For what it's worth, the game does feel a lot like one of the latter Divinity games. The turn-based combat feels like a bit of a downgrade from Wasteland 3, but it's a completely different setup. The latter game utilized an Action-Point-based system whereas BGIII uses a fixed-action setup where each PC gets a main action, a bonus action that consists of things like running away, shoving a melee opponent away from you, or hiding, and a movement meter (how far you can go in a given turn depends on a number of factors, including your race--my character can move 9m). Character creation looks like it will be as fun as it was in D:OS II; it will be slightly different (from what I can tell) in that the "pre-rolled" characters from that game will not be restricted by race or class. This bit doesn't seem to be finished yet because you can't select any of these, just a custom "background." I'm not sure that I entirely get the 5e rules because I mostly lost track of the changes somewhere between the second and third edition, when things like weapon, armor, and non-weapon proficiencies were introduced to this system. At launch, some classes like paladins and bards are not available. All racial types are available, and these include all of your bog-standard types like elves, dwarves, humans, and halflings, but also more exotic choices like two types of drow, tieflings, and githyanki (the latter two of which will be familiar to veterans of Planescape: Torment). The game also asks you a sort of odd question at the end of character creation, which may be a way of determining your character's romantic preferences? It asks you "who do you dream about?" and has you select a race, class, and gender combination. The game picks up where the opening cinematic, previously released (where an illithid is going around in its nautiloid ship and inserting mind parasites into unwilling hosts, including the PC, when it is attacked by githyanki riding red dragons), leaves off, with you and a githyanki companion fleeing the damaged nautiloid ship and your illithid captor. It's interesting so far. The game feels like it's very much leading you on a linear path at this juncture, but I'm expecting it will probably open up a bit more a few more hours in.
ing 2020 strikes again
