History VideoGame / DivinityOriginalSinII

* BigBadEnsemble: Hoo boy. The story of the game could best be described as a war between multiple Big Bads, with your hapless team of adventurers caught in the middle and left with no choice but to kill them all. [[spoiler:First you have the God King, who rules and controls the malignant Voidwoken invading the world. Lucian, Divine and leader of the Divine Order, is behind the purging of Sourcerers, the weakening of the Seven, and the unleashing of the Voidwoken upon Rivellon, causing the untold death of millions. The Seven created the Voidwoken in the first place, have been exploiting mortals for millennia in order to feast on their Source, and directly inspired Lucian's own [[WellIntentionedExtremist crusade]], with his main goal being to stop them. Braccus Rex is manipulating ''all'' of them to become a god in and of himself. Oh, and Adramahlihk is lurking on the side waiting to seize divinity for himself, which he just might, becoming the new BigBad if you let him.]]

* DoesNotLikeShoes: All elves walk barefoot and forgo any kind of footwear.

* JackassGenie: There is a lizard djinn in a lamp you can find on a beach in Reaper's Coast. If you pass the persuasion check to make it grant you a wish, it offers four choices: power, knowledge, wealth, and to never see your enemies again. As you might have guessed from the trope name, his interpretation of said wish leaves more than a little something to be desired. For example, wish for wealth and you'll get a necklace worth 1700 gold, but has the stolen tag (and 1700 isn't that much at this point, never mind that no shopkeeper will buy it from you for that price), or if you wish to never see your enemies again, you'll be struck permanently blind. At least his lamp is worth a pretty penny, once he's out of it.
** There are four options for trying to persuade him to grant you a wish. Passing two of them will result in the scenario above, but the other two result in him giving you actually useful rewards for the same reward choices, like a non-stolen version of the same necklace, or a powerful spell scroll.

** Elemental Infusions on the Summoner's Incarnate are often this. Summoning an Incarnate over a GeoEffect will affect its resistances as well as granting it a skill and setting all the Incarnate's damage to that type. The thing is, Power Infusion gives the Incarnate a powerful knockdown effect that always checks for physical armor, even if your Incarnate can't deal physical damage. It's usually better to have an uninfused Incarnate with a knockdown than an Incarnate infused with the damage type the enemy is weakest to. The outliers here is Blood, which will keep the Incarnate on physical damage while also granting it Mosquito Swarm and the Necromancy passive (self-healing as a percentage of damage dealt directly to enemy hit points).

* WeaponizedTeleportation: The low-level Teleportation skill and associated scroll allows the caster to teleport almost anyone and anything within range (typically within line of sight) to an applicable destination. Although you cannot teleport things directly on top of each other, the full hitbox of any objects already at the destination is usually not factored in, and the act of teleporting the target will always result in it taking FallingDamage that scales based on the caster's level. Hence, this mundane utility spell can be turned into a potent weapon in three ways:

** Teleport a creature right beside another creature. The teleported creature will first take falling damage then, as they get back up to their feet, cause additional impact damage to themselves ''and'' the creature they were teleported to.

A few decades have gone by since ''VideoGame/DivineDivinity'', and [[PlayerCharacter Lucian the Divine]] has passed away after winning the [[GreatOffScreenWar Great War]] against the [[{{Cult}} Black Ring]]. His death has weakened the Seven Gods, however, who [[GodsHandsAreTied watch idly]] as monsters from the Void now threaten to overrun Rivellon. These "Voidwoken" are drawn to manifestations of the [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Source]], so Bishop Alexander, Lucian's son and the new leader of his [[TheOrder Divine Order]], has decreed that all Sourcerers be corralled on a [[PenalColony remote island]] of [[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom Fort Joy]]. You play as one of Fort Joy captives and have to band with the others to escape from the island before the Divine Magisters subject you all to a FateWorseThanDeath. From there on, you uncover the mysteries of the Voidwoken, divinity, and the Source, in order to stop the Void from swallowing the whole world.

** [[https://steamcommunity.com/app/435150/discussions/0/3223871682624636138/ This]] article discusses it more detail, and describes it as "Every encounter is stacked against you and you have to use your wits, the environment, and clever combinations to succeed...(the game) is meant to be rigged against the player -- you have to find areas where you can rig it back against the game".

