Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been reading Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay's thoughts from yesterday about how players need to "get comfortable" with renting their games as a package, rather than "having and owning" an individual copy. His broad takeaway is: that ain't it, chief. In a social media thread today, Vincke wrote that "it's going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not". He feels that "direct from developer to players is the way". As such you shouldn't expect Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2 or any other Larian RPGs to join the Game Pass bandwagon anytime soon.
]]>Larian's king wizard (CEO) Swen Vincke is very eager to tell you about the studio's next game after Baldur's Gate 3. And also, a bit terrified, because after all, the response to Larian's D&D adaptation has been rather rhapsodic. How on Earth do you replicate that level of success? The answer may lie in scripture.
]]>If 2023 is remembered for one thing, it's that it was a 100% critical success year for the RPG. Role-players across the land have been feasting exceedingly well these past few months, what with the stonking success of Baldur's Gate 3 (and to lesser extents, Starfield and Diablo 4), so we thought it was about time to celebrate your favourite RPGs of all time. Your votes have been counted, your comments have been sorted, and the cream of the RPG crop has been assembled. But which of the many excellent RPGs have risen above all others? Come and find out below as we count down your top 25 favourite RPGs of all time.
]]>Baldur's Gate 3 launches next week, but already people are wondering what developers Larian might turn to next. Mainly, they're curious whether the studio will return to their own long-running RPG series, Divinity.
"Definitely," is the answer from CEO Swen Vincke - but not until after the studio has had a break.
]]>Is this iPad news we shouldn't be writing about, or is it PC news fit for a PC games website? I don't care. It's lying-in-my-bed, playing-cool-games news, and such joys cannot be limited by petty platform divides.
Your Divinity: Original Sin 2 saves are another thing which cannot be limited by petty platform divides. The iOS version of the game now has Steam Cross Save functionality, meaning you can move your progress in the RPG back and forth.
]]>Like their upcoming mind flayer baddies, Baldur's Gate 3 developers Larian Studios have snatched some minds for a new studio. Larian have announced that they've snagged the development team from Spanish studio BlitWorks who they've previously worked with on porting their other big RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 to the Nintendo Switch. Less sinister than the mind flayers though, I imagine. The two apparently got on so well while working on the Switch version of D:OS2 that Larian have lifted the developers from BlitWorks to create their new Barcelona studio.
]]>As an enjoyer of co-op campaigns, an enjoyer of RPGs, and specifically an enjoyer of co-op RPG romp Divinity: Original Sin 2, here's a nice bit of news. It may seem like Larian Studios' last big game had gotten a release on just about every platform you could think of, but no. They've now launched it on iPads too. If you too have co-op pals who don't own PCs, here's yet another way to try and rope them into one of the best co-op games around thanks to cross-platform multiplayer between PC, Mac, and iPads.
]]>I've started a co-op playthrough of Divinity Original Sin 2, an RPG that feels like learning another language. Slowly, I've grown accustomed to the sheer volume of stats and abilities and decisions I have to make. I now approach situations methodically, identifying enemy weaknesses, and scanning rooms ablaze or bloated by gas, before I commit to an act.
But there's one thing that always gets me. No matter how careful I am, icy surfaces totally pass me by. It's as if they're invisible, the way I think I've clocked every variable, before my dwarf rogue moves two paces and tumbles onto his arse. I don't mind, though, as it's comedy gold; an act so funny I'm convinced there's actually nothing funnier.
]]>Everything going terribly wrong is the theme of most of my Divinity: Original Sin 2 experiences. Fire everywhere, right? Speedrunners know this big RPG's ins and outs much better than I do, but it turns out even they aren't impervious to disaster—or fire. This year's D:OS2 speedrun during the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon went totally off the rails but was an even more fun watch because of it.
]]>Get your speedrunning shoes on and prepare your glitches: Awesome Games Done Quick has arrived for its yearly speedrunning extravaganza. As with previous years, the charity event is raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. It's been live since yesterday evening and runs until this Sunday, and there are already some fab runs in the likes of Mirror's Edge and Dragon Age: Origins to catch up on.
]]>Whether you like wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Comb your hair, spray that perfume and suit up for a night of high culture, readers - the third edition of the Game Music Festival is underway. Starting last night, you can already tune into a full evening of orchestral rearrangement of scores from Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades, with Larian Studios picking up the mic tonight for a more high-fantasy swing at the concert scene.
