Original Sin - Release Date, Patch and Blog

The release date for Divinity Original Sin has been set to the 20th of June, which as they mention in their Kickstarter update is still spring.

Then there is the news on the new update

• Complete overhaul of loot generation matrix. Expect much cooler treasure.
• Added 135 music tracks, including some all-time favourites from previous Divinity games
• Added skill “Way of the Rogue” and a variety of new Rogue skills
• Full overhaul of your Homestead at the End of Time
• You can create different user profiles, so your little brother or sister can play, too.
• Difficulty settings have been added, so players can pick which sort of experience they prefer.
• Added formations, both in turn-based combat and in real-time, for optimal tactical positioning
• All players playing Divinity: Original Sin can now chat with each other, making it easier to form multiplayer groups within the community.
• Added an “Illusionist Mirror” through which you can change your player’s looks in-game
• Replaced “repair” with “blacksmithing” and charm/intimidate/reason abilities by “charisma”
• Amended stats of “Way of the Ranger” skill
• Skill stats now level up with the characters, e.g. a level 1 flare is still useful at level 15.
• Added plenty of new skill visual effects
• Skills now have certain requirements. You can still learn a skill by boosting the relevant ability artificially, but once you lose the boost, you won’t be able to use the skill anymore.
• Full overhaul of all lighting, shading, and zoom. Get up close and personal!
• You can now give commands to each party member independently. Commands will be executed even if you’re focused on another party member.
• Party members avoid traps. Traps can be disarmed with disarm trap kits (an alternative solution to blowing up the trap, which may destroy neighbouring objects).
• Journal now tracks the recipes you’ve learned.
• You can switch between party members while trading.
• There is now an interface to assign companions to other players in multiplayer.
• Several stability and performance fixes were made, in addition to loads of bug fixes. Most of the remaining networking issues should be solved now, too.

They are also looking back to the year after the Kickstarter with a video.

And for a more in-depth look at all that can't quite be summarised in 100 seconds (plus a sneak peak at the Collector's Edition), there is the following video:

And finally Swen has made a new blog entry on the power of crowd funding, the release date and the state of the game.

I’m aware that there’s a lot of negative out on the internet regarding Steam: Early Access, but reflecting on my earlier blog entry in which I was pondering whether or not to release Divinity:Original Sin via Early Access, I think the positives for us far outweighed the negatives, and I think our game is an example of Early Access being a boon both for the developer and the players.

Barring a disaster, we’ll be shipping Divinity:Original Sin in 6 to 8 weeks, the target date being the day before the next solstice, June 20th.

I know we lost a lot of credibility in the release date department, but this particular deadline is pretty much set in stone now, if only for the reason that if we postpone releasing again, we’ll be taking turns at the divorce lawyer. Of course there’s also that other reason and that’s that we’re slowly approaching the stage where the game will actually be ready.

It remains hard for me to figure out what the correct deadline is for this game because it is after all an RPG, which means millions of data fields, and it would be easy to continue working on it for ages. Perfectionism is a disease many of us have at Larian, and it’s something the production-minded people over here need to fight constantly.

In my feeling the game is now at a point where, barring a few thousand bugs and balancing changes, it’s good to go. Anything we put on top is icing on the cake. Don’t get me wrong, there still are a lot of extra features I’d still like to see, but I think that what we have now makes for a rich RPG experience already and more importantly, also makes for a lot of fun. I was watching these 2 guys play last night , and the experience they were having was pretty much what I was rooting for when we start out developing this game. Seeing that confirmed my feeling that we’re very close and so I didn’t pull the new release date in panic, but instead confirmed that we were going to communicate about it today.