Making this even more lovely, the Gargoyle snarls at you about what a cheaty cheat you are, but acknowledges it's rather in the spirit of the maze's creator, Braccus Rex, so you get away with it. And get to the top, poke around enough, and you'll find a little door that lets you sneak into the cave from the rear. But once on this otherwise inaccessible secluded beach, after a spot of sunbathing, watching the waves and what have you, there are vines that let you scramble a route up the cliff faces. I only stumbled on this via nosy exploring, no greater purpose in mind. Or indeed, as it turns out, from one little stretch of beach over some unclimbable rocks, to another! One of the four million side quests introduces you to some gloves with the ability, and one of your characters may well pick it up if they've Scoundrel talents - having two characters with it is the ideal, because then you can relay your team across to otherwise impassable clifftops in turn. Because the game also has a teleport spell. The cave, it turns out, proves an excellent distraction from another nifty idea. A shore that has the entrance to a peculiar cave, with its own mess of puzzles and bizarreness inside. The maze is on some higher ground, a short way from the shore.
So you can go in and puzzle your way through, go off to hunt for that ring (I've never found it, still not sure if it's a bluff), or. To get past him the easier way, he implies you're going to need a special ring. This is a maze of ruined walls, the entrance guarded by a gargoyle who gives you a coded warning on arrival that escape isn't going to be so simple, and that souls must be sacrificed. So yes, weeny spoiler in this illustration, but let me stress this is a non-vital part of the first chapter of the game - nothing that's going to ruin your day. I think the best example of this comes with the Gargoyle's Maze. It's just that sometimes, like in life, if you look behind a curtain you might spot something interesting. The point is, smashing past some crates for the hell of it isn't rewarded by some mechanism, rearranging the furniture isn't a primary feature, it isn't something you can game. It's not fussed, it's not telegraphing these things, and it's behooves you to think, "Hmmm, I wonder what might happen if I pick up that enormous painting and put it over there?" Nine times out of ten, nothing! One time, maybe something fancy, maybe access to an empty box. It's just a game where, if you take it upon yourself to beat the ever-loving shit out of that bookcase, you may well find you can access a crumbled tower and a useful treasure chest within. This isn't a game where there are "secrets" hidden in every room. But on a smaller scale, it lets you break or move an enormous number of things for much more minor detail.
Just think about the logistics of that - there's never a moment where killing one particular person sees the story crash into a wall, or forces a reload because it doesn't allow its threads to come together later. Famously you can kill absolutely anybody in the game, and still finish its main quest. But few let you smash stuff in order to meddle with its plans.ĭOS2 offers you the most extraordinary amount of freedom when it comes to just how much you can muck about within its world. In fact, a game that doesn't let you smash stuff is verboten. Below I celebrate its extraordinary replayability, the joy of moving furniture, and hideous undulating flesh blobs. While Adam has the definitive word in his Divinity: Original Sin 2 review, I've found myself unable to stop playing in every spare moment, and jotted down some of the very many things that make this game stand out, make it feel so very special.