]]>Hubbish bubbish, rhymes are rubbish, eye of newt and blah blah blah. Gosh, magic is a chore. If only we had a catalyst to... Oh, hello reader, what are you doing here? Well, as it happens, yes, you can help me out. Just stand over here while I scratch these runes around you. I’m trying to summon the 9 best magic spells in PC games, you see. Stand still, please. You won’t feel a thing.
]]>If you plumb the depths of human ingenuity you will resurface with a wet box of penicillin and 100 million bits of different-coloured plastic. We people are very good at making useful things, and then killing ourselves with them. But videogames, my friends. Videogames hold the solution to our self-destructive ways. That tech utopia your pal Start-up Stan is always talking about is in reach, we just need to find a way to make these 12 practical devices from videogames appear in real life.
]]>Times are strange and frightening. But one point of great solace for me has been hearing people celebrating things in their lives. It feels especially important right now to hold on to what makes us all proud about what we do and who we are. And what I really love is people showing off things they’re proud of making.
So I’ve been asking a bunch of developers to pick out something they’ve created that brings them pleasure to look back on. And here they are, including Harvey Smith remembering his input on Deus Ex and Dishonored, Derek Yu on one of his first-ever games. There’s pride in doing something for someone else’s game, in the power of details and in little inventions, and ah gosh, shut up, let’s just tuck into a big slice of escapist positivity.
]]>I’m having a moment in Divinity: Original Sin. I’m lost in the limitless depths of my inventory, its small icons denoting vague categories which make me forget which character was meant to give what to whom, or where I put that unidentified sarong I swear I picked up in the last battle. Meanwhile, the NPCs in the market square around me are repeating their lines on 20-second loops. “Quiet day on the market, it seems”, says the lonely bougee lady, to absolutely no one. Yes, I think. It is. But it’d be just that precious bit quieter if I stuck these blooming daggers between your ribs.
]]>Now that we've gotten a proper look at Baldur's Gate 3, the ol' war machines are firing up. Baldur's Gate games from years of yore featured the combat shared by other Infinity Engine games—real time action with the ability to pause and dictate to your party. Baldur's Gate 3, developed by those Larian folks of Divinity: Original Sin 2 fame, will have turn-based combat similar to Larian's last big RPG. So then, which is better? Come hash it out, but please do so in an orderly, turn-based queue.
]]>Ah, religion. I know this is a topic we all have trouble agreeing on. But fear not, humble practitioner of a good pray, I am not here to squint angrily at your favourite book of life advice. I’m only here for the videogame religions. The ones that are very, very, very, very bad. You know, the gun-loving cults and the xenophobic people-burners. The (mostly) fictional religions that involve an uncommon volume of murder. Step this way, sprinkle yourself with some of my 100% genuine oil of the almighty, and peruse the 9 most dodgy religions in games.
]]>Playing games with other people is one of the beloved traditions of liking video games at all, and if you're the friendly type like us at RPS, then you'll enjoy games where you work with others, rather than against them. That's why we've put together our list of the best co-op games on PC for you to find common ground with your besties. Whether you want to shoot monsters together, shoot robots together, or get a divorcing couple to work together as they run around their own home as tiny doll versions of themselves, then you can find something to enjoy on this list of co-op games.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Winter brings out a part of me that immediately seeks a mountain of blankets in which to burrow. Even in my seasonally confused state of Texas, the weather has tended towards the chilly and left me with little excuse not to have a kettle boiling interminably as I layer on socks and pull the biggest comforter from the top of the closet. But this presents a problem likely familiar to other cozy connoisseurs: how does one game while properly bundled?
I will admit it does limit possibilities considerably. That's why I've curated a small selection of games perfectly playable while your other hand keeps coffee or tea always within sipping range.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 has had a couple of free Gift Bags drop already. Think of them as small mutators that add little features to the base game which you can toggle on or off. The first bag added new customisation options and a respec mirror onboard the Lady Vengeance. Bag two had herb gardens, talent tweaks, and action point increases. But bag three, Order & Magic, is the latest and greatest. It has a toggle called "Nine Lives" that adds a whistle that will summon the black cat.
]]>HDR on PC hasn't improved much in 2019. Despite there being more HDR gaming monitors than ever before, the very best gaming monitors for HDR continue to be quite expensive compared to non-HDR monitors, and the situation around Windows 10 support for it is still a bit of a mess. However, provided you're willing to fight through all that, then the next step on your path to high dynamic range glory is to get an HDR compatible graphics card.
Below, you'll find a complete list of all the Nvidia and AMD graphics cards that have built-in support for HDR, as well as everything you need to know about getting one that also supports Nvidia and AMD's own HDR standards, G-Sync Ultimate and FreeSync 2. I've also put together a list of all the PC games that support HDR as well, so you know exactly which PC games you can start playing in high dynamic range.
