Divinity: Original Sin 2's brilliant armor system is one of a kind in RPGs, and I'm bummed we'll apparently never see it again
Sic transit gloria mundi.
(Image credit: Larian)
I'm mourning a friend today, and what's more, my friend's memory is being slandered. Not only will Divinity not carry forward the unique armor system Larian crafted for Divinity: Original Sin 2, my coworkers keep bashing it. PCG guides writer Rory Norris called it "broken" in giant letters on our front page.
I forget what PCG news writer Morgan Park said to me exactly during our Friday meeting, but it was something like D:OS2's armor system sucks, I'm stupid for liking it, and I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt, and my butt smells and I like to kiss my own butt.
Far out, man
Crowd control—stuns, knockdowns, anything that hampers an enemy or player instead of directly damaging them—is a key part of RPG combat, but it's almost always based on a certain amount of random chance, like Dungeons & Dragons' D20 saving throws. It works well enough as a genre default, but D:OS2 is the only CRPG I've played that went back to the drawing board to replace this core assumption with something else entirely.
In D:OS2, every character and enemy has physical and magic armor bars over their health bars. The physical is reduced by weapon damage and abilities centered on those weapons, like the warrior skill tree. The magic armor protects against spell and elemental effects.
(Image credit: Larian Studios)
Once an armor bar is depleted, the corresponding attacks then affect the base health bar. The curve ball is that crowd control effects do not work until the relevant armor has been depleted, but once a character's armor is gone, those crowd control abilities have a 100% success rate. Take the warrior charge attack Battering Ram: When an enemy's physical armor is up, it's just a way to deal damage and reposition your character, but when that armor is gone, Battering Ram will knock over an enemy every time you use it.
This means that every character, even ones you don't usually associate with battlefield control like rogues and warriors, is an important vector for both damage and crowd control. You have to leave certain assumptions at the door when playing: There's no need for a traditional tank or healer, because enemies can just ignore your tank (especially with all the mobility powers like teleportation), and health just isn't as important as armor. The few armor restoration abilities in the game are part of skill trees with ample offensive options.