Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the perfect immersive sim?

About a year ago I became interested in classic RPGs and during this time I gained a lot of interesting experience. I managed to complete both rather boring games and real masterpieces of the genre. One of the first was Pillars of Eternity. Although I liked the plot in it, going through tedious walls of text with descriptions of every detail of the environment was, to put it mildly, not very pleasant, and besides, the whole matter was made worse by the boring combat. And recently I completely completed the giant Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which surprised me with its huge variability in the development of the plot, without introducing anything new in terms of gameplay. But among them there was one pearl that really caught my attention, which made me spend a hundred hours on it, without letting me get bored for almost a minute. It was Divinity: Original Sin 2. And all thanks to its immersiveness and how much freedom it gives. And then the story will mostly be about her.

In this essay, I want to talk about the gameplay of new classic RPGs, how Larian Studios managed to make their game so similar to an immersive sim, how this affected its reception and why other cRPG developers should take a cue from Original Sin 2.

A little about immersive sims

Perhaps, before we begin, it’s worth understanding a little about who this immersiveness of yours actually is. I think everyone has heard about immersive sims and what they are. Dishonored, Thief, Deus Ex and other popular series of the genre, loved due to the freedom they give players, a large number of opportunities to interact with the world, a special approach to level design and variety of passages. This is what immersion is all about – making the player feel like a part of the game world and its rules, giving freedom in using mechanics. In the words of Warren Spector, “It’s all about how you interact with a relatively complex environment in ways that are interesting to you (not in ways that developers think are interesting) and in ways that move you closer to achieving your goals (not the developers’ goals).”.

Although immersive sims are considered a separate genre, their gameplay formula can be perceived more as a philosophy that can be applied to any game without turning it into a full-fledged immersive sim. Well, now let’s get back to our game. I believe Divinity: Original Sin 2 can be called the most immersive classic RPG the world has ever known. And then I will explain why.

What makes Original Sin immersive?

Sven Vincke’s words about Original https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/ybets-casino/ Sin 2 – "Everything that can be used can be used" – quite accurately reflects its philosophy and the approach of the developers themselves to creating a world. The possibilities for interacting with the environment and characters in it are almost limitless. Whatever you want to do, it will most likely work out. The creators provide so many opportunities to interact with objects in the game in different ways that the degree of interactivity of Original Sin 2 is not inferior to an ordinary immersive sim. Let me give you a few examples. There is a barrel. And there are tons of ways to use it. It can be thrown by telekinesis at enemies, and with the help of barrels filled with oil, water, poison or fog of death, you can, accordingly, set fire to the battlefield, extinguish it, poison living characters or even kill all living ones. They are also used as an ingredient to create just about anything. And this is just one item. In OS2 you can destroy any obstacle that has a life bar. For example, a door. You can humanly hack it with a master key (or an undead finger), but no one will forbid you to simply break it and go inside.

Finally, my favorite example is the teleportation gloves (or the corresponding spell), which can be used both in combat to move enemies and party members, and in exploration of the world to overcome obstacles or get to unreachable places.

This reminds me of the GIPS cannon from Prey, which allowed you to create makeshift ladders to get into hard-to-reach places, as well as stop enemies or put out fires. Thus, the creators do not force the player to use exclusively one way to solve puzzles, but give complete freedom in using the available tools and mechanics. ​

This versatility makes the game deeper and more interesting. This forces the player to think along the lines of "what if I try to use this here"?». And thanks to thoughtful game design that takes into account a variety of approaches, such questions and the experiments that follow will give the player the satisfaction of having found a new creative way to solve the puzzle on their own.

One day I came across the fact that the bridge leading to a remote island was destroyed. Mistaking it for the only way, I used teleportation and still managed to get to it. Only then did I find a ferryman who could easily take me there..

And the main thing is that no one will directly tell you about all this. You yourself must figure out all the possible interactions with the world using the available tools, observing the environment and characters, experimenting. I think this approach is cool and correct. Immersive Sims have always been valued by those who like to independently understand all the rules of the game world and the available opportunities. And there’s no denying that this immersive element only benefits the game, giving the game a sense of discovery and making exploring a hyper-interactive world much more interesting and exciting. The creators not only give freedom in choosing ways to overcome obstacles, but also encourage creativity with unique dialogues and rewards. Because of this, you don’t want to leave the game for a minute, plunging deeper into studying its world, just to discover something new, solve a complex puzzle or figure out how to outplay its creators, master all the ways to use mechanics and use objects.

A little about battles

Unlike immersive games, it is impossible to constantly avoid battles in this game, but battles can also be made more immersive and exciting by developing arenas and their surroundings, each time influencing the development of the battle in a new way. The recent Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous failed to captivate me as much as OS2 did, and that’s because it doesn’t have that. When developing an RPG, you should always remember that you are making a game first, not telling a story. I can’t say that the developers of Wrath of the Righteous spent little time working on the gameplay, but I personally got bored with the battles in it pretty quickly. And the fault for this is not so much the real-time battle system itself (it can be switched to turn-based, by the way), but rather the lack of influence of the environment on the battle. Battle locations feel simply dead, literally zero interactions with the environment, almost complete lack of verticality. And, unlike Divinity, in Pathfinder I didn’t even remember any unique battles in which you would have to act more creatively than in all other battles, adapting to the new conditions of the arena. Therefore, I think it’s a good idea to do it the same way as in Original Sin 2, where in almost every battle the environment played a role, adding a puzzle element to it. Divinity encourages the search and use of non-obvious “exploits”: here you can use telekinesis to throw objects at enemies, break barrels to create elemental surfaces, and throw enemies into lava using teleportation. The verticality of arenas often changes the approach to combat, forcing you to take a different approach, when the same Pathfinder is much more boring in this regard, like the latest games of the genre from Obsidian. In terms of the excitement of the battles, they cannot be compared with D: OS2, which added immersion to every battle.

Finally, write about the traps

Finally, it’s worth saying that the creators still have room to strive in developing the design of the world, because the game has enough moments in which the player, during exploration, has to act in only one available way. For example, when you need to get a chest standing on a remote island, which cannot be done otherwise than using teleportation. I would also like to see more quests in which the choice is made purely mechanically, without a dialog box. While the environments are well-designed, they sometimes lack little details that tell the story, something you typically see in immersive sims.

Still, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a good experiment in trying to combine classic RPGs with the philosophy of immersive sims. After all, the approaches of these genres are in many ways similar: both try to immerse the player as deeply as possible into their world, only immersive games do this through deep elaboration of gameplay variability, and RPGs do this through narrative. The game takes the best of immersive sims without losing the strengths of role-playing games, which is what makes it so special. I think that focusing on the ideas of Original Sin would benefit many games in this genre. Not all of it will be appropriate in other CRPGs, but at least the approach to the development of arenas for battles will clearly make any project of the genre better. It would be a pity if the introduction of immersiveness into the classic RPG genre is limited only to the innovative creations of Larian Studios, because this can make the gameplay more interesting and varied. And this is the main thing in games.