]]>Larian today announced that Divinity: Fallen Heroes, the combat-focused spin-off from Divinity: Original Sin 2, is on indefinite hold. First announced in March and due to launch this November, it just needs more time and resources than anyone has right now. It sounds like they do plan to return and pick it back up at some point, but don't hold your breath. Or do hold your breath if you want to, I guess, because even if you do manage to make yourself pass out your body will automatically resume breathing so sure, why not, what else do you have to do right now? Not playing Fallen Heroes, that's for sure.
]]>I'm declaring it: this is the Worst Week Ever for Steam Charts. And let's face it - this is entirely your fault. If you were a better person, you'd buy better games. But instead you buy the same eight bloody games every bloody week, and then buy a game that isn't even out for over a year. A YEAR! You are awful, and you do not deserve me. This is your punishment.
]]>Matthew Holland never planned to add his dogs to Divinity: Original Sin 2. It happened on a lark, but turned into a wholesome story about his two canine companions. Holland worked as a scripter at Larian, the studio behind the fantasy RPG. While they were designing Fort Joy, an introductory island prison, the team came up with a quest about two separated dogs who wanted to find one another. At the time, their names were just "Dog A" and "Dog B". While brainstorming with lead writer Sarah Baylus, Holland jokingly pitched the names of his two dogs, Buddy and Emily. The names stuck and Buddy became the lonely dog on the beach at Fort Joy who was missing his partner, Emmie. Although they planned a golden retriever modeled after the real Buddy, it turned out that a golden dog on a white beach wasn't so easy to see. Buddy became a black labrador in-game, but his personality stayed golden.
But Divinity: Original Sin 2 is not the only game to immortalise its developers’ pets. It turns out videogames are full of cat cameos and designer’s dogs. Some are sentimental tributes to pets that have died while others are loving takedowns of catty behavior, but they are all lasting memories of some furry best friends.
]]>“Hot diggity daffodil,” says I, reading a GDC email two weeks ago. “A ‘new and unannounced Divinity: Original Sin 2 title’, what a day!” Eagle eyed readers will have already spotted that the email did not in fact say ‘hot new in-depth RPG Divinity: Original Sin 3 revealed’, and Divinity: Fallen Heroes is indeed not that. I got a hands on with an early alpha build, and what it is, is sort of XCOM but for Divinity. Or, to put it another way: did you like the combat from Divinity: Original Sin 2?
]]>Ho ho ho! John still hasn't returned after Christmas, missing presumed drowned in egg nog, so I'm filling in today. Valve have already blarbed about 2018's best-selling games so we're back on the weekly charts. Last week's top ten was largely familiar, though catching the tail end of the Steam Winter Sale has introduced a few surprises.
]]>I, Alice Bee, have returned from a week off and everything has changed. Matt is in the office now, and complained about having to get up at 8.15am. This complaint made me furious and I am telling everyone. My desk has been moved. There is no milk in the fridge. I am confused, and I can't remember all the HTML codes to write this very post. It's going to take ages. The new world is terrifying. But we always have the Steam Charts, even when John is away on his holidays.
]]>Beep boop. I am the SteamChartBot, and welcome to the CYBERCHARTS. They're like the regular charts, but they have the word "CYBER" shouted at the start, and that makes them really bloody cool.
]]>There are weeks when the Steam Charts surprise us! There are weeks when interesting new and old games reappear, pushing out the dreary regulars! And then mostly there are weeks like this one, where it's so depressingly bland that it starts raining outside the moment you glance at it. Not good rain, just bland drizzle.
]]>I’m being stalked by six-legged space demons, I’m on the run from the fantasy police, and my chosen deity is being slowed squeezed to death by a spectral tree, but my biggest problem in Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a talking squirrel.
Not just any talking squirrel. Sir Lora is — he says — a preeminent wizard, in addition to being the target of an order of fluffy animal knights hell-bent on hastening the end of the world with the coming of the “Great Acorn.” Lora certainly stands out, riding a skeletal cat and talking in a plummy accent, commenting occasionally (and derisively) on my quest to save the world. Sadly, for what he’s gained in arcane knowledge, he’s lost in common sense: Sir Lora is an absolute liability in dangerous situations.
