14 DAY TRIAL // It’s been a year since the Divinity: Original Sin Kickstarter campaign hit water, and the developers are getting ready to make an important transition in the game’s life cycle.
Next week will mark the Divinity: Original Sin graduating from alpha to beta stage. That’s right, the beginning of April will gift players with access to a major content update on Steam, and those who tried the game out earlier can expect a lot of changes and fixes.
To celebrate the occasion, Larian Studios has released a new developer video, running 23 minutes long and outlining the upcoming changes and additions in the beta. The video takes gamers on a tour around the offices, with the developers speaking about what each department has been up to and explaining what players can expect in the upcoming beta.
In short, the update will unlock new explorable regions, a greatly expanded character creation toolset, with more presets and enhanced visuals, tons of new talents for player to improve their characters with and a lot of new spells and skills with which to face enemies in battle.
Apart from that, gamers can also expect improved AI and new enemy tactics, along with hundreds of bug fixes, improved loading times and better stability.
There will also be a host of cosmetic improvements, the April update bringing new and upgraded visuals, new special effects, as well as new music and improved cooperative dialogue systems.
For now, the team has decided to postpone the implementation of night and day cycles for the full launch of Divinity: Original Sin, as they decided to allocate the resources toward improving stability and resolving known issues in the alpha.
Although the decision will no doubt disappoint many backers, the team hopes to make it up to them with a content heavy and bug free release that will function smoothly from a technical point of view.
For those interested in further reading concerning the team’s decision, Swen’s blog holds a much more thorough explanation.
Swen and David will be hosting a livestream on the Divinity: Original Sin Twitch.tv channel next week, on Monday, March 31, at 16:00 GMT, ready to answer any and all fan’s questions regarding the incoming beta, as well as offering a preview of the new features to those who do not have backer access to the game.
We had a sneak peek at the Divinity: Original Sin on Steam Early Access back in early alpha, for those who want to see how the game looked and felt like back then, and we’re looking forward to getting our hands dirty with the beta.