** Really the only boss that plays this at all straight is [[spoiler:Adramahlihk]] -- not because he's actually ''immune'', but just because if you haven't [[spoiler:nerfed him through Lohse's personal sidequest]], he just has an incredible amount of magic armor -- and if [[spoiler:Lohse is in your party, he'll mind control her ''permanently'', removing her from the party]], in far too little time for you to work it down for most players. However, even he is vulnerable to [[spoiler:the freezing effect of cursed ice, which for whatever reason goes right through magic armor.]]

* DysfunctionJunction: Pretty much everyone you can invite to your party (barring custom characters) has some sort of dark past that still affects them to this day, ranging from Ifan, who unwittingly unleashed death fog on an unsuspecting elven settlement while trying to save them; to Sebille, who was made a slave and forced to kill her own kind; to Lohse, who has a powerful demon inhabiting her body. Each character's quest is basically about resolving their issues or punishing those whose fault it was that these things happened.

* EarlyGameHell: Still in effect (fortunately it is nowhere near as bad as the first game). You begin the game without equipment, without physical or magical armor your characters can get afflicted by delibitating ailments, new skills are expensive and a new player doesn't know which ones they should use depending on the situation (new players may even seal their own fate by setting up poison and fire areas that they can't handle), some early game encounters are brutal, and overall you die extremely easily. Once you acquire decent equipment, skills and level up a little, the game gets progressively easier, though you can expect it to throw you a curveball at a moment's notice.

* EveryoneIsBi: Played straight with the romancable party members, all of whom are available regardless of gender. The only aversion in the entire game, in fact, is Papa Thrash, who can only be seduced by a female dwarf.

** The Dwarves have Celtic knot patterns decorating their architecture and often wear Nordic looking braids. Their backstory involves a warrior-king confederating many tribes under his banner through conquest and diplomacy, not unlike UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat or UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan. The primary influence on their aesthetics, though, is AncientGrome. Their Plate Armor sets are gilded and skirted while their cloth armors are basically decorated togas. They tend to have Latin sounding names like "Marcus Miles" or "Justinia". Their more recent backstory, involving their Empire fracturing due to conquests by younger cultures that they view as barbaric, adds to this. They have some hints of post-Roman Renaissance Italy and Iberia, with their ornate and fancy weapons (their Axes often have rapier-like baskets around the hilts), a powerful merchant class, and a tradition of seafaring (and sea shanties of course). Less obviously, their presence in human cities as oppressed, barely tolerated, second-class citizens who often make a living as craftsman make them out to be similar to the medieval Jews.

* GangUpOnTheHuman: on occasion you might have magisters and voidwoken alongside one another. [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration While a lot of them will help you out]], (Notably at the end of Act one), they do often decide to go after you if you're close enough.
** Averted in the [[spoiler: FinalBoss - if you allowed any Magisters to survive, or even Lucian or Dallis, they will go after Braccus Rex too. This can be used to your advantage since they will eat hits and weaken the FinalBoss for you.]]

** In a quest in Paradise Downs, you meet a healer who is treating a somewhat deranged woman in his basement, and you can offer to help cure her. Successfully doing this requires actively controlling a character with the Scholar Tag (not just using them to talk to her), making the correct dialogue choices for how you want to proceed with the treatment, and having a sufficiently high Finesse and Intelligence to perform the surgery (which probably involves using some potions ahead of time). The game doesn't tell you ''any'' of these requirements, and not doing everything perfectly results in the patient dying during the surgery and the healer becoming angry with you. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Though to be fair, offering to help with a delicate surgery without anything resembling the skills required is itself less than clever...]]

* MasterOfNone: The game allows you to dabble in whichever skillsets that you prefer. However, the fights tend to be geared towards specialized characters who do their one thing really, really well. Although the game doesn't have literal LevelScaling, there is definitely a finite amount of XP available and it basically requires the player to complete every {{Sidequest}} possible just to keep up with the expected level required by the end of the game. Diversifying a character ''too'' much will result EmptyLevels in a character that can't do enough damage to match the foes being sent against them.

