Video Game / Divinity: Original Sin

Divinity: Original Sin is the fifth (or third, if you don't count spin-offs) entry in the Divinity RPG series by Larian Studios. Taking place over a thousand years before Divine Divinity, it revisits the idea of dual protagonists from Beyond Divinity: a pair of Source Hunters^note both of whom you control in single-player, while in the online Co-Op Multiplayer, you and another player control one each, members of an order dedicated to stamping out a dangerous magic called the Source, investigate a murder in disaster ridden Cyseal. A Star Stone left at the scene of the crime blasts the Source Hunters to a shelter dimension called the End of Time, where an imp and the Weaver of Time recruit them into saving existence from the Void Maelstrom, and maybe finding out why the place seems so familiar.

Originally funded internally, Larian ran out of money in early 2013, leading to a Kickstarter campaign that brought in over one million dollars. The game was released on June 30, 2014, to critical and commercial success. On May 15, 2015, Larian Studios announced an Enhanced Edition version of Original Sin, bringing the game to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Enhanced Edition was released on October 27, 2015 and features better graphics and sound, full voice acting, a slew of new content, and a heavily rewritten story, complete with a brand new ending. Similar to the PC version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, Original Sin Enhanced Edition is a separate product. As a show of good faith and gratitude towards the fans, people who already owned the original PC version before the new release received the Enhanced Edition for free.

Gameplay is an isometric turn-based RPG centered around Geo Effects. For example, the Rain spell can be followed up with a lightning spell to shock every enemy who got wet by the rain for lots of damage and a stun. The game also borrows many elements from Immersive Sim games, as well as encouraging experimentation and heavy use of items, skills and spells to break through tough encounters.

The sequel, Divinity: Original Sin II, also went to Kickstarter, was fully funded in 11 hours, and met all its stretch goals by the end of the campaign.

A third Kickstarter campaign for a cooperative, storytelling adventure Board Game, Divinity Original Sin The Board Game began in 2019 and reached its funding goal in 4 hours.

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The game contains examples of following tropes:

A-K

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Jahan gets to say this after the party defeat a necromancer:
    "May the pain wrought by sword and sorcery stalk this stiff-stirring strumpet beyond the shores of death!"
  • The wishing well's wondrous wisecracking.
• Aerith and Bob: Unusual names such as Eglandaer, Aureus and Arhu coexists with other common names like Brandon, Jake and Evelyn.
• All Trolls Are Different: In this case, they are extremely large, fat, club-wielding creatures whose main vocation is to guard bridges and demand "troll toll" from anyone seeking to cross, for no other reason than their king telling them to because he wants gold. Most of them aren't too bright and speak in a Simpleton Voice (and a zombified troll is so garbled that it's effectively a separate language and needs translating), but at least one troll is extremely articulate.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: If you're having trouble lockpicking some doors/chests, you'll be pleased to know the relevant key (if not hanging on the wall somewhere or nestled in someone's pocket) might be hidden under an object such as a chair, a tub, a pork roast, or even under the chest itself. Useful information if you're playing a Kleptomaniac Hero who breaks into people's houses.
• Amnesiac God: The Source Hunters. Well, they are not actual gods, but in their past life as the Guardians of the Source, they were as close to divinity as mortals can get. As penance for failing to protect the Godbox, they erased themselves from the fabric of time, destroying everyone's memories (including their own) of their past selves.
• Anchored Teleportation: The game has portable magic teleportation pyramids to simplify travel — activating one transports the user and their companions to where another pyramid is located. You find a pair early in the game and can find two more pyramids later.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The Enhanced Edition eliminates some annoyances:
  • When searching chests, wardrobes and various containers you get a floating text saying that it's empty when you point your mouse back on it. Very useful when you're wondering: "Have I already searched that chest?". This feature was actually available before the Enhanced Edition came in.
  • Need to take some water, but you don't have a receptacle? The computer will automatically check your party members' inventories for one. Same goes for crafting, identifying, and repairing equipment.
  • Crafting is done in the crafting window. You have a list of all the recipes you've learned and the ones you've experimented with. It also displays the ingredients you need and the proper level requirements. It's just a matter of choosing the item you want to create and pressing the craft button; no more bazillions of clicking and scrolling to combine ingredients around.
  • Backstabs are much easier to pull off. You get indicators to where you should position yourself before striking.
  • Want to talk to a shopkeeper about something entirely unrelated to trading, yet they are behind the counter and their damn inventory is in the way? They will open up a dialogue box with you instead - that way you won't make the game Unintentionally Unwinnable when the shopkeepers aggro you for accidentally picking up a bowl you did not want.
  • If a character needs to use a quest item but another party member has it, it will be automatically traded via 'magic pockets' without requiring the player to do so manually.
  • Should a character die in battle returning to the End Of Time teleports their body to the player,saving the player from having to go back to the enemies that killed them
• Anthropomorphic Personification: It is implied that the Weaver of Time is the embodiment of time itself.
• Arbitrary Head Count Limit: You can only take two of the four companions with you at a time, though the Enhanced Edition has a mod that allows you to have all four at once.
• Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: Any grave can be dug up but there's one in particular your characters will be hesitant to do the same to. You get no less than two prompts asking you if you're absolutely sure you want to take to it with a shovel. Don't say that you weren't warned.
• Artificial Brilliance: As noted below (see Geo Effects), enemies can and will use the environment to their advantage as well as use certain attacks in tandem. An example would be when two archers fire a poison arrow and then a fire arrow at your character, causing significant damage.
  • Enemies will go around your own pools of hazards. They also heal and buff themselves and make good use of their action points.
• Artificial Stupidity: Your characters are incredibly careless about stepping into fire, poison, and other hazards while under AI control. This gets extremely frustrating after a tough battle (which leaves hazardous surfaces everywhere) and your party automatically regroups, utterly ignoring these areas. Having your character burn to death because he stupidly ran right into a wall of flame to rejoin his comrades (which you cannot stop) is hair-pullingly frustrating.
