The Divinity tabletop game is perfect for the most chaotic Baldur’s Gate 3 fans
26.02.2024 - 15:59
/ polygon.com
Before it set the role-playing world ablaze with Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios sent a considerably smaller, but still sizable, portion of video game role-players into a tizzy with its Divinity: Original Sin series. Itself a spinoff of the studio’s long-running Divinity franchise, Original Sin and its sequel charmed players with tongue-in-cheek storytelling and a Rube Goldbergian approach to fantasy battles, one where swinging a sword wasn’t the wrong way to play, but it certainly wasn’t the best one. Larian preferred its players create gonzo chain reactions on the battlefield, throwing barrels to spill oil over enemies who had tripped over ice because you froze the water underfoot and will now set them ablaze.
Baldur’s Gate 3 fans know this feeling, and Divinity: Original Sin fans really know it. It’s a big part of the appeal of Larian’s approach to RPGs: seeing the whole world as a violent set of magic dominoes to tip over in an elemental cascade. It makes sense, then, that the first tabletop adaptation of Larian’s work would lean hard into this experience.
Divinity: Original Sin the Board Gametakes its inspiration from Divinity: Original Sin 2, in which the player can choose from several “Origin” characters with bespoke backstories to give their session unique flavor. These backstories were often more compelling than the main plot — a generic magical crisis is nowhere near as immediately interesting than the arrogance of a disgraced lizard prince out to reclaim his honor or a traveling bard who shares her head with a demon. You’ll find all those characters from Original Sin 2 here, with a few extra to choose from to form a party of two to four players with.
But more importantly, you’ll find Divinity’s tabletop incarnation wants to hook you with its chaotic combat first and the narrative hooks (which are very much there) second. Thanks to a pretty great playable tutorial that instructs players to take only what they absolutely need from the box, Divinity throws players in the thick of things, immediately tasking the party with taking on some guards on the prison ship you’re all trapped on.
Divinity is both elaborate and elegant — every player character and enemy has cards, trackers, dials, an assortment of fiddly bits and bobs that borders on annoying until you cross the threshold of understanding (a blessedly quick trip), where all of those trackers and tokens and cards go from laborious admin to the satisfying tick-tick-tick of game clockwork. Each character’s starting set of abilities and talents all smartly fit together in ways that immediately evoke delicious combinations.
An example: Let’s say you’re Sebille, a badass elven assassin with some Dark Shit in her backstory. Sebille’s