My issue with Godwoken graphic novel and its execution
I think it's time to make it into a coherent post instead of just letting bits and pieces known in asks or random replies so let's go.
Godwoken Graphic Novel was my first contact with the medium. Not great, but it is what it is. Now with several Witcher ones under my belt, it's definitely easier to pinpoint all things done wrongly, misguided, or in a simply disrespectful fashion.
The premise:
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Godwoken - Collector's Edition
Dive into this brand new hardback filled with six brand new adventures; telling the origin stories of Rivellon’s godwoken; Ifan, Lohse, Red Prince, Sebille, Fane and Beast.
Rivellon is coming to the world of graphic novels! Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Godwoken is the accumulated history of the six godwoken of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Who were they before their trails with the Divine Order, or before travelling to the Hall of Echoes? Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone has an origin story.
Explore the events leading up to the start of Divinity: Original Sin 2, from the perspective of all 6 Godwoken heroes of our tale.
This 300+ page full-colour graphic novel will take you on a journey through never-before seen areas of Rivellon. Ever wondered what Fane looked like in the flesh? Curious about Red Prince’s life as the crown jewel of the Forgotten City? Journey with Ifan as the Divine’s right-hand man, and explore the lives of Sebille, Beast, and Lohse up to the moment of the ill-fated Kraken attack that starts the epic tale that is Divinity:Original Sin 2.
Let's tackle down the hydra starting with the heads.
#1 Inconsistencies
Ever wondered what Fane looked like in the flesh?
This is what personally prompted me to buy the book in a spirit of hype-fueled urgency, in collector's edition no less, and free my wallet of more or less 300 PLN (or 6 Witcher Ronin novels - 128 pages each).
I read the entire thing as a zealous inquisitor would the Bible - rapidly losing steam with each flip of the page. Why? Well...
Ifan, a Magister before the existence of Magisters
The Lorebook of D:OS2 states plainly:
1235 AD
The Divine Order after Lucian
Under Lucian, the Divine Order grew large, and after his death it grew fractious. Its core function remained – to serve the Divine – but Lucian was no more. Without a leader, the Order began to fracture. Without a Divine, the Order struggled to protect
the people of the world from the Voidwoken. The hope brought by Lucian’s hard-won
peace was soon replaced with despair amongst the people and tension within the Order. Resolving this conflict is one of the most pressing issues for the Order’s new leader – Alexandar, Lucian’s only surviving son.
That Magisters as a fraction of the Order existed only after Lucian's death. What's more, we know that before this schism happened - Lucian's Order consisted mostly of Paladins - we play as one during the events of Beyond Divinity (1238 AD). So if Ifan served under Lucian well before that time (Chaos War 1233 AD) he'd have to join the Divine as a Paladin - most of which were of noble descent but did not overlook gifted and dedicated recruits of other walks of life. Recruits, as opposed to Magisters, Paladins are said to go through meticulous military training before joining the ranks proper. This notion may or may not be inspired by an older organization - Source Hunters who are known to train in Academies as far as 4 AD. Meanwhile, we see Ifan wear a Magisterial Red-Gold-Silver combo as opposed to Paladin gold and white
Old Paladin design:
(the picture limit might kick my ass in this post but I want to include as many sources as possible)
Naturally, this inconsistency extends over every Magister we see in Ifan's chapter.
A notable technical inconsistency on pages 5-9 | 13-14 is that Lucian's eyes randomly flicker between normal, human ones and Divine all-white sclera, and his cloak disappears in the panels on page 5
A bard and a....who?
Now, this is not my own complaint, but my boyfriend frequently pointed out that Nick's appearance is quite random and was not mentioned in the game at all. While I can excuse it with Lohse's memory going more or less blank during her 'episodes' and the indication that Nick might not be real at all - I see it could be jarring to introduce a character this important with no covering in the base material. While Loshe's chapter is among the few that get their job done quite well storytelling-wise I will discuss a few instances from here in another segment regarding worldbuilding and pop-culture references.