  • (Mostly) Averted in the Enhanced Edition, where AI-controlled party members are much, much smarter about avoiding damaging environmental hazards and traps and won't willingly enter them unless you force them to, though they will still walk on pressure plates and they won't respond to hazards that appear mid-move (such as hazards created by running over a pressure plate). They also ignore non-damaging environmental effects such as ice and oil, even though they have negative effects.
• Back Stab: It does massive damage, but you must take the back-stabber talent, use a puny dagger and be precisely behind your target.
• BFS: Madora's default weapon and you too can make use of them.
• Big Bad: Leandra, the sister of Icara the White Witch.
• Big Good: The Weaver of Time.
• Bilingual Bonus: The language of Nadia and Sebi's homeland is Esperanto.
• Blatant Lies: The promises made by the Talking Statues.
• Blood Magic: The Cult of Immaculates sacrifices "lesser beings", also called "Lost Ones" (generally animals, but also slaves and anyone the Cult doesn't like) and uses their blood to supercharge inert Star Stones into powerful Blood Stones, which can be used to revive the dead.
• Boss Rush: Once you've reached the Act 1 boss, he resurrects the last three bosses you faced so far. At the same time.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The humble Rain spell can put out fires, burning teammates, or bomb fuses, and the puddles it creates can wash away oil or poisonous gunk. It also applies the "Wet" condition to all combatants, increasing their fire resistance and decreasing their water and electricity resistance; thus, starting up a rainstorm is a great idea when faced with fire-flinging enemies. And then you can charge the puddle you just made with an electricity-based spell to stun everyone in that puddle.
  • Attack of Opportunity - it allows your characters to attack enemies who turn their back or walk nearby them. Sometimes it'll actually end their turns or kill them.
  • Drain Willpower may not seem to have much immediate use, but it's invaluable for making enemies with high saving throws susceptible to statuses that could turn difficult battles in your favor.
  • Bodybuilding may not be as flashy an investment as the skill groups, but it gives you valuable saving throws against potent statuses like Knockdown and Freezing.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: The Enhanced Edition trailer lists a number of new features including wands, dual-wielding, and dual-wielding with wands.
• Canon Name: Well, names and appearances. The defaults for the PC Source Hunters are Roderick (dark brown hair and clean shaven) and Scarlet (curly red hair).
• Cap: Skills haves completely been redone in the Enhanced Edition. They were rebalanced, empowered, nerfed or removed. They're also reclassified in tiers: Novice, Adept, Master. Once you reach the maximum character level, you can only learn a maximum of skills per tiers: 6 for Novice, 4 for Adept and 2 for Master. Choose them wisely.
• Carry a Big Stick: Two-handed hammers fall into this category.
• Cave Behind the Falls: There's a treasure chest in a cave behind a waterfall... with tons of bloody corpses.
• Character Customization: As befits an RPG, the character customization options are many and varied, with an added twist that you create not one Featureless Protagonist but two.
• Character Class System: Subverted: You can select a "class" at character creation, but these are really just predefined templates for attribute, skill point, and talent distribution than actual rigid class definitions. The only definite thing that the "classes" do is give you a specific weapon and set of armor to start with.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Averted. Not only can you save anywhere, you can have up to twenty Quick Save slots (the default is five). So save early, save often.
• Chest Monster: You can come across what seems to be one of these. It's a suicide bomber hiding in the chest itself.
  • One chest in Black Cove will start hopping around lobbing poison at you if you come too close.
• City Guards: A lot, including the expected patrols as well as quest givers. Cyseal is crawling with them.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Madora, the retired Source Hunter you can invite to your party, is a Conspiracy Theorist Talkative Loon.
• Companion-Specific Sidequest: Predefined companions eventually present you with a personal request, such as Madora's vendetta against a certain orc, Bairdotr looking for her mentor, and Wolgraff regaining his voice. Jahan doesn't have a sidequest per se, but if he is with you in a particular late-game boss encounter, his dialogue reveals a lot about his past and lets you affect him in a major way.
• Cooking Mechanics: Cooking is a type of Item Crafting in both games, providing food and drinks that heal and sometimes provide stat boosts. It's notable for having multi-step recipes: Instead of flour+water+cheese making cheese bread, flour+water makes dough, dough+cheese makes cheese dough, and cheese dough on a furnace makes cheese bread.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: When playing online, a friend can join your game at any time and take over the controls of the other protagonist for a while (though, since the game is saved on the server host's computer, the host can impose limitations on what the guest player can do). The devs were so fond of this feature, they included two copies of the game in one of the lowest Kickstarter reward tiers and the Collector's Edition.
• Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth: The game features a surprisingly elaborate stealth system for an RPG focused on Turn-Based Combat, and you will need stealth on at least two occasions. It is also often possible to avoid an impending fight via a Persuasion Minigame, though it gives less Non-Combat EXP than killing the enemies.
• Continuity Nod: Despite being a Soft Reboot, multiple characters and elements from previous Divinity titles feature heavily in this game.
  • A much younger Zandalor (the Gandalf-like Big Good of Divine Divinity) finds himself in a love triangle between two powerful witches, which doesn't end well for any of them.
  • Those who played Divine Divinity may also remember the name Thelyron, the long-dead necromancer who gets resurrected in an early-game quest. Here he's a local healer with a mysterious connection to the undead outbreak in Cyseal. He even commanded the Council of Seven at one point according to a dialogue in Divinity II.
  • This game also has its own Zombie Jake, though whether he's the same one from the other games is anyone's guess.
  • Icara the White Witch and Leandra the Conduit share a soulforge Psychic Link not unlike the central plot device of both Beyond Divinity and Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. Braccus Rex and his sister Cassandra are eventually revealed to have shared one, too.
  • The Death Knights of Beyond Divinity play a prominent role in this game as invulnerable super soldiers.
  • You can meet Bellegar from Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga again, and he makes comments on the Dragon Commander and his jetpack from Divinity: Dragon Commander.
    Bellegar: So hie thee to a store and take a good gander at the amazing spectacle that is Dragon Commander!
• Covers Always Lie: Zig-zagged. The cover art has the female protagonist wearing stripperific armor and was used to about a year. When Larian went to Kickstarter for the rest of the funding, the cries of a group of people taking issue with it forced the artist in charge to change it. Larian still uses the original version for advertising, though.
