Despite hosting an AMA specifically to answer questions about its upcoming project, Larian remains tight-lipped about Divinity. Sure, it’s the studio’s “biggest game ever”, shifting back to Larian’s own world after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, but we’re left with little more than an atmosphere after its bloody reveal trailer at The Game Awards.
That said, I don’t really care that much because Larian has confirmed the only news that matters. When asked about the way defences would work in Divinity, head of design Nick Pechenin explained that it would “not keep the magic armor system from DOS2”, and that’s music to my ears.
For the uninitiated, Divinity: Original Sin 2 split protection into two categories: physical and magical. The problem is that these were effectively two different additional health bars for enemies, weakened by two entirely separate types of damage, and you’d need to break at least one.
What this meant is that you were generally much better off having your party focus on either physical or magical damage to break your chosen type faster, rather than using a mixed party and splitting damage between the two types. Plus, you were often best off saving most of your fun abilities until after you’d broken the enemies’ armour. Not exactly the best for build diversity, huh?
On that note, Pechenin explains, “There will be ways to protect your characters from harm, but you will not have to wait before you can use your fun skills on enemies”, suggesting a much better balance is being struck this time around.
Now all we need is clarity on whether Divinity is sticking with the divisive Action Point system or taking a page out of BG3’s 5e handbook in favour of the less restrictive Action/Bonus Action setup.
In fact, Larian did respond to someone asking just that, but only vaguely hinted at “a new action economy and character progression system”, which it hopes fans of BG3 and DOS2 will find “intuitive but deep.”
I suspect that means it’ll be a modified version of DOS2’s Action Points, maybe with more of the action freedom of BG3, though that does little to clear things up now, does it?
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