Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game Update #19

The latest Kickstarter update for the board game adaptation of Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin lets us know that the game’s release had to be postponed until Summer 2021. The reasons listed are the need for more playtesting and the team’s desire to overhaul the game’s artwork. The link above has some samples of this new artwork, and here are the text parts:

Hello everyone!

During these past two months we’ve been assessing the development of Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game. Our ambition has always been to produce something that’ll be a top tier gaming experience across the board. Narratively, mechanically and visually, we set the bar high because you deserve it.

We’ve had many discussions, and many iterations since the end of the successful Kickstarter campaign. Ultimately, we’ve chosen to delay the game until Summer 2021 to allow for more iteration as well as massive improvements to the quality of the game and its art. We know this may come as a disappointment, but we think it’s necessary in order for us to bring you a game of superior quality that meets and hopefully exceeds all your expectations.

There are two principal reasons behind our decision to delay:

We need more time for playtesting.

While some very limited playtesting has continued during the pandemic, we need to do much more. Designing such a long adventure game, with so many skill schools and interesting mechanical avenues to explore means there is a lot of room for error. Ensuring each character path is balanced requires a lot of iteration. With pandemic restrictions easing for many countries, we hope that in the coming months we can begin playtesting in earnest. Because the game is so large however, one full playthrough of the game takes many hours so we need time to do this properly.

We need more time to redo the artwork.

The cards are an integral part of the experience. They’re important both mechanically and visually. They set the scene, give clues and show you the various gameplay options available. Over these past few months we’ve worked hard to raise the level of quality of these cards so that it not only matches, but exceeds the expectations you had when you pledged your support for the project. A new art direction was chosen and we put a team of 10 artists on it to guarantee a higher level of detail.

While a lot of the cards for the game are complete, re-working the art piece also takes time. There’s 524 location cards, 119 enemies & bosses, 158 items and 49 NPC’s that we’ll be iterating on. It’s quite the investment but we feel it’s worth doing because it will result in a big quality improvement.

Next Steps

We’re more determined than ever to make this a truly great game and hope you’ll understand the reasons for our decision.

Of course we understand the wait is long and may be a disappointment for you. Refunds are available and can be requested using Kickstarter’s direct messages or through the email support[at]larian.com. The production delay also means we’ll be keeping the Pledge Manager open for the foreseeable future.

Moving forward, we’ll keep you informed of how playtesting goes and talk more about the implementation of the stretch goals such as The Dungeon mini expansion, Expanded NPC’s, The Black Cat, Elemental Interactions, Nightmare Mode and Slane the Winter Dragon.

Have patience, it’ll be worth it!