Why Divinity: Original Sin might be the RPG you've been waiting for

Swen Vincke is a menace. I'm trying to solve a mystery, something that may or may not be a murder, but he seems much more interested in wandering off, in petty theft or in getting into fights. When I try and help him out he has a habit of setting me alight, knocking me down or simply getting me killed. "Whoops," he says, as he prepares to resurrect me again. He insists these are accidents.He's supposed to be a fellow adventurer, another member of the party, but he has a mind of his own. He's far more interested in following his own agenda and, right now, that agenda mostly involves experimenting. He tells me there's a lot in Divinity: Original Sin that he doesn't yet know about, that he hasn't seen, and he likes to have some distance between himself and his team so that he can be more objective about what they're adding to the game. It's more fun that way, he says. It's cooler. He likes the surprises.He wants to show me all these surprises, too. "Try this," he says, or "Go here; pick up that; use this item." It's not just that he's excited to show me Larian Studios' latest project, it's that he thinks I might not spot many of these things otherwise. I might not expect them. Vincke's team have been trying to pack Divinity: Original Sin with a host of different concepts, systems and ideas. They're mixing together what they think are the best elements of many other roleplaying games and hoping their dough rises into a big, crisp, bountiful loaf.http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/art...x-1/quality/80It wouldn't be an RPG without gruesome combat.

And baking bread is just one thing that Vincke mentions when I ask him about the game's many influences. Chief among them is Ultima 7, a 20-year-old classic that Vincke says was something of an evolutionary dead end. "In my opinion, nobody made an RPG that actually improved upon Ultima 7," he explains. "That was my fix. That was what I was looking for in every single RPG since. I saw fractions of it, but I never saw it all again."What Vincke is talking about is the variety and the interactivity that Ultima 7 demonstrated. It gave players a world where, as well as taking on quests, fighting monsters and exploring the wilderness, they could manipulate, combine or craft with most of the items they found. The world itself could also be altered by player action and just about any character killed, regardless of the ethical or mechanical consequences. Its plot was open-ended. It gave players a lot to play with, without prescribing how they should play.It's that same level of complexity that Larian are aiming for and, while I'm busy chatting my way through dialogue trees or pouring over my character sheet, Vincke's keen to show off all the items he can craft and combine. That, and the many ways he can use magic to cause havoc.A plank of wood and some nails become a club. Meat can be cooked. Heavy items can be dropped on pressure pads to trigger traps. I'm free to grow my character's skills as I wish, but if I decide I want enjoy a little spellcasting then I open up another world of prankish possibilities. Blasts of chill air turn water to ice and send attackers skidding, while searing magical heat can turn that water to vapour, obscuring lines of sight. A zap with a bolt of electricity then turns this into a dangerous static cloud.Individually, all these elements are interesting, but it's when they come together that Divinity: Origin Sin's potential leaps out at you. A vapour cloud isn't just useful in combat, hiding you from a party of advancing monsters, it could also give you the cover you need to commit a quick theft and leave your reputation intact. There are, Vincke says, multiple ways to solve many of the game's problems and, should one approach fail, there will still be others available.

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