Divinity: Original Sin II

pl

The characters and their origin stories are very important to the bigger picture. They are the characters you’ll choose from to play as and who you’ll surround yourself with, and their origin stories should completely change your experience of the game. There’s the corpse-eating elf Sebille, who’s on a Kill Bill-style quest for vengeance against people who wronged her when she was a slave. She tattoos the names of her targets on her body, so has names to cross off. There’s the Red Prince, exiled royalty who wants to restore his kingdom. There’s Ifan, a murderous gang member who finds out he’s not as alone in the world as he thought he was. And there’s Lohse, a lady whose mind hosts demons. They all have things to do, and further down the line Vincke says there will be cutscenes at the start of the game explaining each of them.

Four of the planned six origin characters are in the game now. Those remaining are the undead origin character and the dwarf, says Vincke. In addition there will be default racial origin stories for people who make their own character from scratch, so however you play you’ll have an origin story to pursue – as of course will the people playing with you in multiplayer, or the AI companions playing with you in single-player. And these are stories that weave far into the game.

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“You’re playing Act One but you’re not seeing the full end of Act One,” he says, “so the full end of Act One is quite spectacular and that’s not in there. And it ends there, where you fully comprehend what your central concept is going to be and what you need to go do through Act Two.”

And Act Two, he says, “is vastly bigger”.

“If you want to quantify it: Act One is going to be 20 to 25 per cent; Act Two is going to be 50 per cent most likely; and Act Three is going to be the last 25 per cent. Three acts,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean three maps.”