It must be pretty busy in the offices of Larian Studios these days. Not only is the development team working on new titles, they’re also adding a bunch of new content to hit RPG Divinity: Original Sin.
One such addition that will please fans of the already rather tricky game is a new ‘Hardcore’ difficulty mode. This will give enemy mobs new skills and tactics to use against you in combat, forcing you to change up your existing strategies.
Larian’s Swen Vincke reveales the new mode in the lengthy, and very Christmassy, developer video posted above. It’s one of a few changes mentioned, alongside controller support and fixes to the game’s slightly broken economy - presumably this will stop paintings of cows being worth more than magical greatswords.
Anyway, Hardcore mode. There’s a whole process by which Larian are trying to identify how players fight and the tactics they use, with the idea being that cunning enemies will be able to counter those preferred moves. Good luck countering my patented ‘fireball to the face’ attack, chaps. Though to be honest, after working out the kinks of Original Sin’s combat engine, I think another level of challenge might draw me back to the game. Especially if Larian also follows through on its promises to make companion stories and banter more interesting.
There’s no date for all this extra content yet, but Larian is promising a slightly less exciting (but still welcome) bug-fixing patch for early January. We’ll keep our eye out for any other tidbits from the studio, including what those new games being built on the Original Sin engine actually are… It’s certainly been a big year for Larian.