldn't rate DOS2 game of the year, it's not because of the quality. I just prefer single-character games over party-based.

I probably got most of my games from you then, via -> via -> via -> via -> via -> via and then it finally reached me.

I got my Commodore 64 from the parents of some kid that had been convicted of breaking into government facilities, via online methods. I paid three hundred bucks for everything, he had all the floppies indexed and sorted, close to nine hundred of them. I never had to buy another thing for that system, it was quite awesome.

while I think cdprojek and larian are aware that their 'good guy' image is helping sales; I also think they do it because they are perfectionist and the ceo(s) are (or were) basically gamers. I.e, for example Larian has been doing this same thing since day one. They did drop a few failed attempts (beyond divinity and dragon commander) but they redid dks and tweaked dd for many years so I don't really see this as being strictly for business. The bottom line is they make good games; they support them and they sell them at very reasonable prices - so imho they well deserve their financial success.

Man, all those "good guys" out there should merge already in one single company.

Just imagine CDpr, Larian, Obsidian, Spiders, Pluto13 to name just a few under one roof each with their own crazy project and some joint inhouse engine capable of RT, RTwP and TB and anything.
EA/Ubi/Warner/Konami with their scams would be brought down to knees! Yea, I'm silly, they'd merge then too so they can continue with scamming.

Originally Posted by joxer
Man, all those "good guys" out there should merge already in one single company.

Just imagine CDpr, Larian, Obsidian, Spiders, Pluto13 to name just a few under one roof each with their own crazy project and some joint inhouse engine capable of RT, RTwP and TB and anything.
EA/Ubi/Warner/Konami with their scams would be brought down to knees! Yea, I'm silly, they'd merge then too so they can continue with scamming.

Hell, no!! I want variety, and a bit of competition. I want each company to have some sort of "uniqueness", sort of like a… signature dish from each different chef.

Just keep that conglomeration of evil away from greater old games, please!

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Just keep that conglomeration of evil away from greater old games, please!

Yes yes Carnifex… we get it

@joxer and @purpleblob

You are both right IMO. Industry consolidation as per @joxer turns out to be the natural order of what happens absent government intervention (which is certainly not going to happen these days in the US), And what happens following a merger? Give it about a year and one-half on average and all the talk about synergies, etc., goes away. That's quickly followed by layoffs, and it just turns out that one competitor bought out the other, as per @purpleblob with the result of less competition.

But consolidation still is almost bound to happen as any market becomes more mature (AAA video games for instance). The new competition generally emerges from new markets and developments that generate new players (mobile game devs that decide to go into pc and/or console maybe) … and then… big wheel keep on turning… new mergers etc. …

[Edit] My opinion; others probably have different valid views of course…

Well I like spider effort but the actual games leave a bit to be desired. cdprojek is public so if they goof big time on a big game (cyberpunk for example) they might be pressured by investors to do something they don't want to do (btw I do not expect them to goof on cyberpunk just using it as an example); Larian is private and i see them staying that way until the ceo ages out. Sad but it happens to everyone. Not sure what happened with bioware (i.e, why they sold out). obsidian is a mix bag - really liked alpha protocol but some of the other games have been just ok.

Personally i've been pretty happy with xile (though some people here dislike them) but they have already said there will be (big) changes after wasteland 3.
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One thing we are seeing these days is that with the advancement of technology it is cheap to write games (relatively speaking); so the developers really need quality game designers and writers and that is what (imho) will differentitate the great games from so so games. Just look at the influx of indie developers and number of games being released the past 5 years.

Originally Posted by you
Personally i've been pretty happy with xile (though some people here dislike them)

I'm totally disappointed with them.
WL2 was instapledge from me and I loved it. But then they decided to go MMO and VR route. Next thing I'll hear probably is them making a Nintendo exclusive.

Originally Posted by joxer
I'm totally disappointed with them.
WL2 was instapledge from me and I loved it. But then they decided to go MMO and VR route. Next thing I'll hear probably is them making a Nintendo exclusive.

I agree about the VR project maybe not being up my alley, but I'm highly anticipating BT4 which as far as I know is pure single player? And I expect to get a great experience out of WL3 too, single player. If they fail to deliver on that I'll stop being a fanboy, but they'll have to mess up first. (I know a loy of people feel Torment was their "mess up", but I highly enjoyed it).

Originally Posted by purpleblob
Hell, no!! I want variety, and a bit of competition. I want each company to have some sort of "uniqueness", sort of like a… signature dish from each different chef.

I agree to that.

*sigh*
I tried to specify they'd work on different projects not clones based on just one blueprint.

Given that CDP owns GOG.com, they're probably bigger than the other independent ones combined. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved more strongly into publishing, as they've already published a few games, and they own their very own store.

I don't think they'll start to buy other developers anytime soon, but they might make a good publisher, considering the overall quality/Q&A/polish/marketing of The Witcher 3, where they didn't use a traditional publisher of any kind.

That is certainly the goal they have always talk about in every interview, being independent to do as they please in the creation, selling, publishing or producing fields.

I fear this discussion is unfairly hijacking this thread. Probably should end this or move this discussion elsewhere. Apologies and regards to all.

__

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
I agree about the VR project maybe not being up my alley, but I'm highly anticipating BT4 which as far as I know is pure single player? And I expect to get a great experience out of WL3 too, single player. If they fail to deliver on that I'll stop being a fanboy, but they'll have to mess up first. (I know a loy of people feel Torment was their "mess up", but I highly enjoyed it).

Black Isle did the same stupid thing of adding online to games that had nothing to do with being online only to capture a very narrow market/hype-train. VR is in the infancy and to tout it in an RPG game is at the moment, not very bright; VR is basically having a new kind of controller, not an experinces so what Bethesda is doing is very lame.

VR is an interesting route though. Even if it's in its infancy now and the "RPGs" made with it may be basic, it will start the path for future devs to make more complex RPGs in VR. I'm excited about that possibility down the line, of having VR RPGs that don't also sacrifice complexity and have the same or similar depth to non-VR RPGs.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
Now your rpg credentials will be revoked if you don't give Divinity Original Sin 2 a perfect score, and proclaim it as one of the best rpgs in history!

Seriously at this point, if I was Maylander, I would be sorely tempted to drop the score further to a 3 out of 5, just on account of all the bellyachin'.

And then watch the reaction…

Must have missed this one.

What I'm really tempted to do at this point is to review ELEX in a few weeks, and give it a 4 just for the sake of it, so that the entire RPG community just implodes and #MaylanderReviewGate2017 continues.