REVIEW: “Divinity: Original Sin” walks the line between heavenly gameplay & hellish difficulty

By Connor Bucy

In the video game industry, the financial desires of publishers often rule over all, above the developer’s vision and even above the wants of potential players and fans. “Divinity: Original Sin” is an example of what happens when game studios throw off the monetary reins of publishers and bring their pure, unadulterated vision to market.

            

“Divinity: Original Sin” is Larian Studios’ latest entry to its “Divinity” franchise, and differs from its predecessors in that fans, not publishers, funded its development through a wildly successful crowd-funded online campaign through Kickstarter, a platform which allows fans to pledge money toward ideas they want to see made real. This key difference resulted in a game that could not have been made under any other circumstances, a unique beast that combines old-school imagination with the polish of the present.

            

“Original Sin” starts off slow. Stepping into a generic-feeling fantasy world that belies its true artistic depth starting out, players take on the role of two Source Hunters, a government-employed force sent to a plain oceanside town to investigate the murder of a politician. What could have been an entirely cookie-cutter setting becomes much more nuanced as players explore the world and experience the game’s quirky sense of self-deprecating humor in its many characters and side stories.

While modern games rarely encourage exploration, “Original Sin” hides complex storylines in dialogue with non-player characters all over. Talking to townsfolk, or even to animals if a character possesses the ability, can yield valuable information. While perhaps not the most obvious way to tell its stories to new players, this adds a sense of immersiveness to the game that harkens back to the days of old pen-and-paper roleplaying games.

Mechanically, “Original Sin” is all about choice and variety, providing a level of depth that can be off-putting initially, since the game isn’t fond of hand-holding or extensive tutorials. Players start the game with two characters, each with potentially unique personalities, depending on how the player handles different situations in the world.

This philosophy of choice extends to essentially everything in the game, including the turn-based combat system. Players can choose from pre-set classifications at the beginning of the game but beyond that, every skill and trait learned is left up to the player. These skills interact with each other and with the environment in logical ways. For example, a rain spell will put out wildfires while hitting a puddle of oil with fire will cause the ground to ignite, damaging both friend and foe. While these combinations of strategic environmental use and character skills work seamlessly every time, “Original Sin” spends little time explaining how they work or that they even exist at all, leaving players to find out on their own.

“Divinity: Original Sin” prides itself on providing an experience built on a contradiction. It is approachable yet highly complex and enjoyable yet infuriatingly difficult, even starting out. Players will be frustrated time and time again, but the reward of triumphing in a particularly difficult battle or solving a befuddling mystery provide a sense of joy that can only come from hard work. “Original Sin” is a mother bird shoving players out of the comfortable nest of mediocre, simple games, without pause or warning. Those who learn to fly will find a humble but complicated world full of fleshed-out characters, engaging mechanics and stories that are never the same for any two players.