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: Played straight.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In nearly every console game, if you push the right stick backwards and forwards, the camera angle moves up and down. In this game, the camera angle is fixed and pushing the right stick backwards and forwards makes the view zoom in and out. It may take you a while to get used to this.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Both protagonists. The subtitle of the game refers to their past, among other things.
• Deal with the Devil: Jahan made one with a demon 1000 years ago. If you've been evil enough in your playthrough, you can carry out the same demon's dirty work in exchange for a reward or even offer Jahan to him.
• Dem Bones: The skeletons are resistant and immune to many attacks, such as bleeding, poison, piercing and so forth. The skeleton archers are nasty as they can shoot Trick Arrows. you can also summon them.
• Dig Attack: Giant Spiders have a Special Attack where they dig into the ground, come out behind their target, bite them In the Back, and dig back to their original position. This allows them to go straight for the Support Party Members, ignoring the frontline fighters and attacks of opportunity.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Iron Maiden inside Boreas' prison talking about "craving the fires of desire", along with the number of red-blooded men "invited" to penetrate her.
• Downloadable Content:
  • The Source Hunter DLC Pack. It adds two in-game items: The Golden Grail, a chalice that can recolor items gold and slightly increase their sell value, and "Zandalor's Trunks", a pair of magical underwear that comments on whatever is going on. The better part of the deal is that the DLC Pack includes design documents for the game, a digital portfolio of concept art, and the game soundtrack.
  • Two new characters were released as part of a patch on September 15, 2014: Bairdotr, a female ranger from the Homeforest searching for a missing druid, and Wolgraff, a male rogue who lost his voice due to a Sourcerer at a young age and turned to less savory work after being rejected from the Order.
• Dual Wielding: Introduced in the Enhanced Edition, you can use a one-handed weapon in each hands, including wands.
• Dueling Player Characters: Having a low reputation with Bairdotr will cause them to turn on the party after reaching the boss at the end of their personal quest, potentially making an already extremely challenging fight outright impossible. Thankfully the encounter is also entirely optional and can be postponed indefinitely.
• Early Game Hell: Averted if you know what you're doing, but even then, the first 6 or so levels are absolutely brutal, due to limited funds, not a heck of a lot of options, and generally being weak as hell. Even with skilled use of the environment, the outer edges of Cyseal can kick your ass extremely easily.
• Electricity Knocks You Out: Many Shock and Awe powers and electrical Geo Effects can inflict the status effect "Stunned", which costs the target their next turn. It's easy to accidentally stun your party if you carelessly cast one of such spells while a puddle or even a pool of blood is in your vicinity.
• Elemental Absorption: Some high-end equipment can offer 100% resistance to all elements when worn together. Also applies to many bosses and Boss in Mook Clothing enemies late in the game, to the point where your spellcasters may have no way to inflict damage in certain fights. This encourages you to construct your party carefully and gives a relevant role to non-magic users.
• Elemental Embodiment: You can summon them to fight for you. You can also buy elemental skillbooks from them in the End of Time.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Played with. Earth/Poison, Fire, Air/Electricity, Water/Ice. Elemental counters aren't simple, though, and using certain sets of elements can create powerful lingering status effects or incredible blasts of damage.
• Enchanted Forest: The Phantom Forest which is filled with undead, demons, cyclopses and other magical creatures.
• Escort Mission: If you choose to help the missing archaeologist Wulfram get back to Cyseal, you will have to complete one of these, as he blindly charges towards the nearest city gate, running into three mandatory undead ambushes, all of which target him by default. At least he doesn't play hero in combat. There's another escort mission in Luculla Forest where you have to protect a stranded couple and their pack beast on their way to Silverglen.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Icara the White Witch reveals to the Source Hunters that the game's apparent Big Bad, the Conduit, is her own estranged sister Leandra. Icara blames herself for the Conduit's Start of Darkness and begs the Source Hunters to find the means of restoring their long-severed Psychic Link so she can attempt to redeem her.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: You not only get the standard human zombie, but get ready for zombie versions of trolls, dogs, boars and much worse. They all leak poison when hit, which actually heals them...
• Exact Words: Of the four Watcher statues, only the Earth statue doesn't suggest something that would do you harm. Instead, he offers to see what lies in your future. Turns out it's the end credits.
• Exploding Barrels: Should you choose to set ooze barrels on fire they will explode.
• Failed a Spot Check: Didn't invest any points in the Perception attribute? Your field of vision is reduced, you might not hear nearby enemies, and you won't find traps, hidden treasure, or some switches.
• Foreshadowing: The main character's mission originally is to investigate the death of a man called Jake. Early in the investigation it turns out his corpse is missing, and someone rapidly suggest someone must've used it for necromancy. If you played Divine Divinity or Divinity 2 you are familiar with the recurring villain Zombie Jake, and you therefore know where it's going.
• Flunky Boss: All over the place. It's very rare you outnumber opposing parties.
• Fragile Speedster: You can spend all your points in the Speed attribute and max your actions points while neglecting all the other aspects of your character.
• Free Rotating Camera: Introduced in the the Enhanced Edition only, there's a "Rotation And Zoom" camera feature.
• Friendly Fireproof: Your arrows and magical missiles will pass through party members without harming them, but grenades and most area of effect spells will hit everyone. Non-magical AoE skills like Dust Devil won't touch allies, though.
• Fusion Dance: In the Enhanced Edition, if you decide to repair Icara and Leandra's soulforge then the two end up fusing together into one person: Icandra.
• Giant Enemy Crab: You'll encounter them in the black cove.
• Geo Effects: Player and NPC alike can use the environment to good effect (or to their own detriment) in and out of combat. For example, puddles of water conduct electricity and smoke obscures vision. Players can also create their own Geo Effects, such as using the Rain spell to generate water puddles or put out fires. There are also perks which can benefit you via Geo Effects.
• Giant Spider: Big large poisonous spiders that love to sneak on you. You can also summon one with the geomancer skill.
  • The Spider Queen is an even larger example, being several times the size of your characters.
  • The Source Nightmare and smaller Mud Hunters are a unique variety; they're found near the water and seem to be half-crustacean.
