DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN II arrives on Kickstarter

Larian Studios have commenced the Kickstarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin II. This is the sequel to last year's hit RPG.

The new game has sailed past its Kickstarter target of $500,000 less than 24 hours after the appeal went live. With 34 days still left in the campaign, I think we can comfortably expect the final total to be well into the seven figures. However, the video game record set by Shenmue III with $6.33 million would appear to be safe for now.

The new game is very similar to the original, but with the party now expanded to four fully-controllable heroes (as opposed to two fully-controllable ones and two NPC allies in the original). The game will retain its focus on high-quality graphics, physics-assisted battles and open freedom, but this will be joined by the idea of the party occasionally splitting up and engaging in separate, simultaneous narratives. The designers are also working on the idea of furthering roleplaying in video games in multiplayer mode by allowing the players to work at cross-purposes to one another. This is fascinating, although only time will tell how successful they will be.

What is interesting is that, this time around, the basic underlying tech is already in place (and Original Sin II is clearly in a much more advanced state of prototyping than the original was at the same point) so the Kickstarter money this time can go more towards, writing, art and the development of these intriguing ideas of consequence and competing narratives. If Larian pull off what they are promising, this game could be something very special indeed.

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN II announced

Belgian developers Larian Studios have announced that they are working on Divinity: Original Sin II and will be commencing a Kickstarter campaign for the game later this month.

Larian Studios began work on the Divinity franchise with the curiously-titled Divine Divinity, released in 2002. It was followed by an action-focused spin-off, Beyond Divinity (2004), a direct sequel called Divinity II (2009) and another spin-off, Divinity: Dragon Commander (2013) in which the player could engage in combat from the back of dragons. However, the company felt too constrained by budgetary limitations by working in the traditional publisher environment. In 2013 they embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to fund Divinity: Original Sin, a prequel to the rest of the series. This campaign was highly successful and the game, released in June 2014, soon attracted rapturous reviews.

Larian are currently working on Divinity: Original Sin - Director's Cut, a thorough reworking of the game which sees the entire game updated with full voice acting, as well as new quests, rewritten dialogue and descriptions and additional controller support. Divinity: Original Sin II is bigger news, however, with Larian claiming that they could have funded the game with the proceeds from the original game but wanted to go further and make something more ambitious.

If successful, Divinity: Original Sin II will likely be released in 2017 (although based on their speed and the fact some early work has already been done, a late 2016 release may be possible).

Ten reasons you should be playing DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN

Divinity: Original Sin has been picking up some excellent reviews and I'm about ten hours into my own playthrough. Given time constraints and the sheer mind-boggling size of the game (almost all of those ten hours have been spent on the opening town map alone), it may be some days weeks months before I can do a detailed review. So in the meantime, here's why I think you should be checking the game out.

1. There's a clairvoyant bull called Bull. His best friend is another bull called Bill.

2. A key subplot revolves around the cross-social class romantic struggles of two cats.

3. An interdimensional massive threat to all lifekind as we know it is treated as a middling and not terribly pressing subplot for most of the game.

4. Blood conducts electricity, making for some interesting fights when your blood-splattered heroes start throwing lightning bolts around.

5. Early in the game you meet a talking clam which quotes from Moby Dick.

6. Zombie enemies occasionally sport the names of the person they used to be (like 'Rob'), to make you feel slightly bad when you splatter them.

7. You create two PCs instead of one, and can have them spend the whole game bickering with one another if you want to explore the duality of your own psyche. Or merely accelerate your own inevitable mental breakdown.

8. It has the best combat seen in an RPG since Baldur's Gate II.

9. It's basically the product of an unholy union between Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Ultima VII, XCOM and Myth (the pre-Halo Bungie strategy games). Simultaneously.

10. It'll more than adequately fill the time until Pillars of Eternity and Elite: Dangerous come out.

Divinity: Original Sin is available on PC now.