]]>Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: steam Charts will PAY $2 for evry time u forwad this Article.#
If you do not fwrard this article to TEN of you're Friens YOU WILL DEFINITELY DIE!!!!!!!11
]]>Larian's fantastic fantasy RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 has become even fancier with the launch of its Definitive Edition, a free update adding and refining loads. It brings a new 'Story Mode' difficulty level, performance improvements, UI improvements from the inventory to dialogue windows, a new tutorial level, new bits of dialogue slipped into all sorts of quests and situations, some new fights, and oh so very many tweaks and balance changes. Also, accompanying it is a DLC pack (free for current owners) adding a new companion: a squirrel who wears a larger rodent's skull as a helmet and rides a skeletal cat. Adorably metal.
]]>Welcome to my nightmares. As chronicled last week, all human progress is wiped out by a Steam Sale. Where once we were a species that revelled in new, interesting ideas, pursuing our dreams, we are once more wedged neck-deep in the past, doomed to buy the same £40 five-year-old games until we rot and coagulate into a molten horror. Welcome to the Steam Charts!
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>I have reached a conclusion. Everything that's bad is the fault of Steam sales. Two weeks ago these charts had reached a place of being a fertile ground of interesting new games and discounted classics. Today, they're back to being mostly a miserably predictable list of games that even the undiscovered tribes of Papua New Guinea have on their Steam accounts.
]]>The old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it's easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)?
Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes.
]]>In the mid-to-late 2000s, publishers abandoned the CRPG genre – an acronym describing the very specific genre of video games adapted from tabletop RPGs to be played on computers – which a decade earlier had been a cornerstone of PC gaming. They were more interested in accessible, console-friendly series like Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls, and PC-centric RPGs all but died out.
Then, around 2012, RPGs made a comeback, largely thanks to the rise of crowdfunding and an endless well of nostalgia. Since then we’ve been treated to heaps of good ones – Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera – and there are plenty more in the works. But there’s no guarantee that CRPGs are back for good. Some, such as Torment, haven’t sold well. The future of crowdfunding remains uncertain. And asking fans to commit 50 hours to a single story is more difficult than ever, given the volume of great games that release every month. So how can developers ensure that the genre stays relevant?
]]>Not content with blowing everyone's socks off last year with Divinity: Original Sin 2 (see Adam's rightfully gushing review here), Larian Studios are putting in some serious man-hours on improving it for the upcoming Definitive Edition re-launch. This isn't just a little bit of spit n' polish work, but a major rewrite of large chunks of the game, an across-the-board rebalance, and even some brand new things to see making a return to Rivellon at the end of August all the more tempting. Today they detailed most of the big changes in this Kickstarter update and the video within.
]]>You look a little tired, friend. Let me just adjust this slider for you. There, wide awake. Now you’ve got some energy, how about listening to the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show? This week we’re talking about character creation. Which games spoil us with choice? And why do we always end up creating the same sneaky elf?
]]>If there's one thing experience has taught me about prolific RPG powerhouse Larian Studios, it's that they're perfectionists. Early access really is just a foundational step, and even the 'final' retail release is just a dry run. As with their last several games, they've just announced that their RPG mega-hit Divinity: Original Sin 2 is getting a Definitive Edition re-release this August, presumably in an attempt to scoop up all the Best RPG Of 2018 awards on top of cleaning house last year.
]]>With Steam's big VR Spring Sale on, obviously the charts are a bit full of... ha ha ha, no of course not. No one wants VR. Same old same old.
]]>Join us for our weekly skip through the bountiful fields of fresh gaming joy! Hold our hand as we guide you down the top ten selling games on Steam, to discover which heart-lifting original content has caught the attention of the enthused gaming public! Someone please help me!
]]>Imagine you’re on a quest for a powerful artefact in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Perhaps you conversed with a ghost who pointed you in the right direction. Now you see demons close by. You cast Chameleon Cloak to try to sneak by, but alas! you are spotted. The fight begins. You draw your weapons, inscribed with runes. You weave protective spells. You summon your cat familiar to enter the fray and confound your enemies. A fireball scroll sets a puddle of oil ablaze, but you misjudged and now you’re on fire as well! But a potion you concocted earlier heals your wounds just in time.
It’s a typical scenario for D:OS2 and similar fantasy RPGs. Magic is everywhere, and you could barely swing your cat familiar by the tail without hitting a fellow Sorcerer (don’t do that though, it’s cruel). But where do these spells, demons and artefacts come from? Games have so inundated us with magic that it’s easy to forget that even the most outlandish, videogamey spectacles have their Source-drenched roots in historical beliefs and practices.
]]>Well sound the klaxons, unfurl the flags, hoist your main-braces and petards whatever they may be, 2018 is proving far more interesting for charting Steam games. Of course we can't escape the three usual suspects, but beyond those this is quite the collection of interesting, independent, and novel games.
