The Belgian studio is striving to improve upon the third installment by learning from the previous two Divinity episodes.
A Bloomberg article on Divinity made headlines by emphasizing the reinforcement of the turn-based combat system and the ambition to deliver a bigger, better game than the award-winning Baldur’s Gate 3 in a shorter timeframe. Following backlash against Larian’s use of AI as a development aid, Swen Vincke, the studio’s CEO, issued a clarifying statement. Before and after The Game Awards and before the game’s announcement, the studio’s founder, owner, and game director participated in several other interviews. Vincke admitted to IGN that one of the changes, although requiring a lot of work, will be significantly improved world-building compared to previous installments.
“We learned the value of having a solid universe behind you, for sure. One of the first things we started doing was saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to put a lot of effort into making this universe feel tidy.’ That’s also why we’re simply calling it Divinity. There’s never been a game called just Divinity, because there were all kinds of versions with different names. This time, it’s actually going to be Divinity, and it’s going to have a proper universe backing it. We’re building everything as you would expect, with lots of surprises, so that we can build on top of it. We learned that from Baldur’s Gate because we spent a lot of time delving through all kinds of Dungeons & Dragons books. That’s probably one of the biggest takeaways from the development process.
We really wanted to clean things up because the first Divinity games weren’t made with much thought given to world-building. It wasn’t until Original Sin 2 that we started thinking more about it, but not quite as much as we did with Baldur’s Gate 3. Now, we’re giving it a lot of thought, so it’s a lot of work to make sure we get it right. It’s the little things, after all. I mean, what do people do when they go out to eat? What do they do when they go to sleep? All of that has to be called out,” Vincke said.
Although Rivellon has potential, it cannot be compared to well-known fantasy worlds such as The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Dragon Age, or Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Forgotten Realms. The latter is by far the most popular Dungeons & Dragons setting and has definitely contributed to BG3’s success. Much more depth, texture, and backstory are needed to compete with such intricately crafted locations. To that end, Larian should flesh out the world in much greater detail and explore transmedia opportunities.
Divinity: Original Sin has an official board game, but the setting could greatly benefit from novels to help fans connect more deeply with characters, events, and factions. An animated series could also help, though it would be much more expensive. In terms of in-game features, it would be nice to have a Codex-like system that allows players to refer to universe-specific terms, events, and people.
Leave a Reply