One of the many perks of being a PC gamer (which I am not, for the record), is being able to play amazing games before their almost inevitable debut on consoles. Case in point, Diablo 3 and its expansion afterwards, was out a solid year before making the leap to my consoles. At that point, I may have been a year late to the party, but I still got to play something great. One of the latest to make its way to my home console is Divinity: Original Sin, packaged as the Extended Edition.
Extended Edition takes the base game, and throws thousand of tweaks and enhancements at it, then rewraps it and presents it to players on Xbox One, PS4, and even PC. Players who have the “old” PC edition get this update free, too, by the way. The change log is probably one of the longest I have read, from reworked enemies, to new skills, to new grenades, the list is scary-long.
That being said, the core game still feels the same as from how Tony reviewed it last year on PC (link here). The genius behind things like bashing chests open, throwing a fireball at oil to destroy enemies in one fell swoop, and genuine dialog discussions that changed my characters are all there. Most of the tweaks don’t change the groundwork in those ways. The foundation of the game is fundamentally unchanged: here is a rich and beautiful world; approach things however you want without the usual tropes of RPG’s.
Besides enhancing things and tweaking the game, Larian Studios added quests, loot, fleshed out the story, added voiceovers, and put a fresh coat of paint on its baby. Sadly, this is the only part I can’t compare with the original since I did not play it, but a lot of work went into the story and quests. The voice acting is well-done, and it all looks great on my TV.
One of the big perks to this year’s console release is the split-screen co-op. Friends can come over, roommates can come out of the woodwork, or significant others can bask in an epic with you as you play through the game, dropping in and out in a convenient manner. There is a key feature missing however. Every other Xbox game that me and the Mrs. have played has at least allowed her to log in and earn achievements as we play games co-op. In Divinity: Original Sin, she could not log in under her profile and load her character into the game.
Online play works out the same way, as I hopped in and explored with our original reviewer, Tony for a while. Without having my own build to work with, I lost interest in the multiplayer aspect all together, both online and local, as did my wife, so one of the more-touted features fell flat with me.
The redesigned user interface is easy to manage, though, especially for an RPG with so many options. And the dynamic split-screen worked like a charm, though I preferred to have it always split so that if my wife was hovered over something and I was in the vicinity, I could still see what I was doing.
Once again, console gamers are greeted with a grade-A title that has been riddled with a wealth of new content. The couch co-op was a little disappointing, but if your partner doesn’t mind missing out on some achievements or using their own character, it can still bring friends together for a serious RPG with a brilliant open-world.
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