Divinity: Original Sin II - Post Release Interview

[Silver]

PCGamer interview Swen Vincke on the future of Divinity: Original Sin 2.

I met the developer's founder Swen Vincke at this year's Gamescom and, with just two weeks to go before launch, he seemed calm. I caught up with him again last week, three weeks following Divinity: Original Sin 2's launch, to see how he feels the game is doing, what he wants from its flourishing mod scene, and what it's got planned into the future.
Swen Vincke

Swen Vincke is the founder of Larian Studios, whose back catalogue includes the likes of Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga, and Divinity: Dragon Commander. We scored Divinity: Original Sin a healthy 87 back in 2014, and its follow-up Divinty: Original Sin 2 92 last month.

PC Gamer: How are things at Larian Studios at the moment?

Swen Vincke: Quiet. Most people are on their holidays and [patch 3] is a big one. We're start working on patch four next and slowly people will start returning from their holidays and we're gearing up for our next things.

I presume these were well-deserved holidays.

Absolutely. They gave their everything to make the game as good as they could.

When we met at Gamescom you seemed pretty chilled out for someone who was on the cusp of releasing a game. Were you as calm inside as you appeared outside?

[Laughs] Not really. I actually wasn't planning on being at Gamescom and then a couple of things happened that got me to be there. And then I was there for a day and a half. The madness was at its peak at this point and at that particular time we were focused on bug fixing. Given how large the game is we were trying to get as many players through it as possible.

According to SteamSpy, you sold somewhere in the region of 700,000 sales in less than three weeks.

I think we're over 700,000 now.

That's not bad going.

No, it's not. We could definitely do worse. I mean, we had the early access players before that too. Lifetime total units: 748,000 on Steam, and then you have to add the pre-release ones on there. Wow, that's higher than I thought, that's really good.

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More information.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

Look at Larian making some big money. Congratulations, Larian. It is well deserved.

 

[Dez]

It's always nice to see "the good guys" win. Hopefully Larian can now keep making more awesome rpgs.

 

[Silver]

I'm really curious about their big surprise. I hope they don't keep it a secret too long.

 

[Hastar]

I don't know if I should buy this game on GOG or Steam? I would rather support GOG but the Steam Workshop seems like it was made for the DM Mode.

 

[Myrthos]

If you want to DM games then I think Steam is the way to go.

 

[rjshae]

Presumably they have people working on their next big project. Maybe another Kickstarter is on the way?

 

[Hyperion]

I don't know if I should buy this game on GOG or Steam? I would rather support GOG but the Steam Workshop seems like it was made for the DM Mode.

There are a couple of good mods in the Workshop for anyone starting out. It's not an easy game starting out, even if you have experience with the first game. It's very good, don't get me wrong. But one of the most serious flaws is that it's badly unbalanced in the early going. For instance, if you meet up with level 2 or 3 enemies and you're the same level, the enemies will have a ridiculous amount of armor compared to you.