• Glass Cannon: One of the available talents carries this name, and if chosen will turn your character into this: it doubles your action points but halves your health. Oddly enough, it's actually better to give the talent to Mighty Glaciers like Madora than to conventional Glass Cannon archetypes; they can deal more of their powerful strikes per turn and will still have plenty of Vitality left over.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: The Rift Oglers included in some editions of the game are meant for gazing into rifts. Putting them on yourself turns everything wireframe.
• Goofy Print Underwear: The "13 Star" underwear selectable at the start of the game.
• Grave Humor: The various tombstones.
• Guide Dang It!: The game has a number of puzzles that are only solvable through a great deal of exploration, observation, and occasionally blind luck, with some parts bordering on Moon Logic Puzzle or Pixel Hunt.
  • Braccus Rex will always open combat with a very high-level fire spell, capable of easily wiping out most the player's party (potentially giving them a game over if both Source Hunters die). It's quite easy to work around if you know it's coming, but doing so requires knowledge about both the spell and boss's capabilities that simply isn't available within the game at that point. Particularly brutal if playing through the Enhanced Edition for the first time on "Honor Mode".
  • Despite what the game hints to you, you have to track down Icara's hidden treasure by yourself. While you can save Thuringer the boar and have him sniff it out for you, he never indicates its actual location; if you're lucky he may end up at the right spot, but you still have to find and dig for it yourself (using the shovel from the inventory menu). There's no visual cue and high Perception won't help you this time.
  • Mangoth's sanctuary in the Immaculate Cathedral is opened by pressing four switches in a specific order. Three of them are in spots that can be found by an observant player. The fourth is somewhere totally different and can be nearly impossible to see unless you know exactly where it is.
  • The Source Temple in Phantom Forest is an enormous puzzle dungeon that takes up nearly a third of the map. Figuring out how all the pieces go together can take hours without a guide, since it requires doing several things you've probably not had any reason to do or been outright unable to do until then.
  • Traits don't really do much besides give you certain stat bonuses...except when Bairdotr turns against your party if you happen to have the Obedient trait. The game never warns you about this, and because this quest generally occurs late in a playthrough you'll likely have no remaining opportunities to make your character Independent. It doesn't help that the dialogue options that turn you Independent tend to require you to kill someone or at least be kind of a jerk. You can always avoid this by talking to Jareth without her in the party, or by attacking him outright, but this voids the associated achievement.
  • Getting Madora to forgive the orc who almost killed her requires you to not only possess the "Forgiving" trait but to also give specific answers to her dialogues at several points in the game. Many of these are missable if you don't know what you're doing (like if you complete the Charmed Orc quest before you meet Madora) and if you don't answer enough of them, she won't have a change of heart.
  • Some of the late-game secrets (the ones purchaseable in the End of Time) are so cryptic there aren't even any guides online to help with them.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Kill an opponent hard enough and his body will be torn in half.
• Harmful Healing:
  • Party Members with the Zombie talent are healed by poisoning, but damaged by potions and healing magic.
  • Don't try to use a healing spell on the wounded wollock in Luculla Forest; it'll just make things worse. You need a Blood Stone.
• Have You Seen My God?: The seven gods of Rivellon have disappeared 2000 years ago. Mortals speculate either they are dead or in hiding.
• Heal It with Blood:
  • The cult of Immaculates soaks Star Stones in human blood to turn them into "blood stones", which they then use to give their adepts perfect health and youth, as well as to heal any diseases. In gameplay, using a Blood Stone is the only way to cure the Rot.
  • If you have the Leech talent, you can heal yourself by absorbing pools of blood on the ground.
• Heal It With Fire: Purifying Fire heals a number of status conditions, but can also be used to deactivate an enemy's healing and shields.
• Heal It with Water: Hydrosophist skills grants a character the ability to use water and ice magic, and includes a number of healing skills such as Restoration, Healing Tears and Cleanse Wounds.
• Heel Realization: If you restore her soulforge with Icara, Leandra realizes how evil she has become and leaves without a fight to repent. At least, that's what happens in the Classic Edition; in the Enhanced Edition she merges with Icara and periodically attacks you in the final fights of the game, likely to give meaningful consequences to a choice that most players were going to make anyway.
• Hell Is That Noise: Death Knights, powerful enemies that are completely invulnerable without a certain plot coupon, are announced by the earth-shaking stomping of their armored boots, from up to one or two screens away. Several NPCs who survived encounters with Death Knights find the sound terrifying.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: You can equip each party member with some headgear and it always provides the armor/stat boost when worn, but you can individually set their helmets to be always shown, always hidden, or to only be shown in combat.
• Hitbox Dissonance:
  • Smaller enemies can be a pain to hit because if your mouse slips just a little bit, the game will interpret you as trying to move. This can also apply to obstacles where the game will assume you want to interact with them.
  • Suppose you want to talk with a shopkeeper. They will sometimes wander right behind an item on the counter or hanging from the ceiling when you want to talk with them - resulting in you confusing the game by clicking on an item by mistake. Fortunately, they will instead open up a dialogue with you asking if you would like to purchase that item and there is no penalty for just canceling it out.
• Hollywood Torches: They can be unlit, but you can't destroy them.
• Ice Magic Is Water: The Hydrosophist magical school covers both water-based and ice-based elemental spells (and, incidentally, healing spells).
• Immune to Fire: As with other elemental damage types, the player character can temporarily or permanently raise their fire resistance to 100% by stacking Protective Charms like magic armor, flame runes, Magic Potions, and/or protective spells.
• Impossible Item Drop: Played with. Lowly mooks will drop items they were using to fight while creatures/animals drop body parts or nothing. However, named unique opponents will drop random magic items.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chest: You'll come across many of them outdoor and in town.
• Interspecies Romance: The star-crossed lovers sidequest between a human and an orc. Both are also males.
• Intertwined Fingers: The default protagonists do it on the promotional images. How intimate they grow in the actual game, however, depends on the player's decisions, but the Word of God hints that hand-holding has a deeper in-story meaning than just personal closeness.
• Intoxication Mechanic: Consuming alcohol has a chance to inflict the "Drunk" Status Effect, which penalizes several stats, but does make the character luckier.