* MoodWhiplash: If one makes Lohse sing at the end of personal quest, it [[spoiler: follows an epic battle against a building full of possessed people, a giant demon, and (depending on your previous actions) a number of normal-sized demons]].
* MouthtoMouthForceFeeding: Radeka the Witch forcibly tries to kiss the player character so she can spit insects down their throat, thereby weakening them, at the beginning of combat.

* OneStatToRuleThemAll: While one should not ignore the stats like Strength, Finesse, or Intelligence, ''everyone'' should consider Wits, since it affects your initiative. Being able to act before most enemies makes a ''huge'' difference.
** Possibly not true. Initiative will automatically be staggered between allies and enemies at the beginning of the fight. Beyond one character having a high initiative to start off, the rest will simply take turns with the enemies.

* OurDwarvesAreDifferent: The Dwarves of Rivellon are deeply divided between the upper and lower classes. Most of the dwarves you meet in-game fall into the category of homeless criminals and impoverished peasants or fabulously wealthy merchants and powerful nobles. Dwarven men tend to have beards, and the women tend to have elaborate hairstyles. Unusually compared to most depiction of Dwarves in a fantasy setting, the Dwarven nation is ruled by a Queen.

** Healers will likely want to build around Restoration and Armour of Frost, and cast both as frequently as possible. Other forms of healing and armor repair are based on gimmicks, like Cryogenic Stasis making the recipient unable to act or take damage while they heal or Healing Tears only activating on nearby allies. Restoration and Armour of Frost are basic, entry-level spells that just do their one thing really well: Restoration can put out a lot of healing with its over-time effect, Armour of Frost clears out a lot of bothersome debuffs, and both have a cheap AP cost.
** The humble Rain spell is a nice staple of Hydrosophist builds: no damage, just applies the Wet debuff and creates water surfaces in its range. Wet enemies become prime targets for electrocution and freezing, the spell creates a lot of water with which an Elemental Affinity Hydrosophist can now use their costlier freezing spells at a lower cost, it can be used to counter the effects of an enemy Pyrokinetic, and freezing the large rainpuddle is the only way you can really get use out of the Cryotherapy spell.

* VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: The game makes it abundantly clear that entering Lucian's crypt is the game's final PointOfNoReturn.

* MurderIsTheBestSolution: There ''is'' a way to save Gareth's parents from being murdered by Magister Jonathan. What is it? Why, going to a house north of the Paladin Bridge before crossing it and killing Jonathan while he's knocked out by Gareth, despite the latter's hesistance! You can still talk Gareth out of doomed revenge ''and'' meet Gareth's sweet mum and dad, alive and well! It also creates an encounter with some Voidwoken who have taken over their home, netting more experience points.

* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: The difficulty levels aren't intuitive at first glance, but do make sense, at least. They are, from easiest to hardest:

** [[HarderThanHard Honour Mode]] (Basically Tactician Mode with only one save file period)

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Many Real life cultures have had funerary rites that involved eating the dead so that they may live on in their loved ones, much the same as the elves in this game.

** Piercing damage ignores physical and magic armor, always dealing damage directly to vitality. Awesome in theory, except that almost every skill in the game is a StatusInflictionAttack if it hits a target without the appropriate armor type. This means that, unless it actually kills the target, reducing their armor to make them vulnerable to a status effect from an ally would usually have been more effective.

** Braccus Rex rather enjoyed inflicting these on those who challenged him. For example, you can find three brothers in a completely dry well, suffering from extreme thirst, having been there since the time of Braccus' rule, as well as a man, called the Historian, who's been trapped on a pedestal, [[ManOnFire permanently on fire]], and a woman [[BalefulPolymorph who was turned into a pig]] and also [[ManOnFire permanently on fire]]. Fortunately you can end their suffering, then speak to them if you know what to do.

* BalefulPolymorph:
** Chicken Claw turns its target into a chicken, who then cannot attack, or use skills. It also makes them so much easier to kill, as chickens, naturally, aren't very tough.
** There is a rare status effect that turns you into a cow. On the Reaper's Coast, you can find two people who have been transformed this way. They will give you a quest to get them back to normal with a witch's brew. Better yet, even though they're both ''female'' bovines, when you transform them back, one of them is revealed to be a man.
** Braccus Rex turned a princess he was engaged to and her entire court into Fire Slugs for annoying him. He also turned Sourcerers who questioned his rule such as Feder into pigs that were permanently set on fire.

