It could be chess. Or it could be totally different game. I was taking about the concept itself, thee is no reason to be mad.

If you include any mini-games, please make them strictly optional. I think at least 90% of the mini-games I have seen are a terrible waste of time (and the developer's resources), and in my opinion, tying mini-games to the player's progress along the main storyline (like it happened in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) is a severe design flaw.

However, I would appreciate a few well-placed puzzles, mysteries and/or riddles. And in a game with turn-based combat, they should not be time-constrained in any way, please. As you might call them mini-games as well, they should only appear in side-quests which you don't have to complete if you want to beat the game.

Solving crime mysteries is something I think would go very well with D:OS, it can offer a lot of interesting dialogue options and it's not that often a part of role-playing games.

It was in DD for example, with dukes murder, elrath and the plague, and so on.. I have no doubt there will be at least the same level of thorough thought-through questing, it's (i believe) one of the things larian is best known for, good and decent storyweaving.. Imho anyway ^^

What are you people most excited for? D:OS or DC? As long as no new content is released I'm going for D:OS. DC still has a lot of potential though. I just hope the battlefield won't be too repetitive.

More excited about Original Sin definitely. Although Dragon Commander will be something weird and fun and out of my comfort zone and I may very well not even like it, but it's worth a shot.

I thought of something for the wishlist, and it has to do with quest depth and outcomes. I like multiple ways to solve quests, but not just good/neutral/bad (Bioware) or succeed/fail (most other games, including many but not all quests in previous Divinity games). What I'd like to see is "failure," so to speak, not be something you reload to avoid a "failed quest" entry. Instead I'd like it to be something that creates a new path through the game. Life in the game-world just keeps going on, certain "mistakes" are just things you did and learn from.

The best example I can think of offhand is in Chapter 2 of The Witcher. There's a whole mystery quest with suspects, evidence, and eventually an autopsy. It seems like there's about 20 different ways you can solve this quest, and many of them involve getting stuff just plain wrong. Drawing wrong conclusions from evidence and accusing the wrong people. Missing evidence and clues entirely. Not learning about anatomy and botching the autopsy. Or stumbling into a crypt and discovering the truth by sheer accident.

Each path has its own way of guiding your character towards the truth. No matter what, as long as Geralt is still alive, you didn't mess up. The kinds of quests characterize both Witcher games. You always progress, just often by very different paths (and not the shallow good/evil stuff). I guess I'd like to see an approach like that in Original Sin.

Yes that was a very nice one. I let myself go and accuse kalkstein the alchemist. It took an hour or so to reload an fix that. (semi) irreversable mistakes are loveley. They force to start a game over and over again... This time i'm gonna do it right!

What I don't like is that good/evil is balanced. I'm just saying cause I just can't help myself from playing the good guy. And because good/evil rewarding is balanced I do it over and over again. Can't help it! I believe this was mentioned before: balance good/evil reward but not in every choice; this one evil more interesting, this one good more interesting, so only the total picture remains neutral.

Finally, I hope there's gonna be some randomness. When I was a kid I liked playing humongous entertainment games. Some quests altered each time it was played, forcing the player to have go trough a different adventure each and every time, until you has seen it all.

I believe all 3 of these should enhance the replayability of any game.

Yeah, cool, I think you got what I was saying. Except part of my point was that you shouldn't feel like you have to reload to fix things (and in your case you didn't have to. You could have still solved the mystery and Kalkstein would still be available for other quests). But it definitely enhances replay value.

Can we have a house again which the players can own ? And decorate ? Just like in Divinity 1 ?

And a chest there where we can store our trophies ?

Or decorate the house with our trophies ?



Edit : Taken from a Rewview (linked at RPGWatch right now ) :
http://www.gamercast.net/e3-2012-original-sin-preview




Question : If we can have 4 different players, then,

why not give them editable dialog fields where they can insert their own replies ?

(And need to press the "Okay" button to send them to the other players who currently participate in the currently ongoing dialog-based discussion.)

That's an interesting idea, but it might be a little TOO much like a Tabletop RPG. I mean, in the single-player mode, a dice roll determines which choice is picked. Players could type anything in, but would the game translate that into consequences, or would it just be a chat program which doesn't influence outcomes?

