Divinity: Original Sin is getting a significant overhaul from creator Larian, as they acknowledge the ‘sucky parts’ of the game. However they’re also ”working on our new RPGs,” using the D:OS engine.
The Belgian developer is determined to fix the mistakes of Original Sin, and they’re also opening a new office in Quebec City to expand, but it lets them ”make true some of our bigger RPG ambitions”.
”In one paragraph and unsurprisingly, my biggest issues with the game are the same things most people had issues with. I think the main story can be told a lot better and has more potential than is apparent, that combat falls a bit flat after act 1 and that crafting,inventory & trade UIs could use a bunch of improvements,” blogged Larian’s Swen Vincke.
”Certain dialogs should be done better, there’s still a lot of feedback missing from tooltips & skills, and at higher levels character progression isn’t as cool as it should be. Our loot system doesn’t behave as hoped for, and the companions could use some work.”
The studio is hard at work ”fixing parts of the story, improving the UIs, revisiting the encounters, rebalancing the loot, rewriting certain dialogs, adding extra feedback, looking at what we can do to fix character progression, improving the companions etc…”
Divinity: Original Sin was built from the ground up almost entirely from scratch and their small team inevitably made some sacrifices, but now they’ve got the time and resources to fix them.
Larian is also looking to the future with new RPGS based on the engine with their new digs in Quebec.
”It’s a lot of growth for a small independent developer from Gent, Belgium and I’m quite apprehensive of the dangers that brings. However, the commercial success of D:OS has given us an opportunity to make true some of our bigger RPG ambitions and I’ll be damned if we don’t seize that chance.”
”Fixing things is not all we’re doing however, far from it. We’re not hiring all those people just to transform D:OS in a better experience, no, obviously we’re also working on our new RPGs.”
”…both RPGs are being built on top of the D:OS engine,” said Vincke, but he can’t say much else.
”It’s an important thing, because it means that whatever we fix in D:OS, will automatically be present in our new RPGs. It also means that we can spend most of our resources on developing new cool stuff without having to reinvent things that worked well already. And it immediately gives us a rationale for putting unreasonable amounts of effort in fixing the things we didn’t do that well in D:OS, meaning our existing players will continue to get improved gameplay for as long as we can maintain compatibility.”
As their toolset improves they hope to see better mods and expand to Linux. Check out the full blog for more on Larian Studios’ future plans into 2015 and beyond.
