Original Sin - Hands On @ RPS

Dhruin

SasqWatch
Joined
August 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Adam Smith provides his hands-on experiences with Divinity: Original Sin.
And that’s why I ended up leading a group of monsters into the marketplace, watching the vendors flee in terror even as the guards drew their weapons and prepared to fight. I look forward to advancing my character, building a personality and gathering loot when I play the game in the discomfort of my home, but on that day I was more interested in seeing just how much Original Sin’s world would stretch and engage with my efforts to play. I wasn’t disappointed. Original Sin may have clever co-op conversations and a huge open world but it’s also a game that has been built to be broken.
Rather than providing specific stage directions for every eventuality, Larian tag and code their world and its inhabitants, instructing every element how to react to the players’ presence and actions. That’s why it’s not only possible to ignore the main quest and head into the wilds, it’s also possible to involve NPCs in your own subplots, simply by having the systems that drive them collide and intertwine. The reactions to the situations you concoct may be less perfectly executed than a cutscene containing a motion captured and fully-voiced argument involving Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, but Robert Zemeckis will be bringing that to the cinema in his take on Don Quixote (Stewart is the windmill). Original Sin isn’t about perfect execution, it’s about a world that reacts, providing all manner of possibilities, from tactical use of artificial behaviour to accidental farce and disaster.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
Excellent preview. World interaction and non-scripted npc responses to player actions increases the scope and replayability of the game. Will definetly pledge.

One question I don't know if it was answered, is there an option for offline co-op (i.e. split screen)?
 
Joined
Feb 2, 2011
Messages
2,818
Location
United Kingdom
Does anyone know if OS uses level scaling? Or will there be places in the game where you can get one shotted if you're too weak. I'm hoping for the latter.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,897
Location
Oregon
Does anyone know if OS uses level scaling? Or will there be places in the game where you can get one shotted if you're too weak. I'm hoping for the latter.

The RPS preview says "It’s a small thing but it pleases me, as does the fact that the creatures of the world won’t level alongside the player characters. Some areas are dangerous and to be avoided, and you’ll either have to earn right of passage by becoming more resilient, or find an alternative way around." That sounds like there's no level scaling.
 
Joined
Nov 30, 2009
Messages
421
Location
California
RPS has some of the best writers I've seen anywhere.
 
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
520
One question I don't know if it was answered, is there an option for offline co-op (i.e. split screen)?

I don't think they are doing split screen, but of course multiplayer isn't strictly online in the sense that it will work over an internal network without connecting to external servers. Probably, they expect most gaming families these days to have more than one PC.
 
Joined
May 18, 2012
Messages
1,501
Location
Somerset/London UK
Back
Top Bottom