Changes Coming to Divinity Original Sin 2 in the Enhanced Edition

Divinity Original Sin 2 launched to universal acclaim in September of 2017. However, the developers at Larian Interactive are not content to rest on their laurels and have been putting in some serious work for the upcoming Definitive Edition of the game.

They previously talked about the changes coming to the UI as well as a massive rework of the often confusing journal system.

In a new video on their YouTube channel, the team explains how they spent a lot of time collecting data and reading on forums looking for issues with the game. They have focused on fixing the pacing of the late game; revamping the goal and XP curves from Act 2 onwards and rebalancing the armour in all fights. Some fights have also been reworked and they are adding new fights to the game as well.

The tutorial section in the original threw a lot of information and game mechanics at players at the same time and this ended up overwhelming a lot of people. To alleviate this, Larian have added a new deck to tutorial ship to gradually introduce players to the many mechanics present in the game. This includes new areas to explore as well as new voice acted characters.

A new, more casual, difficulty called Story Mode has also been added to game. This mode is intended for players who want to focus on the dialogue and spend less time in combat. Players will be able to change the difficulty at any time during the game.

Lots of changes have also been made to Arx, the final story act of the game. A lot of the story has been rewritten to give a clearer indication of everybody's motivations, this includes both player characters and the characters in the world around them. The end game has been largely rewritten to be more reactive to decisions made by players earlier in the game.

There will also be some entirely new content coming with the Enhanced Edition as free DLC. Larian have added a new "mini companion" called Sir Lora. Sir Lora is a Squirrel Knight and he comes with his own trusty (skeletal cat) steed. He also has his own story arc revolving around his quest to stop the coming of the Great Acorn. Players will need to have the Pet Pal perk in order to make sense of what he's saying. If players do not have this perk, Sir Lora will still follow them around and communicate with a series of "eeps" and "peeps"

Larian now has four studios around the world all working on unannounced games. Judging by the quality of their previous work, I cannot wait to see what they are doing. Hopefully I will have gotten around to actually playing through the Original Sin games before their new projects come to light. I'm still hoping for a Switch port of both games, but I might have to settle for PC or another console soon.

Divinity Original Sin 2: Enhanced Edition will release this August on PS4 and Xbox One and will come as a free update on PC to players who already own the base game.