]]>Sorry to frighten the more sensitive reader, but, goodness me, among the miserably common entries, this week's chart welcomes a fair few newbies and indies! Are customers about to get better at buying? Or will we just see these games in the charts every week for the rest of the year? STAY TUNED!
]]>As the feedback loop of Steam successes reaches an ear-shattering scream, this week we see last year's best sellers dominating the New Year's first week. So I refuse to live in the past. Let's look forward. Let's imagine what we might want from these behemothic developers.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>We asked a handful of our contributors to put together a list of their three favourite games from 2017. Their picks are running across the week while the rest of RPS slumbers.
I think I would have lost my mind if it wasn’t for the many incredible digital holidays I’ve taken in 2017. It’s been a bit overwhelming to play so many great but also massive games in a single year, however. New Year’s resolution: squeeze more brief games into my life.
]]>The calendar's doors have been opened and the games inside have been eaten. But fear not, latecomer - we've reconstructed the list in this single post for easy re-consumption. Click on to discover the best games of 2017.
]]>The tail-end of Steam's Autumnal sale sees a few old favourites lingering with the usual suspects in the charts this week. The discounts that got them here are all gone now, but it's only a couple of weeks now before everything goes completely bonkers for the Winter Sale, and you can expect to see all the same names deeply discounted once more.
]]>Imagine what would happen if Plunkbat weren't to be at number 1? Could anyone even cope any more? Has all of gaming started operating on this as a foundation, forgetting that it could, one day, not sell more copies than everything else? What if I'm writing this as a bluff because it's not at number 1 this week? What if I just wrote that to imply the bluff even though there isn't a bluff?! OH MY GOODNESS EVERYONE QUICKLY READ THIS NOW!
]]>"Hello, do you think you'd be able to perform the voice of a pile of corpses, a bull, a deer and a painting?"
When the decision was made to have Divinity: Original Sin 2's dialogue fully voiced, the sheer quantity of text seemed like the biggest hurdle but I hadn't considered the difficulty that casting some roles would involve. Voice actor Jay Britton, who has worked on TV and radio as well as games, including Elite Dangerous and The Journey Down, revealed the full list of 35 characters that he played in Larian's RPG. It ranges from apparent fantasy staples such as Pilgrim and Lizard Skeleton all the way to Pile of Corpses, Dead Civilian, Bull and Deer. It's as good a brief summary of the weirdness threaded through this wonderful RPG as anything I've seen and I asked Jay which was the most memorable character of the lot.
]]>People, people of Earth, for the second week in a row GTA V isn't in the Steam Charts! And for the first time in human history, this week nor is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive! What's happened? I'll tell you what's happened. Everyone's got a copy now. Phew.
So instead, here are eight other games and Plunkbat, and one plastic box, in ascending order of dollar-eyes.
]]>Wotcha gang. Your old chum Alice here for this week's charts, as everyone else has been fired. Out of a cannon. Blown into a jillion little pieces. Hence the Apocalyptic yellow tone to the skies today. Hold your breath when outside, and hold your breath while we count down last week's top ten of the top-selling games on Steam.
]]>Are you strong enough to read the Steam Charts? Do you have what it takes to read all the way to the end? Can you defeat the Plunkbat final boss? NO! NO YOU ARE TOO WEAK!
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] is a fantastic game. But if that's not enough, every copy ships with 'The Divinity Engine 2', which provides everyone with access to the same tools that the xevs used to make the original game.
Kevin Van Nerum, a programmer at Larian Studios recently made a handy tutorial video which showed users how to make their first custom level. I talked to him to find out more about what's coming up next in his tutorial series, what it's possible to do within the editor and what some of his own favourite mods are.
]]>Larian have launched a honking great update for Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site], now glurping down datapipes to a game near you. It's a cracking RPG, our Adam's Divinity: Original Sin 2 review will tell you, though the many moving parts that make it so much fun to mess about with have inevitably left a few little glitches. Today's patch brings bug fixes, a few prettied-up UI bits, and some balance changes including making Bone Widow less powerful.
]]>I've recently started playing with a new Dungeons & Dragons group, drafted in after one of their numbers upped and left town. It's my second time playing table-top D&D, after a splendid stint a couple of years back with Jim Rossignol (late of this parish) DMing, and it's a properly good time. And what I've learned is that it becomes a much better time the more flaws you introduce to your character. Which got me thinking: wow, do PC RPGs not follow that rule at all.
