Those templates could even be very well known, transposed campaigns from elsewhere. You can prepare scenarios - or import other people's - beforehand and veer off enormously during play. You can level characters up, kill them, possess them, spawn them - manipulate almost mechanic in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Instead, he - on the fly and quite outside of the campaign template he was following - built a prison to detain us in, then created a bumbling but brutish guard who offered a glimpse of hope for escape. But Vincke refused to let our hapless lot die. Nor did trying to impersonate enemy agents while we tried to infiltrate their base. There was a big boom and it didn't go well for us. And nothing was out of bounds.įor instance: our captive goblin sung through the night so we doused him in oil, set him on fire and threw him down a secret-entrance-well to ignite any traps below. Vincke was in control, pausing each scenario while he set the scene and heard what we wanted to do. Nothing was scripted - that's a crucial point.
He used a selection of map drawings, multiple-choice vignettes, forced dice rolls, and of course the game's entire toolbox of areas, enemies and mechanics to bring to life a very familiar campaign. My team of three sat around a table while Swen Vincke, studio founder and creative director, led us through a campaign. Larian demonstrated the Game Master mode to me in London recently (it's not in the Early Access build but will soon be in closed beta - it may not be publicly available until the game's launch). Finally the Game Master mode for Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been revealed - and it may be the best example of one person controlling an adventure, outside of a pen and paper game, I've seen.