Divinity: Original Sin II is currently in its Early Access phase on Steam, and in an interview with PC Gamer, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke talked about what players can expect to see from the RPG in its early stages.
The Early Access phase will introduce new features, such as additional skill trees and a "super-secret Game Master mode." The actual content, however, will be restricted to the first act, with the remaining acts releasing with the full game.
"I'm pretty sure we'll add some things on top of Act 1," Vincke said. "There’s this tutorial opening section that's missing right now, just before you arrive on the island. We don't want to spoil it too much for people that are participating in Early Access, so we want to give them sufficient content--the large majority of content, actually--on release."
Vincke added that closed betas will be held to test content past its first act.
"[W]hat you’re going to be seeing [in Early Access] is Game Master mode, new skill trees, lots of extra permutations on systems, probably some surprises that I don't even know myself yet," he continued. "New things that we're trying in the Arena mode also, because that seems to be picking up quite well. We'll see what we do with that. That will probably take us close to release."
The founder also discussed how it plans to switch out character systems throughout the Early Access period to test out different methods and see what works best. He noted that this is something Larian did with the first game, "putting system A in one week and system B in the next week." This is how the developer will figure out the best of both and meet them in the middle for an ultimately improved system, Vincke says.
"This is the cool part about Early Access, you can do these kinds of things," he explained. "It takes some effort, but it's rewarding for the players that are not participating in Early Access, or just try it out a little bit and will be playing it later, they'll get a lot of benefit from this phase of experimentation."
The PC Gamer interview delves even further into how the game will evolve through Early Access and how the ultimate, final decision is made. You can read it here.
Divinity Original Sin 2 is scheduled to release in 2017 on PC. It currently costs $45 and won't increase once it's out of its Early Access phase. In addition to the rest of the game, the full version will include more maps for the PVP Arena mode, more difficulties, a new playable Undead race, and increased content. Larian also plans to release the editor it used to make the game.
The game initially went through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, which helped increase the scope of the project through hitting stretch goals that added dynamic relationships, a new area, and the aforementioned Game Master mode.