** A standout: hilariously, almost every boss in the game, no matter how powerful, huge, or outright divine, can be [[BalefulPolymorph turned into a chicken]] for a few rounds once their physical armor is depleted. The only exceptions are bosses that are so big they have multiple separate 'parts', because it wouldn't make sense to turn just one tentacle into a chicken, and [[spoiler:your own god while they're hiding within your soul in Act 2.]]

* HealingSpring: If the player character shows compassion at the Sanctuary of Amadia, the goddess blesses the pool beneath her statue in a rare act of DivineIntervention. Creatures gain RegeneratingHealth while in the pool, and one {{NPC}} in a {{Sidequest}} can enter to be cured of a BalefulPolymorph.

** Dome of Protection, the innate Source skill shared by all custom characters. The Origin characters get unique effects specifically related to their character like warping time to take a second turn, stealing armor with a demonic stare, or summoning a wolf companion. In contrast, the Dome simply places a Circle of Protection that increases all resistances and restores physical and magical armor each turn for allies within it. The thing is, all crowd control in the game relies on depleting the Target's armor first, so not only do allies take reduced damage, they also become far harder to apply debilitating statuses to. This can save players' hide in the long run during a fight, especially thanks to the spell's long duration and being re-castable the turn after it fades.

* BossInMookClothing: Mummie Dearest at the Abandoned Livewood Mill,she's level 15 while the rest of the Lone Wolves are at level 14,a single swipe from her axe can instantly kill and worst of all,she moves very quickly and kill all in the same turn.

** Planar Gateway is a Source skill that costs no AP and 2 source points; using it allows the player to place two ends of a teleporter within its range. Up to four characters can teleport, with no AP needed to activate either end. Mobilizing an entire party can be challenging, but Planar Gateway allows characters to cover a very large distance or instantly get access to valuable high ground while still having enough AP to attack twice in one turn.

* ChunkySalsaRule: Averted to [[UpToEleven the extreme]]. Your character can explode, be raised from the dead, and explode again, but your party members can still revive them no problem. [[spoiler: Hilariously, this is also Averted in-universe: Alexandar always survives your first fight and is merely comatose on the Lady Vengeance, no matter how he died. Yes, even after [[LiterallyShatteredLives being Frozen and then shattered.]]]]

** In Act 2 you learn to literally suck the Source from living and dead alike. While doing it to living people will only cause them to lose Source (if they have any), using it on ghosts will ''cause their soul to be utterly annihilated''. While at first this hardly seems worse than the actions of many of your enemies in the game, it becomes more and more apparent as you progress that it is in fact one of the worst fates one can suffer. Even spirits that have been tortured for an eternity, begging for it to end, change their minds and cry out in terror when you use it upon them. Most will beg and plead while others will simply stare at you with all the hatred they can muster, but there is no one in the game who will thank you for it, save for the Knight of Duna, who is bonded to the God King and wants a MercyKill. Interestingly, this can be tried on ''every single spirit'' you encounter. Apart from only one or two unimportant apparitions that will disappear when you try, none will be able to resist or fight it. With most important characters becoming spirits after they die, there's a lot of room for cruelty here. ''You'' can be the maniac who laughs as immortal generals, arch-demons and some of the other most powerful beings in the region find out what fearing for one's non-existence actually feels like. Even [[spoiler:Alexander]] can be destroyed this way. The kicker? Allies that died fighting with you are just as vulnerable to it, taking senseless betrayal UpToEleven.

* NiceHat: The Noble Hat is so dignified a headpiece that it convinces Lady Paulina Kemm that the wearer is a fellow BlueBlood.

* BossInMookClothing: Mummie Dearest at the Abandoned Livewood Mill,she's level 15 while the rest of the Lone Wolves are at level 14,a single swipe from her axe can instantly kill and worst of all,she moves very quickly and kill all in the same turn.