D:OS hands down, been waiting for that one since DD and BD

..although DC seems very interesting, and I for one don't mind venturing in strategy from time to time..I think what they can accomplish with DC is very special, a whole lot of people I know that are saying, wtf is that game, I must try this ^^ . Maybe one of the hardest things to do is get certain types of players out of their comfort zones (me f.e, now I'm playing DKS and loving it, but waited for ego draconis from the moment it was announced, played 15 mins and said yuck no these controls are not my cup of tea, although I wanted to love it so much) willing to try something imho completely wacked and not their regular gaming experience..

Ofcourse it helps that Larian is building a firm reputation of stepping up to the plate with it's games, and if it's not good enough (D2:ED) they just fix it <3 awesome

More on special items, inspired by another Gameplay Classic, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Using items to pass boundaries

RPGs usually have soft and hard boundaries woven into them, to keep players on a more or less certain path. Soft boundaries are things such as level, loot, or coins. The players would have to invest a certain amount of time or work before they could reasonably progress in the game, i.e. beat a boss or traverse a higher level area without getting killed on sight. They are called soft boundaries because players can get past them eventually, maybe even earlier than the intended point of time in the story. Hard boundaries are impassable cliffs or invisible walls or story related blocks (the town's gate is closed because -insert arbitrary reason here-) that keep players where the devs want them to be.

Zelda featured objects in the game that were hard boundaries, which changed into interactive elements once you acquired particular items.

An example: You'd have boulders sprinkled all over the game map that block paths. Some of them would block interesting places you want to get to. You'd wonder how to get there. Once you acquire the Power Gloves in one of the dungeons, you can, from that point onward, lift all white rocks all over the game map, allowing you to get past them, opening up new areas, shortcuts or secrets. It's not a one-time thing either.

Most of the items in Zelda had a special gameplay function that were, once found, used throughout the game (bow to activate far-away switches, harpoon to haul in items across a distance, lamp to ignite torches or navigate in completely dark rooms, bombs to blow up cracked walls).

Now, I realize that in an RPG those functions would probably be replaced by skills and spells. But still, the boundaries themselves were refreshingly different from story- or engine-related boundaries we usually find in RPGs, making the game world more interactive in a fun way.

Reminds me of how maps and compasses were used in earlier RPGs : You had to aquire/buy/find them in order to get their benefits.

I miss these times.
Hell, first Gothic haven't had a player marker even, if I'm not mistaken. The only RPG in 200x that used this concept. Everything else is from 90.

I like to see in D:OS maps you can find for finding your way out of a maze .. without finding the map you can lost your way !! But of course, a 'note' at the entrance of the maze give you a warning it's a maze
Or even at first start NO maps of the world: but if you fidn or buy some maps they're automatically included behind the buttom "maps" or something

In Skyrim you've also treasure maps, but not good done . I hope a treasure map give some "written info" by a drawed map too ... or like in DD it was nice done !

I could imagine a map which one/you can buy or find ... It marks the place of a very good, yet very well hidden Inn in he wilderness (this seddenly reminds me of a certain house in Divinity 1 ... )and it remains hidden (read : unspottable) without the map ... But with the map there suddenly pops up a dialog option within this game : "Look, honey, are my eyes daft or is this really an Inn over there ? There, where the rocks hang almost over that cliff ?"

like this story, magnificent idea Alrik ! Hope Larian can include most (or some of) of all the ideas that start appearing at the Original Sin threads
At least I hope we can make many kind of adventures with "the Editor", many options for fantastic & funny things to include ourself

The more I think about an Editor for a RPG the more I'm delighted about it !!
It times I was a child playing with LEGO bricks I mostly "building up" things and break them down agian to build up something new ... again & again ... and sometimes I played a kind of roleplay game with my LEGO knights ! (still, I have all the LEGO bricks stored, it's nostalgy )

Please also include that one in the game as tutorial.

Hey Larian, is there a chance for a "side quest" competition?

The best idea for a side quest would be included in the game as a reward [obviously]

Five stars post.