Divinity: Original Sin devs talk about story-writing process

Larian Studios’ producer David Walgrave talked to us in great detail about the upcoming Divnity: Original Sin, and one of the many things he talked about was the game’s story-writing process.

When asked what steps the development team takes to ensure that the game tells a cohesive story, given that story and storytelling are such vital aspects of role playing games, he went on to describe the story-writing process in great detail.

“We have the main story pretty much written,” Walgrave said. “The main story and the main characters can be explained in one or two pages, depending on how much detail you want. I believe we have a very interesting main plot with lots of secrets, surprises, and plot twists to keep the player interested and entertained.”

“We try to make sure that all the sub-quests, non-main characters and storylines on the side, have something to do with the main story. They add color to it, make it richer, give it a background. The player doesn’t need all this information to understand or finish the story, but they all do add credibility to the main story and makes the world feel as one big whole.”

“So the story writing process, we’ve got it pretty much worked out,” he continued. “There’s always enough people involved to make sure everything still makes sense. There is one main writer, but the writing process happens in groups of people, not only to add to the creativity, but also for error checking. All the designers know the story, and sometimes still find plotholes while implementing things, and we do listen to them of course.”

In conclusion, he said: “The biggest problem is that the Divinity universe has become very deep, its background very rich. We need to make sure, especially with a prequel, that everything that will happen in the following games still makes sense.”

Stay tuned for the entire interview.