The magic of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons is just how flexible it is.

Image: Larian Studios Capturing the freedom of D&D Baldur’s Gate 3 will inform you that you’ve failed the check (just as a dungeon master would), but you won’t know what you’re failing to spot or where it happens to be. A die icon will appear above characters to see if their Perception skill is high enough to notice a poison trap on the ground. Sometimes these dice rolls happen passively. The screen will literally show the die as it spins, informing you of your fate, just as it would in a tabletop D&D game. If you’re really charismatic, maybe you’d only need to roll a 3 or higher. The higher your skill, the lower the required number on the die. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can have a high Persuasion skill, but you’ll still need to roll a 20-sided die to determine whether you’re successful.

The guard requires 4 Persuasion points, and if you have that, congrats, you’ve convinced him! All you’d need was the requisite level in your Persuasion skill. In Original Sin 2, let’s say you wanted to convince a goblin guard to let you through a gate. Rolling dice is a major element in Baldur’s Gate 3. There are other moments in Baldur’s Gate 3 that make the connections to D&D far more explicit, and they offer the largest departures from the Divinity games. (That’s D&D-speak for the number you’d get after rolling two six-sided dice.) The result is the same it’s just presented somewhat differently. In Baldur’s Gate 3, that same sword would be listed as, let’s say, 2d6 damage. The infusion of the D&D franchise into the Original Sin model is evident in a handful of ways, none of which result in massive gameplay changes.Ī sword in Divinity might be listed as dealing 12-18 damage. Image: Larian Studios What’s different from Original Sin 2? If you had told me this was Original Sin 3, I wouldn’t have been shocked. You can still set pools of oil ablaze with a well-placed fire spell (a Divinity staple), and you’ll still do more damage by reaching a higher elevation.Īfter watching the demo, Baldur’s Gate 3 feels like it has 80% of the DNA that Original Sin 2 had. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can still use the physics engine to shove someone off a high ledge (or drop a heavy box on them), as you can in the Divinity games. Meanwhile, in the Divinity games, environmental interactions and reaching high ground are integral strategies that can make or break a fight. Mostly, playing Baldur’s Gate was about casting spells, swinging swords, and doing direct damage. Combat all took place on the same plane or level, so elevation wasn’t a concern - and there weren’t any environmental interactions (a fireball turning a pool of water to steam, for example) either. The original Baldur’s Gate engine, designed in 2D, had no physics to speak of. In Divinity: Original Sin 2, for example, I can sneak up behind an enemy guard standing at the top of a wall and push him off with a physics-based shove. So it makes sense that Divinity developer Larian Studios would tackle the return of the storied franchise.īut there’s a problem with that: The Divinity games play very differently from the Baldur’s Gate games. Image: Larian Studios Divinity with a D&D coat of paint?ĭivinity: Original Sin and its sequel are stellar modern takes on the classic computer role-playing game (CRPG) genre, originally made famous by games like Baldur’s Gate.

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