• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Kickstarter: Divinity: Original Sin 2 [Over, $2 million funded]

From the sounds of it you get all 4 party members right away, you all start locked up in prison.

It would be great if all co-op players started off alone in different locations. Their first real mission is to reach a sanctuary or inn to meet up with the other players.

This first mission would serve as each players tailored game tutorial as well as impart the sense that the world is big and alive and that it doesn't revolve just around you - that each player has their own story to tell from the outset and that stuff is happening elsewhere other than 'here'.

Similar to the Dragonlance books that start off with all the main characters meeting up at the inn in Solace (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) , after years of pursuing their own quests and trials, with the real adventure unfolding once they're all reunited beside the fireplace.
 
Swen is so adorably enthusiastic.

You laugh, but look at the art direction from their prototype area. Lots of muted colours and earth tones. The bright colourful aesthetic seems to have been tossed out unfortunately.

It looks like it's normal colored stuff with a color grade filter over it, just like a ton of areas in D:OS. I'm not sure I'm convinced it's going to have a notably different style.
 
It would be great if all co-op players started off alone in different locations. Their first real mission is to reach a sanctuary or inn to meet up with the other players.

This first mission would serve as each players tailored game tutorial as well as impart the sense that the world is big and alive and that it doesn't revolve just around you - that each player has their own story to tell from the outset and that stuff is happening elsewhere other than 'here'.

Similar to the Dragonlance books that start off with all the main characters meeting up at the inn in Solace (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) , after years of pursuing their own quests and trials, with the real adventure unfolding once they're all reunited beside the fireplace.
I sort of assumed the origins would start off people in different areas, and then they'd all meet up somehow at the end. It would give a chance for each character to establish their personality and differentiate themselves from one another before meeting up, which would be invaluable in multiplayer and cool in singleplayer.
 
Swen is so adorably enthusiastic.



It looks like it's normal colored stuff with a color grade filter over it, just like a ton of areas in D:OS. I'm not sure I'm convinced it's going to have a notably different style.

We still have the bush disguise as the sneaking animation, so I'm sure it will still be a silly game, we don't have to worry.
 
20,902
backers
$944,284
pledged of $500,000 goal

Original Kickstarter officially surpassed.
 
2m+ easily

Kickstarters always have a bathtub curve to them, especially with the "Remind Me" button activating in the last 48 hours.
 
2m+ easily

Kickstarters always have a bathtub curve to them, especially with the "Remind Me" button activating in the last 48 hours.

People know this bu ti think they are talking about how the curve is going away because everyone is pledging sooner now on these games. Bards Tale IV was completely front loaded and barely had an ending bump.
 
Depends on the stretch goals; if they can nab Avellone's services or include NPC scheduling as stretch goals then the sky's the limit.
 
It looks like it's normal colored stuff with a color grade filter over it, just like a ton of areas in D:OS. I'm not sure I'm convinced it's going to have a notably different style.

To be fair, the campaign does say they're going for a more serious and "grounded" story this time round, whatever that means. I'm sure there'll still be some crazy Larian humor and wacky Larian settings, but by and large I would not be surprised if they're trying to be taken more "seriously" as a major RPG franchise like Witcher or whatever. For better or for worse. Lol.
 
$2M? They're already almost to a million in less than a week. I'd say $2.5M or higher

Nah, funding almost always dies after 4 or 5 days. Especially for games with high visibility.

Big projects tend to make 50% or more in the first few days. So long as this gets a bump at the end, I'm thinking it'll stop a bit short of $2M
 
Hope this comes to the consoles. Need more RPG's like this and less of... whatever we're getting at the moment.
 
Can Divinity 2 handle four player splitscreen or is it limited to two players? Beyond the technical challenges, I feel like the UI would be unworkable with four players on one screen.
Hope this comes to the consoles.

Here's hoping the console port of the first game sells well!
 
I'm only about 6-7 hours into the first one. Really enjoy the combat but got bogged down fucking around in the first town looking for the murderer. Finally said "fuck that" and go out of the town and now getting into some fights.

Checked out the KS and really amazed to see some of the higher end amounts gone (though not the top ones). Someone has some serious moolah out there.

I've never actually backed anything on KS before, but I'm definitely interested in pulling the trigger here.
 
People know this bu ti think they are talking about how the curve is going away because everyone is pledging sooner now on these games. Bards Tale IV was completely front loaded and barely had an ending bump.