]]>Some have doubted the power of the Steam Charts to change people's lives. Those people are dead now. Belief in Steam Charts, RPS's greatest, longest-running, and most industry-revered column, is literally the only thing keeping you alive right now. Don't be a dead one. Love us. LOVE US.
]]>Oh no, you've tripped the alarm. Now the terrifying RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, knows you're here. It's going to hunt you down and force you to listen to it. Quick! Think of a way out of this, before you hear all about Adam becoming an accidental mass murderer in Dishonored, or John obsessively re-loading his way out of a bad situation. If you don't escape, I'll have to tell you about the time I threw a gun at someone's head in Heat Signature, to absolutely no effect. This week, you see, we're talking about Things Going Wrong.
]]>This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site].
It’s the holy grail for RPGs, right, that perfect mix of a strong story and freedom to do what you want. But if players can do anything, how do you tell them a story in the right order and without bits missing? What if they kill some plot-important character or sell the magical thing that does the special thing?
Quite a few RPGs do a good job! Planescape: Torment, for one, presents a fantastically dense and interwoven set of characters and scenarios which you can approach in many different ways. But Divinity: Original Sin 2 goes a step beyond, telling a clear story and allowing - even encouraging - you to do all kinds of dumb things, all without completely breaking. How does it succeed? Well, through a feature that you’d never think is related.
THE MECHANIC: Multiplayer
Very mild spoilers follow, but nothing actually spoiling, promise.
]]>A funny old week in the charts, which is to say, H1Z1 and The Witcher 3 have been shoved out by the hatrick of appearances from Stellaris. Also it's worth noting that Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider has disappeared after just one week, which seems a bit of a shame.
Oh, and as correctly predicted last week, absolutely no sign of XCOM 2 making nearly as much money now it's back to £34.99 for both the base game and the War of the Chosen expansion. Shocking!
]]>While Adam has the definitive word in his Divinity: Original Sin 2 review, I've found myself unable to stop playing in every spare moment, and jotted down some of the very many things that make this game stand out, make it feel so very special. Below I celebrate its extraordinary replayability, the joy of moving furniture, and hideous undulating flesh blobs.
]]>We were supposed to be heroes. As you play through Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site], your character and companions will be many things to many people: thieves, killers, saviours, fugitives, outcasts, demons, nightmares, lovers, traitors, jackasses, adventurers, pranksters and fools. But heroes? You can play through the entire game, multiple times, and never feel like much of a hero.
There's just so much to do in the world that doing good can feel just a little to obvious.
]]>Here, drink this potion. It's called the Electronic Wireless Show and it's a podcast. Yes, you drink it via your ears, unusual I know, but you'll feel much better afterwards. This week, we're talking about roguelikes, roguelites, roguefites and roguelifes. What do words even mean anymore? Also, Pip has been enjoying the blocky spellcasting of Rogue Islands, while Adam is killing innocent young men in the fantasy caves of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Absolutely unnecessary behaviour. To make matters even more unbearable, it's the last podcast with Pip! I shall sum up how I feel about this using the ASCII language of the roguelike.
:(
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] left Early Access less than a week ago and sales figures have been very good. Those are the kind of figures, Larian CEO Swen Vincke tells me, that he'd been hoping for "by Christmas". The game is only available for Windows at the moment and during the Early Access period, the studio stated that, "A decision on other platforms will not be made until after the full release." With that full release now behind us, I asked if the strong sales made support for new platforms more likely. Short answer: "yes". Longer answers on that and other matters below.
]]>This week we finally learn who the killer is, but will the answer provide more questions than solutions? Read on for this week's hair-raising installment of... The Steam Charts.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] is out of Early Access and fully released. Adam and John have both spent many, many hours with the alpha, and are now beginning to chew their way through the full version. That makes it an ideal time to get together to chat about their thoughts on the game so far, the experience of playing an RPG before it’s finished, and how to break the news of a death to a baby bear.
]]>The random death of a cat might be the most shocking moment I can remember in a game.
I'm playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site], and it's my first experience of the series as a whole. Not knowing what to expect, but knowing the game to offer unexpected moments, I was simply pootling around the island on which magic-laden beings were being held captive. And at a certain point a black cat started following us about. A very welcome black cat, causing no trouble, a little too meowy but nothing offensive beyond that. It seemed to have an odd look in its eyes, and I was intrigued to learn if there might be more to this mog than met the eye.
]]>Come one, come all, but not all at once or you'll break our caching, and see the Steam Charts in all their glory! Which game will have reached the coveted #2 position this week?!
