Divinity: Original Sin II

PC

Creating weird, messy builds to experiment with is one of the joys of Original Sin II

Developer/publisher Larian Studios Format PC Release Out now

Divinity: Original Sin II is the sort of RPG where you can use a teleport spell to pluck a merchant from their stall before dropping them onto a pool of magical fire that you’ve created round the back of a house, all to get away with murder and, once you’ve looted their corpse, theft. Limitations are few and far between in the tumultuous land of Rivellon; if you’ve got some madcap idea, chances are that you’ll at least be able to make a valiant attempt at making it happen.

Though not strictly an open-world game, its large maps separated by chapters and loadscreens, this is still very much a sandbox where anything goes, evoking the likes of Ultima 7. Every NPC can be fought and killed, every quest has multiple solutions, and almost every combat skill can be used in experimental ways.

Indeed, there’s nothing stopping you from sauntering into a town and setting fire to everything, leaving its poor citizens burned to a crisp. Such unrestrained hostility might make some quests harder, if not impossible, because you’ve killed off an important NPC. But Larian has seen this behaviour, and its potential results, coming. There are major consequences to your actions, sure, and it can be hard to keep track of them all as the game progresses, especially with a quest journal that’s confusing and inconsistent. But it’s difficult to screw yourself over entirely.

Pick an undead character, and you might have no choice but to burn down a whole town, lest they burn you first. Every race has traits that define them: Elves, for instance, are able to eat dead bodies and gain their memories, but you then get to choose if they’re living or undead. The undead, well, aren’t so popular, and so if anyone catches a glimpse of that grinning skull, they’ll become hostile. Hats quickly become very important. These choices, made right at the start, have a significant and broad impact, potentially changing how you approach quests and combat. It’s the extra roleplaying options and personalised touches that make them feel meaningful, however. If you find yourself in a romantic embrace and you’re undead, for example, the narrator goes so far as to describe what kissing a skull would be like. Someone with the ‘mystic’ or ‘scholar’ background traits, meanwhile, might be able to translate ancient tablets or figure out their origins.

With so many systems, quest solutions and bits of dialogue tied to specific races or traits, there’s a lot that can be missed in a single playthrough, but the addition of companions significantly reduces the fear of missing out. You can play with up to three others, either controlled by you, or three friends in co-op. In singleplayer, you can actually choose their class from a list of pre-made options – though strictly speaking this is a classless game, where skills can be mixed and matched as you see fit – and eventually you can respec them entirely. Yet as handy as it is to have a party that can do all manner of things, from teleporting innocent merchants to sneaking past angry crocodiles, companions are much more than part of a toolkit. Original Sin II boasts excellent writing throughout, but the best is saved for the chats you’ll have with your adventure troupe. Fane, the undead Eternal, is particularly essential thanks to his sarcastic commentary and general ignorance about the habits of fleshy mortals. Unlike your typical RPG party, however, companions in Original Sin II are also your competition.

See, the world is in a pretty terrible state. The Magisters who are meant to be protecting it have become corrupt zealots, terrifying void beasts have been causing all sorts of problems, and everyone’s blaming source magic, or more specifically the sorcerers who use it – including you and your pals. In traditional RPG fashion, you’re special, and must ascend to godhood in order to save everyone. You’re not the only one, however; each companion has a similar destiny and a divine sponsor egging them on, which leads to some awkward conversations between the group. A pragmatic approach is best because you’ll almost certainly want your buddies to watch your back in the game’s dastardly turn-based battles. It’s like XCOM, but ten times as chaotic. On one side, there’s the traditional tactical elements: positioning, height, range, zones of control. But things are complicated by magic, engulfing whole areas in flames or turning them into toxic swamps.

Creating weird, messy builds to experiment with is one of the joys of Original Sin II. Since any character can learn any skill, there’s an overwhelming number of options. You can craft a warrior who focuses on making enemies bleed so that they can summon demonic imps and turrets out of that blood, or a priest who summons lightning and rain, blessing the puddles left behind so that they can be used to heal anyone standing in them. Combat is good enough to support an entire game, and it’s certainly enough to justify the Arena PvP mode, which lets you test your mettle and custom builds against others. The mode also benefits from arenas designed for battle, though that’s not to say that fights don’t consistently take place in tactically intriguing areas during the campaign. What’s surprising about this is that combat can take place anywhere, since you can attack any NPC. Yet rare is the battlefield that doesn’t feel bespoke, full of chokepoints, traps, explosive barrels and multiple levels that never feel out of place.

This amount of detail is very much par for the course. It’s an utterly huge, ambitious game – 100 hours might do it – but it never feels anything less than lovingly handcrafted, its every component part given the same special attention. Its individual elements, the combat, the writing, would be high points in any other game, but Divinity: Original Sin II has it all.