Yeah Bard's Tale IV was surprisingly front loaded and caught me off guard when it remained flat after the first few days and didn't get the normal last two or three day bump. So it will be interesting to compare this to Bard's Tale IV.
 
Will be interesting to see how it's ratio compares to the other high funded games of this year.
RWXEcCl.png
 
I think in Bard's Tale IV's case it was more to do with it being a remake of a game in really small niche (I would consider RPGs a niche, but dungeon crawlers are an even bigger niche). Most people probably haven't even heard of Bard's Tale (except maybe the one with Cary Elwes - which is nothing like Bard's Tale 1-3 which Bard's Tale IV was following up on). I would imagine it didn't have a big bump at the end because anyone who was interested in it pledged at the beginning and it wasn't exciting enough to attract more people.

This kickstarter is following a game that is more recent and more well known than the Bard's Tale series. Divinity: OS coming to consoles also helps spread the word of mouth so more people would be aware of this game. Now, it just depends on how interested people are in the stretch goals to want to pledge by the end.
 
Yeah Bard's Tale IV was surprisingly front loaded and caught me off guard when it remained flat after the first few days and didn't get the normal last two or three day bump. So it will be interesting to compare this to Bard's Tale IV.

I think Bard's Tale's problem was that there isn't a very large group of people who really care for or desperately want another Bard's Tale game specifically. The momentum the KS had at all was down to Inxile's brand name and involvement with projects people actually wanted. Once that was over, there didn't seem to be much real passion left in the fanbase.

On the other hand, D:OS2 is a sequel to a well received current title. There's still a ton of goodwill and excitement, and they're playing their cards right with the new features and additions. I think the momentum will be similar to Shadowrun Hong Kong, but on a larger scale.
 
Will be interesting to see how it's ratio compares to the other high funded games of this year.
RWXEcCl.png

I think in Bard's Tale IV's case it was more to do with it being a remake of a game in really small niche (I would consider RPGs a niche, but dungeon crawlers are an even bigger niche). Most people probably haven't even heard of Bard's Tale (except maybe the one with Cary Elwes - which is nothing like Bard's Tale 1-3 which Bard's Tale IV was following up on). I would imagine it didn't have a big bump at the end because anyone who was interested in it pledged at the beginning and it wasn't exciting enough to attract more people.

This kickstarter is following a game that is more recent and more well known than the Bard's Tale series. Divinity: OS coming to consoles also helps spread the word of mouth so more people would be aware of this game. Now, it just depends on how interested people are in the stretch goals to want to pledge by the end.
Yeah, Divinity is unique in that regard. All those other campaigns were for a new IP (Crowfall) or a spiritual successor/sequel to some older classic game.

While this is a sequel to a popular modern game.

It would be better to compare this to a campaign like Shadowrun Hong Kong. Second campaigns to successful recent games that were also Kickstartered
 
I think Bard's Tale's problem was that there isn't a very large group of people who really care for or desperately want another Bard's Tale game specifically. The momentum the KS had at all was down to Inxile's brand name and involvement with projects people actually wanted. Once that was over, there didn't seem to be much real passion left in the fanbase.

On the other hand, D:OS2 is a sequel to a well received current title. There's still a ton of goodwill and excitement, and they're playing their cards right with the new features and additions. I think the momentum will be similar to Shadowrun Hong Kong, but on a larger scale.


That is pretty much my take on why the Bard's Tale IV kickstarter had the funding pattern it did as well. Well that combined with the problem that dungeon crawlers seemingly appeal to a pretty small niche of players to begin with. Though that is why it will be interesting for me at least to see if my hypothesis is correct and that Bard's Tale's problems were mostly unique to it or if the arguments I have seen that say that inXile was a known quantity and that meant you didn't have a large amount of fence sitters waiting until the last minute to jump in hold water.
 
The projects where the first-three-days share of the final total goes significantly over 40% tend to either be niche campaigns that mostly appeal to a pre-defined demographic (like Bard's Tale), relatively mismanaged (Yooka-Laylee did a notably poor job at engagement down the stretch), or simply so huge that they run out of possible backers (Torment and Shenmue 3 both fall in this category.) Two of these factors definitely don't apply to D:OS 2, and I would be surprised if they seriously mismanage the campaign given their efforts so far.

