Divinity: Original Sin Interview

GameRanx had the chance to chat with Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke on their upcoming turn-based RPG Divinity: Original Sin, a prequel to the original Divine Divinity with some rather interesting co-op features and the ambition to match Ultima VII in terms of world interactivity. Here’s a snip:

GR: The turn-based RPG genre has been dormant for awhile, with the last major release being Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika over a decade ago. Additionally, the first Divinity game (Divine Divinity) had a real-time battle system. What convinced you to embrace a turn-based combat system for Divinity: Original Sin?

SV: Well, there’s always been the desire to do a turn-based game. Actually, the first Divinity was supposed to be turn-based but it turned out that all publishers were interested in was hack & slash. The general idea, even at that time, was to mix Ultima VII exploration and world interaction with Fallout style combat. Now that we’ve finally gone the route of self-publishing our titles, we figured we might as well do something we really wanted to do in the first place.

GR:Why a prequel, and not a sequel? Are there plans to further develop the Divinity universe beyond the events in Divinity 2?

SV: Well, I could tell you that we need to fill in some details in the storyline before concluding the story of Damien and his father, and while there is some truth in that, the reality of it is that we just felt like doing something different. Divinity 3 is something we’ll come back to, but not right away.

For the fans, this game is going to be about The Source, something that’s only been alluded to in the first Divinity and the birth of the Black Ring. The advantage is that people who never played a Divinity will not miss out on anything & those that did play a Divinity will understand a lot more of the lore behind some of the things that happened later in the timeline.