Larian Studios have announced that there will indeed be a sequel to the incredibly well-recieved Divinity: Original Sin, which got 19,541 backers tp pledge $944,282 in April of 2013. The game got stellar reviews on release, and managed to sell over half-a-million copies. Larian are currently porting to the game to both PS3 and Xbox One.
The follow-up, aptly named Divinity: Original Sin 2 is also going to be founded via a Kickstarter campaign which will launch on August 26th. Potential backers can head over to http://www.divinityoriginalsin2.com/ and vote for what they think the rewards for backing the project should be.
“Divinity: Original Sin 2 builds further on the foundations we’ve been laying with Divinity: Original Sin (D: OS), and Divinity: Original Sin – Enhanced Edition (D: OS EE). For us, this allows for an unprecedented focus on the gameplay. We won’t be “losing time” building the elementary systems that typically take up more than 60% of our development time. Instead, we can start building the world immediately and try out all kinds of things.” stated Larian in a blog post.
Anticipating potential backlash from fans about returning again to Kickstarter to fund a sequel despite the success of the original and working on an Enhanced Edition of the first game for console Larian talked about how work on the Enhanced Edition will directly help the sequel:
“Now that news about D:OS 2 is in the open, I can also talk a bit about the commercial reasoning behind making D:OS EE. By now, the investment we did in D:OS EE is beyond what most would consider reasonable, both financially and in terms of time we’ve been putting in. But, other than allowing us to perfect the game which I think always make commercial sense, the work that is being done on D:OS EE would in any case still have had to be done for D:OS 2. So it’s not as if we haven’t been moving forward. On the contrary, all the money we’re investing in D:OS EE is also investment in the tech that’s powering D:OS 2. And the tech can do a lot.”
However, some comments have already appeared on the blog indicating that some people feel the developer shouldn’t be returning to Kickstarter, and instead should be using the money from the success of Divinity: Original Sin to either fund the development of the Enhanced Edition or the sequel.
A prototype for Original Sin 2 will be playable at PAX Prime this year, but nothing else is known about the game.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is set to be another Kickstarter hit and I am pretty sure that it will be as awesome a game as the original was. It’s sad that there isn’t much known yet, a trailer or some sort of demonstration video would have really helped players as they wait for it!