]]>The Steam Charts aren't, as you may have been led to expect, large sprawling maps depicting the locations of all the world's known steam. They were, but due to government pressure we've altered them to list the top ten selling games on Steam, in reverse order, like a rocket taking off.
]]>“And now we just use the Face Ripper on this elven corpse so we can polymorph into an elven form and learn more about what happened by eating the limbs we found earlier.”
At Gamescom, Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian, was showing the playable undead race in Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] for the first time. Faces were ripped, children were startled, feasting on cadavers quickly became routine. I love Divinity but in among all the elves and dwarves, I sometimes forget just how weird it is. When you're playing a skeleton, it's going to be weirder than ever.
]]>As Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] charges screaming through early access, developers Larian have announced a release date for the full version: September 14th. For early access roleplayers, though, Larian have released a hefty update including the tutorial with a fight against a kraken, the new home base on a captured warship, new areas, improved AI, and plenty more. You can see some of all this in a new dev diary if you aren't distracted by how swish their offices are:
]]>Last week I spent a day playing with Divinity: Original Sin 2’s [official site] Games Master mode, and now I want to force everyone I know to play pen and paper RPGs with me. If this is what I've been missing in the years since I last went full goth with weekend Vampire: The Masquerade sessions, I've had a wasted adulthood.
The GM mode is separate to the main game, using the Divinity ruleset in campaigns either released by Larian or created by players, who can then share those campaigns online or with friends to recreate a tabletop experience digitally. At the press event, we built a chunk of Ultima VII and then started cannibalising the good guys.
]]>I forget which game it was, exactly. If I had to pick one, I'd say probably the text adventure Humbug. It doesn't really matter, as it's not really the game's fault, but I still remember the sadness of being told to go into the inventory and realising that while I was thinking of a big room full of bubbling liquids in interesting flasks and other cool science stuff, the game was actually saying 'look in your pockets'. Especially as if it was Humbug, it's a game about wandering around and exploring your crazy inventor grandfather's house. I must have searched for whole minutes, back in 1990.
There's never been a game that really harnessed that desire, but still, it explains a lot about one of my favourite things in RPGs - particularly those of the early 90s - that the inventory often was a place to experiment rather than simply pluck the correct item at the correct time. Even if then, as now, it's often been more accident than design.
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>So... 2016. (FX: 'Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh....') It's not been the greatest of years, from just about every celebrity you might have loved deciding to peg it, to America electing the Curious Orange. As far as RPGs go, it's also been fairly quiet, thanks to lots of stuff deciding to stay in the oven for a few more months. That's not to say we've had nothing, not least Early Access versions of many of these games. Awards are coming later this month! But in terms of big, BIG, BIG releases, it's been kinda quiet. Next year though? Whoooo-boy, do we have a lot of awesome stuff on the way. Here are some of my picks for the games I'm most excited to get my hands on in 2017.
]]>I had all the characteristics of a blogger — frayed jeans, opinions, laptop, tea — but my depersonalisation was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to compile charts had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating top ten articles, a rough resemblance of a best-sellers list, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.
And yet.
]]>I'm trying to think who it could be. I don't really have enemies any more, or not knowingly so. Some forgotten bully from school who never left our hometown and is still obsessed with tormenting me? A fellow journalist whose article I might have drunkenly tweeted something rude about in 2009? Someone I unfollowed or unfriended because they were tiresome or awful? You Know, Those Guys? Or: all of them, working together. Pooling their life savings to buy as many copies of a certain game as they can. Make no mistake: someone's out to get me. It's the only possible explanation.
]]>This is some kind of sick joke, isn't it?
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] launched into early access today, less than a year after wrapping up its Kickstarter. The fantasy RPG's initial release is quite small, and waiting for the full version before even thinking about touching it is certainly a reasonable idea but, y'know, maybe Adam's raving has got you pumped. Original Sin 2 "improves almost every area" of the original, he said - and it was no slouch.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin is one of my favourite games of recent years. It's a systemic toybox with the skin of a fantasy RPG. I spent an evening playing the sequel [official site] a couple of weeks ago and it improves almost every area. At the foundations, there's a more interesting world, with a stronger set of characters, but there are also improvements to combat, and the smartest twist on cooperative multiplayer that I've seen since Dark Souls.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin [official site] is an incredibly complex game. It's a very silly game, which might lead some people to think it isn't all that clever, but even though it wears a comedy tie to the RPG Christmas party, it's still the smartest game in the room. That's because it's built on intelligent, simulated systems that overlap and feed into one another to make both interesting narrative choices and dynamic situations in both combat and roleplay.