An assassin in the pale moonlight
Not much to add here either, my biggest irk is visual and regards Sebille's hair color that is portrayed as black while the concept arts and key arts show her with brown hair. And maybe that the Needle is, in fact, a dagger and not some intricate lizard war needle was a bit disappointing, and that her tattoos are mixed together on her arm while they should be separate, but in comparison to other inconsistencies, they really are minor. Kudos for getting the D:OS1 goblin designs spot-on. It was a breeze of fresh air to see accurate portrayals. Again, just as with Lohse's chapter, the biggest sin is not in writing per se, but in the graphical portrayal of certain things that I will discuss at length later.
Beast o' the seas
Honestly, besides Isbeil not looking like herself, there's not much negative I can say on Beast's part. And I am RELIEVED to say that. The old sailor deserved that much. His story suffers only from constraints (like all of them, this SHOULD have been a series) Gods bless Beast's chapter.
The Spouse of the Sun
Once more, his part works. Minus the horrorscape/dream snippet - Sadha looks nothing like her in-game model or concept art, plus on page 254 the color of her scales looks green-ish? Sometimes you just can't have everything. Still, a positive overall.
The scholar of a bygone....oh God
I bitched, I bemoaned, I wailed and I cried over the mishandling (mutilation?) of Fane's chapter and the vitriol in me threatens to overflow still, so let's get straight to it.
If Elves in Ifan's chapter could speak in their own language, so should Eternals - Including the differences in Fane's name (Fane is a 'placeholder' he picked in place of his own, and Xantezza is referred to Xantessa in old sources)
Architecture......just.......no. Just for formalities' sake.
The appearance of the Eternals......Gods please, anything but 80s fantasy standards (especially when the concept arts are so detailed)
The King audience should be played off differently (maybe not in front of the WHOLE court (full of randos?? Where's Aetera??)
I also expected Harina to be there with him.
CRIMINAL LACK OF AETERA IN FLESH I REPEAT - A CRIMINAL LACK! It's even a more slap-to-the-face that she's included in one of the additional arts at the end of the Collector's Edition
Eternal Guards should not probably wield swords and look like background characters from The Red Prince's chapter.
Dallis should have been playing with her mask - a good opportunity to explain HOW IN THE HELLS DID HE DO IT WITHOUT ETERNALS DYING OFTEN TO GIVE HIM A CORPSE/FACE TO MAIM
Fane's wife is ugly - the only win in this chapter (I know I know, I'm joking no I am not)
Fane's laboratory......point 2 and let's move on.
Eternals had paper (or a substitute) - in the form of scrolls, yes. But not BOOKS to permanently record knowledge - that is what tablets and memory banks were for! PLEASE.
The Seven...Point 3. I beg of you.
The concept of food as shown in the secret meeting panels is quite questionable. We know Eternals feed on Source (Source Vampirism is their racial skill) and that their digestive systems seem to be 100% efficient (hence why Fane is appalled by the concept of advanced digestion later on) so ????
Why are the Guards tying him with a linen rope like it's a bondage session?
The tombs that look...nothing like the tombs we see in the game! Neato!
Oh, so now Fane can distinctly speak Eternal and not be understood...? Okay...Okay?
Fane in-game > abhors violence, feels bad about purging that other guy dead. Fane in the novel> Hello, would you like to talk to the handaxe I pulled out of nowhere? Also being the brilliant wizard that I am?
If a knife and a face were all that Fane needed to make his mask, his bitching in Fort Joy would never have happened.
His elven face looks nothing like the one in the game (it does in my copy of the book, I sharpied it)
And now, the absolute cherry on top...
Let's point something out. In Ifan's chapter - Ifan's wolf is shown. In Lohse's chapter - Lohse's Maddening Song is shown. In Sebille's- break the shackles. In Beast's and TRP - both demonic stare and tempest are used. So please do tell me, why in cold hell is Fane's MOST unique ability of them all NOT SHOWN AT ALL. We still don't know HOW he mastered time manipulation! Why! Nothing!
#2 Worldbuilding and pop-culture references
A graphic novel is a finely controllable medium - unlike a videogame, the consumer has generally only one way of interacting with it - reading. Now, every panel should move the story further but while this is the core function of a comic what happens in the background has an equally important role - building a wider picture. The buildings, peoples, and things happening in the background can be just as informative as the foreground. The question is: do we want to fill a section with informative details or cram in as much junk as possible? Godwoken novel's approach is very lax in regard to worldbuilding, up to a point where relatively important information gets replaced by a joke. By no means should there be no humor in graphic novel layouts, but there are more or less apt places to do it.