• Ironic Name: The Immaculates are named for claiming to be morally and spiritually cleaner than nonbelievers, but because their whole shtick is using blood and gore as religious ritual substances, their behavior and places of deepest worship are objectively filthy.
• Iron Maiden: In the dungeons of the elemental realm of Heiberheim the party encounters an Iron Maiden that talks. She is quite lusty, beckoning you to enter her embrace, but also lamenting that she can only take life. She wants to be pierced instead of doing the literal, deadly piercing. Destroying her reveals a Star Stone.
• Item Crafting: The game encourages experimentation. Sometimes the results are logical: using a whetstone on a sword increases damage. Sometimes the results are outlandish: Combining Swirling Mud and a Fiery Heart yields an Infinity -1 Sword. Then there's the logical but-why-would-you-think-to-try-that, like carving a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern helmet. Tenebrium weapons are nearly required for the endgame. You can use what tenebrium weapons you find, or turn your weapon of choice into one with Crafting 5.
• Jerkass Genie The Watcher statues. They're bound to an area to maintain a seal and essentially amuse themselves by pretending to be genies, telling people they'll grant wishes if do really stupid stuff. Like you'll be able to fly if you jump off a cliff.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Killing someone that isn't currently hostile to you is counted as murder regardless of the target, and sometimes this results in Reputation hits or upset party members. This makes killing people in self-defense the only acceptable way of fighting for a heroic Source Hunter who values their reputation.
• Kill It with Fire: If it's leaking poison or made of ice, yes by all means.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Stealth-oriented characters can take everything that's not nailed down, provided nobody's looking. You can even sell your ill-gotten goods back to the person you stole it from!
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: If you infiltrate Esmeralda's bedroom in Cyseal, you can find her unwashed underwear and actually wear it for a charisma stat bonus. Yes, really.

L-Z

• Level Editor: The game shipped with one, with the express purpose to start up a modding community from day one.
• Level-Locked Loot: Toyed with. Using weapons while you're below the required level will cost more action points. You still need to fill the minimum requirement in strength/dexterity/intelligence however.
• Life Drain: Vampiric Touch in the Witchcraft skill line. There's also Vampiric Arrow for archers, one of the rarest skillbooks in the game.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Demons not only hit really hard, but they can dish out lots of spells and have tons of action points. And if that wasn't enough, they are immune to fire.
  • The Death Knights do massive damage with tenebrium weapons, have loads of action points, cast spells, are immune to fire and have good saving throws.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: Divinity: Original Sin features one-use scrolls that can be used to cast spells not learned yet.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Using one is the best way to block incoming hits, in exchange for the extra damage you'd inflict with a two-hander or with Dual Wielding.
• Made of Explodium: Poison and ooze will blow up if it comes in contact with fire. Setting something that bleeds ooze, like a zombie, on fire will cause it to explode (sometimes multiple times) every time you hit it.
• MacGuffin: The Star Stone.
• Magical Star Symbols: The symbol for the Witchcraft skill, which governs Non-Elemental magic, is a purple pentagram inscribed in a circle.
• Manchild: Norok the orc, also known as Spinebreaker, is stuck with the mind of a child and thus doesn't understand that "playing" with his human victims kills them.
• Mask of Sanity: Eglandaer has the outward appearance of a kindly, yet melancholy old man normally. Once he's alone with someone he believes can help him with his Revenge Before Reason plot, however...
• Medieval Stasis: While this game is a distant prequel to the other Divinity games, it's hard to tell that this actually takes place 1200 years in the past as they appear to be in the same medieval-level of technology and cultural advancement (so to speak, the world is not as explored as other games) as the rest of the Divinity titles.
• Mêlée à Trois: If you head into Black Cove, you have the option of joining a fight already under way between undead pirates and a group of orcs.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Madora is designed to be this, and will likely serve as your primary damage heavyweight throughout the early game and beyond.
  • The Undead Decapitator summon, available to high-level Witchcraft users, has a high armor rating and hits like a falling anvil. This paired with its Taunt skill makes it one of the game's best summons, providing enough aggro to function like an extra party member.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The inciting plot of the game is a mystery about a minor politician's murder, with only alleged evidence of Source hinting at something more sinister. In the course of investigating, an evil conspiracy is revealed to be behind just about every ill to befall the region for years, and that's far from the end of it.
• Multiple Persuasion Modes: Three modes can be chosen in any persuasion attempt: Intimidate, Charm, and Reason. They are all based on the same skill (Charisma), however, so the only difference they make is the slight bonus or penalty you get in the subsequent Rock–Paper–Scissors-based Persuasion Minigame, based on how appropriate the chosen mode in the given circumstances.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Victoria, the orc librarian in Cyseal.
• Mystical White Hair: Icara and Leandra, though the latter's is mostly hidden by her hood.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Spinebreaker, the orc kept under Grutilda's wing with a particularly brutal reputation and the one who tortured Madora nearly to death before a Blood Stone saved her life. As it turns out, he's just a Manchild who thinks he's just playing.
• New Skill as Reward: Your main reward for completing the Luculla Mines level is a unique skill book that gives you the ability to strip Death Knights of their otherwise perfect invulnerability (it is also unique in that it is not consumed upon use, so everyone in your party can learn that ability). A bit later, a side quest also rewards you with another book that gives you the Tenebrium Crafting skill that lets you craft and use Tenebrium gear without getting incurably poisoned (although there are other ways to obtain this skill if you miss it).
• Non-Player Companion: Not only are you controlling two Player Characters, but each of them can hire a henchman or summon an elemental.
• Noob Cave: The cave at the beach. Of course, with open nature of the game you can always skip it.