The sequel takes all of the complexities of the first and adds competitive multiplayer for up to four players. At Rezzed, Larian's creative director and founder, Swen Vincke, explained how it all works.
]]>Not for the first time, I've spent quite a while recently pondering the nature of roles - more specifically, mechanical role versus narrative role. When we think of RPGs, what we're usually thinking of is the latter. You play the role of the Hero, but in a universe that's typically designed to let you define that however you like. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but there's a key difference between that and stepping into the shoes of someone more specific. Geralt in The Witcher 3 for instance is - spoiler alert - a Witcher. Every encounter revolves around that, every system involves it, every decision has, whether it's by your choice or Geralt bringing it up, a mercenary element that reinforces that asking for money in exchange for your services is expected and not, as is often the case, the first step towards douchery and getting the Evil ending.
I've also been playing a lot of Hearthstone. The two things are linked.
]]>Just before the Christmas break I was trying to catch up on all of the interesting games that I hadn't found time to play earlier in the year. Else Heart.Break() was right near the top of the list, even though I have zero interest in games that expect me to learn how to program in order to have fun. If I learn how to program it'll be so that I can become a megarich superstar game dev, not so that I can solve puzzles in somebody else's game.
So why play a game that is quite clearly about IFs, ELSEs and ANDs? The Store page description contains phrases that should have warned me off the game rather than encouraging me to buy it, and yet something appealed. I wanted to play the game because of a single paragraph in Brendan's review:
]]>The holidays are now over, and it's time to get back to what matters - saving a million accident-prone fantasy realms from their own past mistakes, evil gods on the rampage, and all that pesky loot that they clearly don't have anything better to do with than stick it in barrels at the bottom of dungeons. This is why so many of them have no choice but to have bandit-driven economies. Shameful. Someone should Do Something There.
Here's some of the most exciting RPGs due in 2016. I suspect a couple may not actually make it to final release this year, but never mind - 'tis the season to be generous. In no particular order, then, some of the ones I'm looking forward to...
]]>The most dangerous ideas are the ones so compelling, nobody wants to admit they're bad. Also the atom bomb was pretty nasty, but that's a bit out of a weekly RPG column. Instead, let's pick one of the chocolate teapots that people keep mistaking for the Holy Grail - the idea that RPGs can hope to offer anything close to a classic DM experience. It's a terrible idea. It's not going to work. Stop wasting everybody's time.
]]>This week, Larian announced that Chris "Chris Avellone" Avellone would be joining the Divinity: Original Sin 2 writers to help craft what some are already calling "Words". Commenting, Avellone demonstrated his willingness and capability of writing them by writing others, which read as follows: "This is the first time I think the community is responsible for bringing two developers together who might not have crossed paths... and especially for such a great project." There was also a stickman involved.
But of course, this is only one of the many projects that Avellone has signed on for in the next year or so. What more of his magic awaits us in coming months?
]]>Chris Avellone is going to be a writer on Divinity 2: Original Sin [official site]. His involvement was confirmed at the 11th hour of Larian Studio's already successful Kickstarter project - though not as a stretch goal, for once.
]]>Given a choice, I almost always play as a mage. Swords? Pah. Divine magic? Save it for Sunday School. Give me control over the elements, the power to reshape the very building blocks of the universe according to my every whim, and if at all possible, a cool hat. It's an easy fantasy to indulge in almost any RPG out there.
I just wish it was a more satisfying one.
]]>Divinity: Original Sin 2 [official site] has just landed on Kickstarter but we've already played an early build. It's an ambitious sequel, supporting up to four players who will now be able to compete as their objectives overlap and diverge. As well as bringing about the life and death of the party, Original Sin 2 brilliantly overhauls its predecessor's turn-based combat and introduces multiple playable races and an origin system that defines each character's evolving place in the world.
Bold and inventive, it adds complex layers of overlapping narrative consequences to Original Sin's world of interlocking systems. This is how it works.
]]>At Gamescom, I spent some time with Larian and Divinity: Original Sin's Enhanced Edition [official site]. It's almost completely redesigned, adding controller support for splitscreen local co-op, containing considerable rewrites and additions, and retooling everything from specific quests to the entire loot system. There's also full voice acting and a revamped character development system, which should maintain interesting progression right through the end-game.
Pleasing as it is to see improvements to a great game, it's even more pleasing to hear news of an innovative sequel. Divinity: Original Sin II will be coming to Kickstarter on August 26th and we'll be taking a close look at the plans next week. From previous conversations with the devs, I reckon the intent is to push the simulation of the world and I'm hugely excited to see what that involves.
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