Loot, Coop, And Switch 2: 15 Things We Learned About Divinity

New information continues to trickle out about Larian Studios’ next RPG thanks to a January AMA held with some of the development team’s leads on Reddit. The game is in full production and the Baldur’s Gate 3 maker is exploring timing around when to show off the first snippets of actual gameplay. In the meantime, we have plenty of morsels to chew on from the latest Q&A, including comments on co-op, companion romances, and a possible Switch 2 port. Here’s everything new we just learned about Divinity.

Hand-crafted loot could return

Loot in Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 was random, but Larian wants to do something more like Baldur’s Gate 3 for Divinity. “The BG3 approach of handcrafting every magic item worked well, and it’s something we’ve always wanted to do for DOS2,” head of design Nick Pechenin wrote. “Something we realized when working on randomized loot for DOS1 and DOS2 is that fully random loot is frequently confusing, so we added more and more rules and premade patterns to make it feel more intentional. In the end randomization did not save us much time.”

It’ll be made in the same engine as Baldur’s Gate 3

Larian will continue iterating on its existing Divinity Engine for the next game. It’s not suddenly moving to Unreal like some other RPG studios.

Native keyboard movement controls?

Head of gameplay Artem Titov simply wrote “no.”

Of course Divinity will be co-op

Following in the footsteps of previous games, the next RPG will also be multiplayer at release. “The amount of players playing together will be depending on the final party size,” wrote scripting director Bert Stevens. “But since modding is planned for this project as well, player[s] will be essentially free to extend this. There is no hard limit to the amount of coop players.”

The goal with gameplay is to “embrace the chaos”

For players who love doing quests out of order and blazing their own path through a game, Divinity will continue Larian’s reputation for accommodating the weirdest player idiosyncrasies. “The first thing we tend to do when playtesting our own situations is run them out of sequence, break them in every conceivable way, and see how far we can push the boundaries of what’s possible,” wrote writing director Adam Smith. “The greatest joy I get is seeing somebody go so far off the beaten path that they assume we’ll have lost track of them, and then they stumble across something that we put there just for them.”

Divinity might have swimming?

One fan asked Larian which new Divinity mechanic it was most proud of and Pechenin gave a cryptic answer. “There was something that bothered me when I explored the starting areas of DOS1, DOS2 and BG3,” he wrote. “It stares you right in the face if you think about it. In Divinity I can finally do the thing I wanted to do in every previous game.” Considering all three games start near a beach, some players think he’s talking about finally being able to hop into the water.

It’s ditching the magic armor system

Divinity: Original Sin 2 introduced a new mechanic to the series by which armor for physical and magic damage were separate. That will, thank god, not be returning in Divinity. “There will be ways to protect your characters from harm, but you will not have to wait before you can use your fun skill on enemies,” Pechenin wrote. “We are still cooking a system that makes sure that you have to work harder to stunlock solo bosses with level 1 skills, but it won’t be tied to damage.”

What about the tone?

The debut cinematic trailer was extremely grim and R-rated. Will the rest of the game follow in that vein? According to Smith, Divinity definitely aims to be more “grounded” and embrace some “folk horror vibes,” but will also still have plenty of humor, tragedy, and other emotional beats. “I laughed out loud reviewing a dialogue this morning!” he wrote. “I mentioned in the answer to another question that a game this size needs lots of tonal diversity.”

How will the camera work in Divinity?

“The camera will work very similar as in BG3,” Stevens confirmed. “So a hybrid of top-down and 3rd person camera!”

Will Divinity finally let you look up at the sky?

Probably not. “There is no real engine limitation to allow looking at the sky,” Stevens wrote. “How the camera works is entirely a design choice. Alternative camera angles are always considered. If they benefit the game, we will for sure add it.”

Divinity is a standalone story rather than a direct sequel to Original Sin 2

While Original Sin 2 retconned some of the series’ previous lore, the new game will take place in that world but tell a separate story. “It’s in the same continuity, but it’s a standalone story,” Smith confirmed. “Long-term Divinity fans will find lots of familiar things but it’s never just fanservice – it has to serve the story we’re telling.”

Companions will have deeper relationships with each other this time around

Baldur’s Gate 3 was great at deep relationships between the player and their party, but less so between the individual companions. More interesting relationships between party members is a priority for Divinity. Senior writer Kevin VanOrd wrote that the team wants “to have more interaction between companions – not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players.”

And be less aggressively horny…

He wrote that the other main goal with the companion writing this time around is “to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural.”