Divinity: Fallen Heroes
A fantasy tactics game set in the world of Divinity: Original Sin.
Late
last year, Larian — the Belgian developer behind the Divinity series — said it was moving on to “new stuff” after the success of one of 2017’s best games, Divinity: Original Sin 2. And now we know what that project is — an RPG-infused turn-based tactics game called Divinity: Fallen Heroes which continues the story of Original Sin 2.
The focus in this game will be on squadbased strategic combat, but it’ll retain some of the role-playing elements that define the Divinity games, namely talking to people, character relationships, customisation, and choices that alter the course of the story. For many Divinity fans this will be a surprising change of direction, even though Larian has made some strategy games in the past. I talked to the studio’s founder, Swen Vincke, about what we can expect from the upcoming Fallen Heroes.
“We’re huge fans of tactics games,” he says. “Into the Breach was one of our favorite games of last year. When we were making Original Sin 2 we had a lot of discussions about things that we could change in the combat, but we didn’t have time. So we thought, what if we make a tactics game?
“But in our game, story will define everything that happens in the missions, and everything that happens in the missions will define the story. And from this, Fallen Heroes was born.”
Set a few years after Original Sin 2, Fallen Heroes sees the return of Lucian the Divine, who tasks you, a commander, with arresting the half-demon Malady.
“She has stolen powerful doomsday weapons from the Divine Order, and they’re afraid she’ll use them in a fit of anger,” says Vincke. “But things are not what they seem.”
“It is a story in its own right,” he adds when I ask if being familiar with the series is a requirement to enjoy Fallen Heroes. “People who haven’t played Divinity will be able to enjoy it. But we really wanted to continue with the characters we’d developed in Original Sin 2. We like them, fans like them. Fans will love that you can now control Malady in battle. If you played Original Sin 2 it’ll feel like coming home. But if you haven’t, you’ll meet a whole bunch of interesting characters.”
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
Larian is aiming for each hand-crafted mission in Fallen Heroes to be around 20-30 minutes long, but there’ll be some downtime as well. “Between missions you’re aboard the Lady Vengeance, and here you’ll meet the heroes from Original Sin 2, as well as some new characters,” says Vincke. “You’ll talk to them and make choices that will define what happens in the missions, and what missions you’ll be able to access. There’s real choice here. You can also upgrade technology, unlock new heroes, and buy consumables to take into missions.
“You have multiple rooms, and in these rooms different characters will appear depending on what’s happening in the story. You can interact with them using the conversation system from Original Sin 2. Some characters can even leave you if they don’t agree with what you’re doing. They may also join you in combat, bringing unique abilities with them, depending on choices you make in the story.”
I ask Vincke to explain how combat in Fallen Heroes compares to Original Sin 2. “The changes are different enough that it’s going to feel fresh. On the other hand it’s familiar enough that you’ll understand what your tactical opportunities are.
“You’ll have to adapt your thinking a little bit. The biggest change is that it’s now squad-based. We have around 200 skills and over 30 unit types, and that creates a lot of combinations and possibilities on the battlefield.”
Larian is also making no bones about the fact that Fallen Heroes will be, by design, a challenging game. Like the Infinity Engine RPGs that inspired the Original Sin series,
you’ll need to make intelligent use of your abilities and second-guess the AI to survive a fight. “Frankly, the game has been designed to be quite difficult,” says Vincke. “You’ll often be left in situations with little HP and only a few units left, so it’s quite intense. Even I suffer when I play it, and that’s on the normal difficulty setting. You can lower it, of course.”
For fans of Original Sin 2, the chance to hang out with the Red Prince, Ifan, Beast, and the rest of the gang will be hard to resist, even if it’s not in the form of a typical RPG. “Narratively, it feels really good to see these heroes back,” says Vincke. “But this isn’t a massive world you’re going to go out and explore. There are set missions, and each has its own objectives. But we have tried to maintain the diversity you find in our RPGs. We never want you to do the same thing twice.”
Fallen Heroes likely won’t be as long as the gargantuan Original Sin 2, but Larian is aiming for a lot of replay value. The path each player takes through the game will be different depending on choices made, the order missions are completed in, and so on. “The critical path through the game is 22 out of 60 missions, which gives you an idea of how many permutations there are,” says Vincke. “But it is more contained, with a clearer structure of acts. I think we’re offering a higher level of freedom here than you’ll find in other tactics games.”
DRAMATIC ENTRANCE
Larian is also aiming for a feeling of drama in its battles. “It’s a lot more cinematic than Original Sin 2 was,” says Vincke. “When you start a mission the camera will move around and show you the action. One of the decisions you have to make is when you find a city under attack by a group called the Bloodless.
“You decide whether you’re going to relieve Lucian, which you should do, or save a bunch of people stuck on the harbor trying to escape. If you help Lucian, the camera will show you the city under siege. People falling off buildings, explosions everywhere, characters yelling at each other. It sets the mood.”
Surfaces also play a big part in Fallen Heroes’ combat — areas of the battlefield with different elemental properties you can exploit. “We added a new type called sulphurium,” explains Vincke.
“It’s triggered by kinetic energy, and it causes an explosion with a shockwave. So if you shoot a crossbow at it while you’re on top of it, you can rocket jump. And if you time it right you can jump across multiple surfaces. If an enemy is nearby they’ll be thrown back by the impact as you jump. It’s a really cool systemic addition to the combat.”
Giving an example of how this new surface can also work against you Vinke says, “Last night when I was playing I used Phoenix Dive to get on a roof where an enemy with a blunderbuss was positioned. I had the intention of killing him with one shot. But it was his turn and he shot me off the roof. I landed on some sulphurium that had spilled out of a barrel, was thrown away, and took double damage. That was the intention of the AI and it felt awesome. It also sucked because I lost my unit. But those are the kinds of combinations you can pull off. And all the surface types from Divinity 2 are in the game.
“Combat-wise, we’re giving you a much better toolbox. When you start on a mission, your most important decision is who comes with you.
“This decides which tools you can use on the battlefield. Then you have to decide which consumables and artifacts to take. These starting parameters can make every fight feel different, and can actually decide whether you’ll make it through the mission or not. This, plus AI which is capable of adapting to how you play and the surface experimentation, makes it very unpredictable.”
Fallen Heroes is not what I expected the next thing from Larian to be, especially after the enormous popularity of the Original Sin games. But it’s nice to see the studio attempting something different, and a chance for Original Sin 2 fans to continue the story — albeit in a very different form. The idea of bringing RPG storytelling and choices to a tactics game is an intriguing one, and I can’t wait to see if Larian pulls it off. The combat from the Divinity games is a deep well to pull from, and should be a powerful starting point for a squad-based tactics game.