i finally finished dos2.... thoughts ft. drawings + choice playthrough phone notes (spoilers obv)
my godwoken was an elf witch named allegory. he ended up as a necromancer/hydrosophist combo. blood damage + healing was a fun mix! odd contrasts <3
his backstory, 2 me, is that he was lost in a marshland as a little kid, and tir-cendelius saw the chance to keep him isolated (seeing off any potential rescuers, magically expanding the marshes every time he tried to trek out and leading him in circles) + raise the perfect tiny loyal godwoken for when The Time was Right. he let him out when he was an elf teen. t-c should have kept him longer because if anything it just made him weirder when he got reintegrated into society a couple decades later. F
what if your god grew you in a petri dish to [major game spoilers, redacted]. but you were a capricious little know it all with a jester's soul. what then
gorry took sebille, fane and ifan with him because i thought he would assemble a team of hot emos if given chance. this paid off + i love them all dearly
i wasn't expecting the origin characters i didn't take with me after act 1 to UP AND DIE. but it actually added a really good set of stakes. responsibility for ur actions. lohse yelled at me for leaving her to her fate and i felt SO bad. sorry miss thing
LOVED the worldbuilding....i was super familiar with 5e before i played bg3 so i sort of knew what was coming most of the time but for divinity i had to LEARN. super fun. 100% recommend
also i thought bg3 went in on the body horror but divinity was Something Else.
^ and then larian said okay that was fun what if we do it again. and made bg3. anyway
i was hideously bad at combat for ages until i listened to all the people on reddit chanting 'put points in warfare' and then it was much much much more doable lol
ngl i actually very much prefer dos2 to bg3. i loved loved loved bg3 but after like 4 playthroughs during various patch stages it was such a relief to play a game that's actually completed and won't eat my laptop for breakfast!!! first two bg3 files i had i couldn't make it to the lower city because the optimization on mac was so diabolical that it wouldn't actually play until after patch 5. dos2 lets me also have photoshop on my computer. and files that aren't bg related. miraculous
but even ignoring technical issues: from a story and world standpoint dos2 felt way more expansive and inventive. campy but also harrowing in a way that bg3 just didn't hit for me. i also genuinely enjoy being given a zillion pieces of almost overwhelming info and then sorting it out so i am biased. may expand on this at a later point and not under a mile long read more. moving on
romanced fane bc i loved his voice acting and i thought the culturally cannibalistic elf/the one guy with no flesh to eat bit was funny. jokes on me i fell in DEEP. u canonically have disappointing sex because hes simply made of bones without nerves and afterwards he takes notes. he calls u dear heart offhandedly in act 1 like it's nothing then goes right back to being aloof. how many more times does he have to tell you? he has business in the blackpits. he spends the whole game having an increasingly worse time. he's a loser. it's all his fault. he got me. he got me good. god damn
my game glitched (?) and even tho he rejected sebille (sorry baby) her and allegory still made out right before the big final choice. no option not to. then he had the expected epilogue with fane. poly ending canon enough for me!
also the music was bonkers good and the audio direction in that one battle in the final act? mwah. and dallis' va knocked it out of the entire park.
last thing here's a gorry i drew when i was still back in act 1. 180 hours ago. titled on my phone as 'praying at every altar so i always come out on top'
anyway if u made it this far: thank u. go get divinity: original sin 2 when it's next on sale. wise wise wise choice of £6.99 <3