• NPC Scheduling: The game was supposed to have it, along with a day-night cycle, thanks to beating the final, $1M Kickstarter stretch goal, but despite delaying the release to get it done, the devs ultimately gave up on the idea due to time and budgetary constraints. Neither system was implemented in the Enhanced Edition either.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Subverted and Played for Laughs with a vengeance: near Silverglen's inn, you'll find a man and a woman spouting sultry pickup lines and each offering to fulfill your wildest fantasies for a moderate fee (and bemoaning the lack of customers ever since the prudish cult of the Conduit moved in). Upon payment, they'll lead you to a private upstairs room with a huge bed and lots of candles, lock the door, ask for your preferences (e.g. Ruby, the woman, asks whether you prefer nymphs or witches), and ultimately dramatically read you a passage from a fairy tale book of corresponding (perfectly PG) content. Somewhere, Fall-from-Grace is smiling.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • In Hiberheim you can obtain the Shambling Oak Death Wand, an item that can one-shot a particularly tough type of enemy found in the area and elsewhere. It can crucially be used to take out the Guardian near Hiberheim Castle, skipping an otherwise tedious Mini-Boss that can only be taken out with chip damage due to its high elemental resistances. As a penalty, picking up the item immediately inflicts Rot.
  • After you defeat Leandra, you get her scepter which can one-shot Death Knights.
• Organ Drops: Various animals parts: claws, teeth, tusks, hides, intestines, etc. All these can be crafted into other objects.
• Our Demons Are Different
• Our Dragons Are Different:  The final boss is the Void Dragon. Though it's technically the animate manifestation of oblivion itself, not a flesh-and-blood reptilian beast.
• Our Liches Are Different: Cassandra's true form. Unlike the stock liches from DnD and elsewhere, she still retains the form of a beautiful woman, but this is just a guise.
• Our Orcs Are Different: In Original Sin, they are the green-skinned, proud barbaric warrior race variety. And they're out for blood. They are more ape-like than pig-like (some males develop a baboon-like body plan) and are matriarchal, with females being tall buxom military leaders.
• Out-of-Turn Interaction: Creatures with the Talent "Opportunist" automatically make an out-of-turn attack when an enemy in melee range moves away from them. It works once per turn of combat.
• Palmtree Panic: There are various beaches where you explore and fight.
• Permanently Missable Content: Completing the Luculla Mines renders them permanently inaccessible for plot reasons—made worse by the fact that the game gives you no warning about it whatsoever.
• Personality Powers: Kinda. As your protagonists develop personality traits, they get special bonuses to their abilities. For example: on the Righteous-Renegade axis, someone who is Righteous gets a +1 bonus to their Leadership ability, whereas a Renegade gets a +1 bonus to their Pickpocket ability. Another example: on the Spiritual-Materialistic axis, a Materialist gets a +1 bonus to their Loremaster ability, but someone who is Spiritual becomes immune to the Fear status effect.
• Persuasion Minigame: Whenever the player characters get into an argument among themselves or with an NPC, they must pick a mode of persuasion (intimidation, charm, or reasoning) and play a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors, where every win awards a number of points determined by the character's Charisma score and, in dialogue with NPCs, by the expediency of the chosen persuasion mode in the given situation. Whichever side gains the target total points first wins the argument.
• Pet the Dog: There are several indications that the Conduit, a.k.a. Leandra, is not pure evil like her methods would suggest. For one, she refrains from killing both her sister Icara and Zandalor, when she has a chance to take her revenge, revealing that she still loves them. Furthermore, she leaves orders to the Immaculates in case of her death, which direct them to complete her anti-Death Knight failsafe and devote themselves to destroying the abominations she created before they destroy all life in Rivellon.
• Platonic Life-Partners: The original Guardians of the Source, as evident from their beds occupying different ends of their shared bedroom.
• Point of No Return: Enter the First Garden and there's no going back.
• Potion-Brewing Mechanic: Many Magic Potions can be created with Item Crafting. Most require an empty vial, one ingredient, and a minimum Crafting score, but poison and Healing Potions can also be combined or upgraded to more powerful forms.
• Power Floats: Casting the storm spell.
• Power Glows: Several skills will glow while you use them.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Like all modern RPG. You have dyes and the option to not show your helm to lessen the impact.
• Random Drop Booster: The Lucky Charm Skill Score increases the chances of finding valuable loot in the (randomly generated) chests and other containers.
• Randomly Generated Loot: Chests and loot drops are randomized.
• Really 700 Years Old: Jahan is actually a former king that is more than 1000 years following dealing with a demon.
• Recollection Sidequest: Discovering your first Star Stone transports the Source Hunters to their Homestead, while additional Star Stones gradually unlock flashbacks about their past incarnations, revealing how intricately the two of them are tied to the Source. Towards the end of the game, this objective gets promoted from a side quest to a main one, as you need to find all Star Stones in the game world to discover the entrance to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Red Herring:
  • In relation to Councillor Jake's murder, Esmeralda. All of the "evidence" implicating her draws from dead horse whodunnit clichés, quickly making it obvious that she's not responsible.
  • Immediately after, you get a much more promising lead. Evelyn turns out to be evil and is responsible for a lot of the suspicious tampering with the crime scene and evidence, making it more believable that she's the culprit. It's not her either — in fact, she and Jake were allies (albeit they hated each other) and she tampered with the investigation for her own reasons.
• Relationship Values: Not only do the NPCs like or dislike you depending on what your say and your reputation, but there is also a complex relationship dynamic between the protagonists, wherein they acquire different personality traits based on their interactions, some of which improve their compatibility with each other, while other disrupt it.
• Ret-Gone: Nobody in Rivellon remembers that the Source used to be a benevolent magic and how it came to be corrupted because the Guardians of the Source erased all memories of themselves (including their own!) and of their failure to contain the corruption before giving up their godlike powers. The Star Stones are actually crystallized fragments of their lost memories, so it's not until their reincarnations recover them that Zixzax can start restoring the true history of the Source.
• Robbing the Dead: Go ahead. Take a shovel to the graveyard in Cyseal, or any grave for that matter.
• Save Scumming: Loot finds are randomly generated, making it perfectly possible to save just before opening a chest and keep re-loading until you get something you can use.
• Saved by the Phlebotinum: There are a few injured NPCs you'll find throughout your adventure who can be healed by Blood Stones (and only Blood Stones).
• Scare Chord: When creatures are summoned by monsters or you.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Everything, people and items, in The Trife's Horrorsleep realm has its name (and flavor text) reversed.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: After being tricked into releasing the Void Dragon, Astarte cast both it and herself out into the Void, where she has been battling the beast ever since.
