What’s New in Divinity Original Sin 2’s Definitive Edition? What You Need to Know
Last year, Divinity Original Sin 2 made a big impression, earning critical acclaim for its brilliant tactical gameplay, deep role-playing mechanics, and awesome storytelling. Now, just with the first game back in 2015, a new Definitive Edition brings the game to console. But it isn’t merely just a port. Developer Larian Studios has both tweaked existing systems and added plenty of new content. Here, we’re breaking down everything that’s new in Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition.
Tutorial
Divinitiy Original Sin 2 is a complex RPG, and Larian Studios noted that they’d perhaps given players an almost unfair amount of information to take in over a very short space of time at the beginning of the game. For that reason, there’s now an added deck on the ship you start-out the game as a prisoner aboard. We highly recommend paying attention!
Streamlined Menus
First and foremost, having been reworked to suit a gamepad instead of the original mouse and keyboard controls, the inventory and quest journal have been given a complete overhaul. In Definitive Edition, the game gives you much more feedback and reminders to help ensure you’re not getting overwhelmed with information. That’s handy when you don’t have a mouse to flick between menus quickly.
Overhauled Arena Mode
Definitive Edition includes an overhauled version of the Arena Mode, which introduces 16 characters, each with their own unique skills and abilities, including the likes of Malady, Zandalor, and Radeka. There are two different modes you can play within the arena spanning PvP and co-operative, such as Classic Death Match, Kill the King. These can be played across 13 different maps (5 brand new Arenas unique to Definitive Edition). There’s even a pass-the-controller hot seat mode in which you can share the action with buddies on the couch. Within each Arena, you’ll find various chests that can be looted for special items, and mutators alter your characters special abilities during.
And there are now Mutators, which players can use completely alter the flow of battle with each new round.
New Story Content
Definitive Edition doesn’t just alter and introduce gameplay mechanics, there have been major changes to the story content too. In particular, new characters, dialogue options, and big changes to the third act and an entirely rewritten epilogue.
“Almost 150k words of text have been changed and we’ve recorded over 130k new words, fixing some voices and text that weren’t quite perfect in the original game. We’ve created new situations and dialogues to give you a greater sense of reactivity across the world, and have bumped up our use of the tag system across most conversations. Finally, we’ve worked on the personal journeys of the origin characters, polishing their quests and situations to better communicate how your decisions impact their story.”
For those that preordered the game on console, there’s also a new quest involving murderous squirrels that you can enjoy (it’s free to download for PC owners).
Combat
Larian has reworked the balancing on some of the game’s fighters, especially in the earlier portion of the game. They describe the challenge curve as flowing better and avoiding harder spikes of difficulty. Some new battles have also been added.
Performance and Music
The Definitive Edition makes changes to the game’s physics engine and general performance. There’s also been a bit of a remix for the score, with certain tracks now playing in different areas.
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