If this winds up a 33% project it'll end up at $2.7 million. 40%, which I think is in the probable range, would get them to $2.2m. Even 50%, which would be very unusually frontloaded for this project, would still get them to $1.8m. There's basically no way they'll come in under that, and they're almost certain to hit $2m.

On the other hand, D:OS2 is a sequel to a well received current title. There's still a ton of goodwill and excitement, and they're playing their cards right with the new features and additions. I think the momentum will be similar to Shadowrun Hong Kong, but on a larger scale.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong was 38% in the first three days, a rate which would put D:OS 2 just shy of $2.4m.
 
Unless the marketing/PR team self-destructs and brings the campaign down with it, I can't see this Kickstarter not passing $2M mark. I see it ending between $2.2M-$2.4M at the moment, but Stretch Goals can always push a campaign past early expectations.
 
They should make all the currently wrought stretch goals----beyond that, it comes down to whatever they cook up for Updates/additional Tiers, Influential figures bringing more attention/crossover buys from other big cRPG Kickstarters since they've already surpassed at least their older raw numbers outright even if not likely to be anything close to a 100% retention rate, and any stretch goals beyond the currently listed.

Doubtlessly off to a good start, all just depends from here.
 
Interesting charts. I can't help noticing that Pillars of Eternity is very balanced.

Josh Sawyer must have had a hand in that.

Larian said:
Jimmious: Those just happen to be the ones we can't do. NPC schedules & cycles would make what we're trying to do very hard and require a bigger team than we have. Voice recordings I would love & I'll fight hard for it, but given the amount of dialogue we have, it's going to be tough. We recorded 7 months non-stop for D:OS EE & that was after the game was done. If we're going to have to add that much time to D:OS 2's development, I might be undead myself by the time it's finished

So sadly no NPC schedules & cycles and no fully voice-acted dialogue in D: OS 2. Don't really care about the dialogue but I had really hoped for the schedules to be implemented this time, too bad.
 
To be fair, the campaign does say they're going for a more serious and "grounded" story this time round, whatever that means.
The charm of D:OS was partly due to its light-hearted stories and locations. It blended well with its imaginative gameplay. It was also something unique in the age of Tolkien-derived WRPGs. I hope Larian sticks to their strengths for the sequel. We already have enough WRPGs with "mature" storytelling. Divinity should remain something unique considering that. Just my two cents.
 
The charm of D:OS was partly due to its light-hearted stories and locations. It blended well with its imaginative gameplay. It was also something unique in the age of Tolkien-derived WRPGs. I hope Larian sticks to their strengths for the sequel. We already have enough WRPGs with "mature" storytelling. Divinity should remain something unique considering that. Just my two cents.

I dont want "mature" storytelling, I just want mature storytelling. That doesnt mean serious or melodramatic.
 
Josh Sawyer must have had a hand in that.



So sadly no NPC schedules & cycles and no fully voice-acted dialogue in D: OS 2. Don't really care about the dialogue but I had really hoped for the schedules to be implemented this time, too bad.

A. I don't mind reading.

B. Saving money is good.

C. NO ONE HAS AS MANY FRIENDS AS THE MAN WITH MANY CHEESES.
 
Glad to see this game is getting a sequel, have yet to play the first. Does anyone know if I could run the first game (or on an unrelated note, Pillars of Eternity) decently on a macbook pro? That's all I'll have access to for a good while.
 
Playing through the first right now with a friend. Phenomenal game, definitely on board with the sequel. Probably won't back cause I just got fired but I will buy day 1 for sure.
 
Glad to see this game is getting a sequel, have yet to play the first. Does anyone know if I could run the first game (or on an unrelated note, Pillars of Eternity) decently on a macbook pro? That's all I'll have access to for a good while.
Played it on a macbook air and it ran fine
 
So sadly no NPC schedules & cycles and no fully voice-acted dialogue in D: OS 2. Don't really care about the dialogue but I had really hoped for the schedules to be implemented this time, too bad.
I don't care about the VA at all, but too bad about the day/night cycle. At least they seem to have some idea of what they can and can't do in time this time around :P
 
I don't really care about day/night tbh. Usually it just means "now you have to wait/sleep to finish a quest because you have to do it during the night/day"
 
Also, with how densely packed Cyseal was, if all the NPCS were moving around all the time it would have been a nightmare to navigate.
 
Top Bottom