Let's look at this particular scene from Sebille's chapter - it's quite a powerful moment in the whole scope of her character. I'd like to note that Mindaran is the elf she was made to kill within the pages of the novel - a list of her victims was kept on her right arm and the names on the left - were the ones killed for revenge. But, well, maybe it was an issue with running out of pages and was done for brevity's sake. Let's let it rest.
What, in my opinion truly detracts value from this scene is all the funky 'reference' names written on her arm. Rubus is the nickname of the artist - less known and quite within reason (and within bonds of the history of artists' signatures). Boromir and Drizzt however share none of those excuses. It feels somehow disrespectful, especially in the context of Sebille's tattoos to put random pop-culture names in there. Was she the one to kill Boromir? Really? On a more serious note, this wouldn't be too bad if we had other, unbiased source about Sebille's victims - but it just so happens that we do not and somewhat important information (to us - lore enthusiasts, and to Sebille herself) gets buried for the sake of a quip.
There were definitely better places to make these references than Sebille's skin.
Same with Lohse's chapter and the reference to the Hobbit. I love Hobbit as the next child raised on Tolkien's stories (it's even a school lecture where I come from - the only fantasy book on our reading list)
But I'd much rather see a reference to older Divinity, rather than a completely foreign universe. Zandalor's character is a walking reference to Gandalf! Why not use him here with Arhu as Bilbo.
I haven't seen anything similarly tactless in Witcher novels, and they were filled with references to the brim! (Several ones made me pause and re-evaluate the context to get them, but it was amazing to have that 'eureka!' moment)
And this pretty much wraps up my feelings about the novel. A lot of goodwill executed terribly poorly and with, well, I'd like to say profit in mind, but that would warrant a series and not one-shot book, so maybe with a riding-the-wave tendency instead? The book did come out whole 3 years after the game too, so there was more than enough time to reconsider the direction, but seemingly not enough time for quality control. (As a side note, my book was bought in 2021 and it's already falling apart - the hardcover really wants to go its own way after sporadic, careful use). I think by then Larian already was in the BG3 deal, and if they really wanted (just like Witcher devs) they could find a studio to handle comic distribution for them and get the Divinity fans something to latch on to during Baldur's development. Not to mention it would be a great solution to filling or straightening up the plot holes and bridging the gap between old and new lore. Alas, it is what it is. Pity.
A study based on the Voidwoken Delegate dialogue - a key moment in Fane's origin.
We've all been there - picking a slightly off dialogue option and reloading a save to say whether there is a better option and where it leads. Sometimes it yields satisfactory results. Sometimes - nothing changes.
To quote CDPR, “Sometimes the illusion of choice is simply unavoidable, but it might often be better to lean towards a more linear narrative flow and instead of choices, to focus on making a bit great using other techniques."
Because what is the point of a choice if it brings nothing of value to the story?
This is how this particular dialogue tree unravels. Note how two options [2. and 3.] bring absolutely nothing to the conversation - whilst 4. only gets a filler add-on.
Not much would be lost by cutting out options 2. and 3. and 1.3 and all of this additional but useless writing could be used to answer actually important questions. Fane's family? Who is the King and why he has such an affinity with the Void? A lot of potential is lost on creating an illusion instead of stating important facts.
Naturally the later choice - [Covenant] - is in general limited to two outcomes that I did not include (for clarity's sake). It gets more complex depending on whether Fane is the avatar or companion, adding a little more dialogue to the equation - a linear one (since the how you persuade him does not matter at all. You do not even get the option to stand down and not try to persuade him at all)
Me and @aetherneadraconis have finally figured out the (possible) order of canonical months, mentioned across the whole spawn of the series. Enjoy your daily bit of lore!
Aventuris - Your hair is winter fire, Aventuris embers
Junar
Germinet (Latin germinō - to sprout, to bud, to grow)
Aurantion
Rubren
Vernis - D:OS2 and D2 happen somewhere around here[Lucian's Day]
Fengali (English fen - a low and marshy or frequently flooded area of land)
Sembten (English septi- prefix: sept- seven, having seven)
Octavianus (Greek octa - eight, having eight)
Aventurim (Latin aveō>avent - desire, wish long for, crave / Middle Low German âvent -evening the day before an event, especially a holiday)