• Self-Punishment Over Failure: In the backstory, the Guardians of the Source stripped themselves of their powers and erased all memories of themselves from the world as penance for their failure to contain the Source corruption. They were then reborn in Rivellon as the future Source Hunters.
• Sequence Breaking: It's possible, with good tactics, a balanced party, and the right combination of missed details, to complete the second half of the main quest in Luculla Forest ( the Immaculate trials) without finishing the first half ( freeing the White Witch). The first time you're likely to notice this is when the chapter boss Mangoth wipes the floor with you because of all the experience you missed. Averted in the Enhanced Edition, which makes this much harder to do by accident and reminds you of what you missed if you choose to do it anyway.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the potential names for a summoned creature is Marvin the Paranoid Android.
  • Someone getting knocked down can be accompanied by text saying 'Hammertime.'
  • Then there's the achievements, most of which are Rock/Heavy Metal song names.
  • There is a talent that you can choose called "My Precious" that makes it so that you equipment will have a 50-50 chance of losing durability.
  • One of the female hairstyles is Princess Leia's famous "cinnamon bun" hairstyle from Episode IV.
  • One zombie you confront is called Rob.
  • One possible name for your summoned elementals is Spengbab.
  • If trying to leave the location via a portal without the full party in tow, the game quips "You must gather your party before venturing forth." One of the possible summon names being Chitika Fastpaws is also a reference to the game.
  • The nails that you use for crafting are nine inches in length.
  • The Void Dragon is the name of one of the C'Tan in Warhammer 40k.
  • "The corrupted Source" and "Sourcery", by extension, are an allusion to The Wheel of Time and Discworld series.
  • There's a unique weapon called Hanneman's Axe, with the flavour text, "Eternally shreds", which is a tribute to Slayer guitarist, Jeff Hanneman, who had passed away a year before the game's release.
  • Cyseal's take on the maritime legend of Unsinkable Sam lives in the King Crab Inn.
• Side Quest: The bread and butter of all adventurers. There are many ways to resolve them depending on your skills and the interactions you have.
• Skill Scores and Perks: At character creation and upon leveling up, you get points to spend on the Abilities (skill scores) and Talents (perks), with the latter ranging from simple stat boosts to abilities that unlock whole new gameplay venues.
• Skill Slot System: Played With. To learn active Skills, you first need to invest points into their corresponding base Abilities. First Ability level lets you learn any three Skills and the next three add two more slots each. Level five, however, uncaps the Skills of corresponding ability completely, subverting this trope. Furthermore, even though you can learn endgame Skills with just one level in the corresponding Ability, actually using them will cost extra Action Points if you don't fulfill the Ability level prerequisite. Played straight in the Enhanced Edition, where skills have three levels based on difficulty, you can only learn so many of each level based on your skill level, and each level of abilities also has a minimum character level requirement.
• Snake Talk: The goblins, although they also have a tendency to roll their "R" was well.
• The Sociopath: Haizea the Yeti, one of the prisoners of Hiberheim's ice crystal prisons, is an unrepentant Serial Killer who takes a borderline sexual satisfaction in disemboweling people, particularly young women. You get the option to kill him directly after freeing him, which is framed as the more responsible and "correct" choice; letting him go offers fairly trivial benefits.
• Soft Reboot: Alongside Divinity: Dragon Commander, this game is set in the distant past compared to the others (but still after Dragon Commander), essentially making it feel like it's a completely new series despite having been around for over ten years prior to its release.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: There is a perk that lets a character speak with any animal in the game. They often provide useful background information and you can even get quests from some of them. Rats in particular pretty much always give you a useful tidbit of information about upcoming challenges or secrets.
• Stone Wall:
  • The Guardian of Hiberheim has an enormous HP bar and insane resistances, making it a chore to kill without the Shambling Oak Death Wand. However, it doesn't hit very hard either.
  • A rare Geomancer skillbook lets you summon the Poison Slug, a gelatinous being that doesn't do much damage but has an enormous health bar for sponging enemy hits. Its function is entirely to keep enemies distracted for long periods, and it works surprisingly well.
• Story Difficulty Setting: Explorer Mode presents itself as this — "If you prefer story and exploration over being challenged in combat, this is the difficulty for you." However, it is not combat-free, and some battles can be rather challenging if you are not properly prepared.
• Suicide Attack: One particular kind of enemy, the Exploskeleton (a giggling skeleton with a giant bomb on its back) will perform this and only this, and will explode upon death regardless of how it died. Savvy players can stop this from happening by extinguishing the bomb fuse with water—which is actually required to complete a minor sidequest in the Silverglen inn, where one such enemy threatens to blow up an innocent and you have only a few seconds to react. You can also summon your own with the Scoundrel skill tree, though this strategy is just as liable to blow up in your face. The floating eyes that lurk near Balberith's lair have the same strategy, but are much more deadly.
• Swap Teleportation: The spell Netherswap exchanges two nearby characters, who may be allies, enemies, or the spellcaster. This can be extremely valuable in a combat system that emphasizes crowd control, Geo Effects, and tactical movement.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The two source hunter protagonists can fit this trope if you make one a warrior and the other a wizard. Or you can subvert it by building them in any direction you want.
• Take Your Time: Dying NPCs with critical information will not-so-gladly wait while you explore every nook and cranny, then die just after talking to you, regardless of how long you take. Subverted in a few notable cases- the burning ship at the start will sink if not extinguished immediately, the dying Immaculate in the desert will succumb to his wounds if you leave the area without using a blood stone on him, and the farm animals near the goblin village will be slaughtered if not rescued when first encountered.
• Three-Point Landing: The final phase of the Dexterity-based personal "teleportation" skills (Tactical Retreat and Cloak and Dagger), which replaces the far less dignified flat-on-your-ass landing from the targeted, Intelligence-based ones (Teleportation and Feather Fall).
• Token Heroic Orc: Victoria, the adopted daughter of the mayor of Cyseal with a passion for knowledge.
• Too Awesome to Use: Surprisingly subverted with the Blood Stones. Normally you'd be inclined to hold on to an item that can heal your entire party and revive all dead party members for when you really need it, but it's actually better to use them at the earliest opportunity to unlock new facilities and merchants at The End of Time (which happens every time you activate a Star Stone in the world, and Blood Stones are just supercharged Star Stones).
