Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition Includes Overhaul of Arx Story Chapter, Easy Mode for Newbies

If you have an Xbox One, you can already play a three-hour demo of Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition on the Xbox Game Preview program. The game is currently planned for a launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in August of this year. Larian Studios has made a host of changes for the Definitive Edition on consoles, with all of those changes coming to the PC version of the game as a free update.

At a pre-E3 event, Larian showed off the Xbox One preview version of the game and offered a few details as to what changes will be coming. First of all, there's a new combat-light Story Mode for players who would rather dive into the narrative over Divinity Original Sin 2's sometimes-difficult tactical combat. There's a new tutorial and Larian has redone the entire Journal, with new quest text written for clarity and brevity, and notifications for new quests.

The Xbox One version has console-specific controls, with character equipment and attributes being bound to a new radial wheel and the ability to toggle through interactable objects with the left and right bumpers. There's also a new local search option, letting players hold down the A button is see all interactable objects via a straightforward menu.

One major change that PC fans of Divinity Original Sin 2 will be looking forward to is the rework of the Arx storyline. This was in the latter part of the game and was pretty contentious for fans, especially given the excellent preceding sections. Larian Studios has completely redone Arx for Definitive Edition with "new voices and new scripting". The studio has taken fan complaints to heart and fleshed out Arx to allow it to stand up to the rest of the game.

Larian Studios will be releasing a detailed list of all the changes to Kickstarter backers "some time before E3", according to a developer USgamer spoke with. The list of changes is apparently 45 pages long in Larian's internal documentation, so expect that novella sometime soon.