Divinity: Original Sin was both a critical darling and critical surprise last year, garnering numerous awards throughout 2014, including GameSpot's PC Game of the Year nod. Its complex, interwoven narrative and layered, nuanced systems created an RPG that hearkened back to the past, but also pointed to the future. And with Divinity: Original Sin II officially announced, Larian Studios is showing off some of the sequel's new and, once again, original ideas.

　　The Belgian studio launched a Kickstarter campaign today. But unlike its crowdfunding campaign for the first game, Larian is only using Kickstarter to fund additional content for Original Sin II. This includes more skill schools, talents, abilities & spells. Everything else is already funded, and in development as of this writing.

　　Larian showed us some of the sequel's new systems, and like those in last year's RPG, they have the potential to drastically change how you play the game--four-player co-op, a new ghost-powered ability system, and a more in-depth character development.

　　To begin with the latter, you'll be able to choose origin stories for your multifarious party. These stories not only affect conversation options and situational outcomes, but also the general population's disposition toward you.

　　"A lot of RPGs claim to have effective origin stories that affect the rest of the story," creative director Swen Vincke said. "But we're really making sure that these backgrounds keep affecting the story throughout, and don't just have these set number of times when it will branch the narrative. We want it to keep changing things throughout the story."

　　During a recent demo, Vincke guided his party toward a town in the midst of political strife. Humans were in the grips of a mysterious murder plot, and because of prejudicial turmoil, racial tensions were high. The human guards allowed most of Vincke's party into town, but forced the "dirty dwarf" to find another route.

　　By selecting the dwarf and splintering off from the group, Vincke found an exterior route around the town. There were giant, poisonous slugs, but by absorbing the ghost of a dead townsperson, the developer used a Source ability to rain down meteors on the trio of gelatinous opponents.One of the group survived, but Vincke doused it in grease, increasing the fire damage to lethal proportions. After continuing onward, he entered the dwarven slums underneath the town. This was a place of outcasts, misfits, and individuals hated by the town's elitist humans above.

　　This juxtaposition was all the more pronounced because Vincke was switching between his dwarf and the rest of his party the whole time.

　　His human thief used his charm and wit to smooth-talk locals; his wood elf killed innocent inhabitants to interrogate their ghosts and absorb souls for later use as Source abilities; and his human sorceress, whose practice of questionable magic dropped her from the noble birth she came from, returned home to find she wasn't welcome.

　　All of this played out in about 20 minutes, and as Vincke switched seamlessly between his four-person party, he described how this would play out cooperatively--or competitively--with four players.

　　"You can send your partners poisoned health vials, stab them in the back, or turn NPCs against them," the creative director said. "It can affect the game in so many ways, and even now, we're learning things about our own game as we continue to work on it."

　　Vincke said the team is aiming for a late 2016 release date, but isn't averse to postponing in the name of quality content. As of now, though, I'm excited to see how the cooperative dynamic affects branching storylines, and how the PvP aspects integrate with the overall experience. Last year's entry in the Divinity universe garnered acclaim from multitudes of RPG fans, but Larian Studios doesn't seem content to rest on past achievements.

　　Mike Mahardy on Google+