• Too Dumb to Live: Zandalor is a generally smart guy in the other Divinity games, but he's not in top form here. Sleeping with two soul-bound sisters then committing to only one of them, then immediately cheating on her with the other one, was certainly not his brightest move. It sets most of the story in motion and gets him killed, but Icara resurrects him.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Tenebrium will do 1 void of damage per round if you carry it around. There's no cure unless you use a star stone. Later in the game, you acquire a book that let you handle tenebrium without receiving any damage.
• Trick Arrow: There is an almost obscene number of these, and they can be found or crafted. Examples include (but are not limited to) various stat-related effects as well as smokescreen, stun, knockdown, slowdown, charming, grenade, poison, freezing arrows and more.
• Troll Bridge: You'll come across several of these, all guarded by Trolls. One bridge in the Cyseal region is guarded by a Zombie Troll.
• Turn-Based Combat: Original Sin features tactical turn-based combat with initiative, action points, and free movement. One interesting quirk is that ending the turn early preserves the character's action points for the next turn, letting them carry out more actions then.
• Undead Laborers: The Immaculates turn out to be using zombies to mine the highly toxic metal Tenebrium from the Luculla Mines, since the undead are immune to the Rot (spread by contact with Tenebrium) and only require minimal upkeep. However, the problem is that to raise that many zombies, they had to slaughter all the original miners of Luculla and then keep bringing in slaves from the outside. Furthermore, they don't do a very good job at preventing them from escaping, which accounts for the recent undead attacks all across the region.
• Universal Poison: Played straight unless you take the zombie talent which makes poison heal you instead.
• Updated Re-release: Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition was created for the purpose of rebalancing and expanding the gameplay, as well as fixing the original storyline's plot holes, based on the fan feedback post-release. It is sold separately from the original game, although people who own the original will get it for free.
• Vapor Wear: Astarte.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can slaughter everyone in the game, plus the various Kick the Dog options during sidequests.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • This is the twist that unravels the mystery of Councillor Jake's murder; none of the various villains killed him, because he was secretly a villain, and he was killed by a heroic character.
  • As far as the public is concerned, the Immaculates are nothing more than a new and benign religious movement that's swept some of the nearby rural villages into its fold, thanks to curing ills that no one else could. Even most of the civilian worshippers and rank-and-file soldiers are genuinely nice, supportive people. It's the higher-ranked cultists, who've been indoctrinated enough to learn the full evil scriptures and not reject them, that are doing all the villainy and proving the Immaculates' true nature as a Religion of Evil and Apocalypse Cult.
• Violence Is Not an Option: The only major enemies in the Luculla Mines are the Death Knights, all of whom are mechanically invulnerable and thus invincible at that point in the plot. The only way to get through the level is by learning their patrol routes and evade them, or run away if they do spot you.
• Visual Initiative Queue: In combat, the order in which the combatants act is displayed on top of the screen.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Unless you're doing things way out of order, you'll need to fight the three bosses around Cyseal's wilderness before taking on Braccus Rex. When you get to him he opens up combat with an attack that can potentially one-shot your party and summons the last three bosses from the grave. At once.
• We Buy Anything: Not only merchants will accept anything from you, everybody can barter anything with you. From ordinary citizens to ghosts and even some enemies. The only exception are animals and NPCs who need to be persuaded to trade with you first.
• Welcome to Corneria: All NPC speech, that isn't a dialogue with the player, will repeat often. The Cyseal market is easily the most overwhelming example. Patches delayed them a bit, but they're still a part of the game.
• We Need a Distraction: If you're trying to sneak somewhere that an NPC's looking right at, an easy way to distract them is send someone else to talk to them. The conversation only moves forward when you're controlling it, allowing you infinite time to sneak about as another character.
  • Not even Braccus Rex is immune to this; you can run around positioning your party and even block off where a couple of the additional enemies spawn with pottery. So long as the first character has his attention he won't make a move.
• Whatevermancy: The Geomancer skill branch. Enemy mages can also be cryomancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, and terramancers depending on their element.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After zombie!Jake makes his evil rant, he disappears forever.
  • Less of What Happened to the Mouse and more a Callback as the character reappears in multiple other Divinity games (which came out before Original Sin), making good on his evil desires in each only to be thwarted by the main character. In the Enhanced Edition you can also summon him again by interacting with his grave but he doesn't have anything new to say.
• What the Hell, Player?:
  • Start attacking your party members, and they'll call you out on it.
  • It's necessary for an achievement, but sending Esmeralda to prison for Jake's Murder earns you the scorn of multiple characters who all pointedly denounce the sheer thoughtlessness and Genre Blindness of implicating the first and most obvious Red Herring suspect in a whodunnit using incredibly circumstantial and cliché evidence. On top of having secured your reputation as the stupidest/laziest pair of Source Hunters in all the land, you still have to find the real culprit anyway.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Ever since the Source was corrupted, most of its users go insane and evil the further they delve into Sourcery. Even Braccus Rex was apparently a pretty okay guy before he got really into conquest and murder.
  • That said, it seems that some people can avoid the madness if they keep from going too far into Sourcery. Icara and Leandra (who is sane despite her... odd worldview) don't seem to have any such issues, and Raddagoth is a Punch-Clock Villain at worst.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: There's no shortage of in-game spells and items that refill a character's health bar, but in some story cases they don't work for a justified, contrived, or sometimes nonexistent reason, in order to force the player to resolve them using a Blood Stone, which has the power to heal normally untreatable wounds.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Earth Watcher statue talks like this. Considering the other three don't it's presumably an act.
• You ALL Look Familiar: Not just the 3D models, but also the portraits.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The Source Hunters in the end. Either they die fighting the Conduit, the Trife, and the Void Dragon, or they overcome them all and become so powerful they must Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence—either way, they may never go back to Rivellon again.
• You Have Researched Breathing: You'd think the Helping Hand skill, which helps knocked-down allies back on their feet and pats out the flames if they're on fire, would be this trope, but considering how it seems to work at a distance, it must involve some form of telekinesis.

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