So, I got my hands on Divinity Dragon Commander, and I had some fun with it. The RTS and strategy aspects are both decent, though a few design choices are questionable, but as some might have already heard, the game's biggest selling point is its diplomacy/adventure element and I found myself having quite a few issues with it.
Namely, you are supposed to be the emperor, the man making big choices. However I found that there is simply no nuance to said choices. You always have two choices, whether we are talking about legislations or interacting with your generals, and they always end in someone being unhappy even in the most trivial and obvious of matters.
Then there is the issue of all your advisors and even some of your generals being ridiculous caricature strawmen of real world political and ideological stances stretched so far so that all of them become unappealing. In detail:
-The undead advisor is a religious fanatic who is a strawman of the Christian fundamentalist right wing, so you don't really need much initiative to hate him, especially since he will go against any form of civil right, gay right or just blatantly any proposal made by either the elves, lizards or imps (aka, 60% of all proposals off the bat).
-The elf advisor is a strawman of liberalism and the green party, and you will dislike him for being a huge-ass hypocrite (advocating gay rights and then hiding an elven nobleman who kills gay people, classy).
-The dwarf advisor is a strawman of conservatism and corporate interest in politics and funnily enough practically the most neutral character.
-The lizard advisor is a strawman of the democratic/egalitarian left and you will dislike her for aggressively advocating democracy in the middle of the war, but at least she is not a dick who will blame one of your generals for the damage some assassins done when they tried to kill his daughter, so there's that. It also seems the developers really liked her since she has the most reasonable personality by faaaaaar, so there's that.
-The imp advisor is a strawman of the scientific community, advocating the stereotype of scientist having no morality and only caring about results, and while the guy himself is not unlikeable, his stereotype is and he is pretty much a wild-card who can react in completely unexpected ways to any sort of proposal.
-Your general Catherine is an archetypal strawman feminist who you will hate because she is, well, a strawman feminist advocating that men a pigs and women are perfect and has an attitude where I really wanted to refuse even her most reasonable proposals simply because she was a rude, overbearing *****.
-Your general Scarlett is a gay advocate and oh boy she won't even shut up about it once she brings it up, demanding that "you" to do something about it right on the spot while, if you somehow forgot, you are in the middle of a continental war.
So yeah, not exactly a likable bunch. The bigger issue, however, is that most of the situations these characters present to you are blatant extremes and often make no sense in context. For example, your first choice of legislation is about conscription, which fits the situation really well, since you are in war and all. Then what is your second decision about? Guess.
...
It's gay marriage. Completely out of left field at the very beginning of the story. Worse, this is not the last time you are going to hear about gays in this game, oh no. In fact, after a while I was literally facepalming from the sheer number of times the issue comes up, and any time you try to make any sort of tolerant choice, the undead will curse you and you will have a permanent luck decrease in all future battles affecting your auto-resolve chances, and if you keep repeatedly pissing off the undead by not being a religious zealot, those maluses keep adding up to the point where they can make the end-game nigh unwinnable. Need I remind you, none of the other factions have such universal maluses associated with them.
And once again we are back to the binary choices. Most of these issues would have been greatly lessened if not outright eliminated if only the protagonist would have had multiple choices. Hell, even if there was only a slider that you could use to specify in which time-frame some policies would be implemented would have helped. Instead your choices usually break down to "Allow gay marriage RIGHT NOW, EVERYWHERE!" or "NEVER EVER allow gay marriage EVER!", which is hardly a nuanced system or shares any sort of resemblance with actual decision making.
In conclusion, I would say the guys at Larian Studios simply bit off more than they could chew. The system looks really impressive and the voice acting and models still make the dialogs somewhat enjoyable, but the reliance of over-exaggerated caricatures instead of actual political and sociological ideas is just distracting and silly to the point it undermines the entire concept of the game.
Namely, you are supposed to be the emperor, the man making big choices. However I found that there is simply no nuance to said choices. You always have two choices, whether we are talking about legislations or interacting with your generals, and they always end in someone being unhappy even in the most trivial and obvious of matters.
Then there is the issue of all your advisors and even some of your generals being ridiculous caricature strawmen of real world political and ideological stances stretched so far so that all of them become unappealing. In detail:
-The undead advisor is a religious fanatic who is a strawman of the Christian fundamentalist right wing, so you don't really need much initiative to hate him, especially since he will go against any form of civil right, gay right or just blatantly any proposal made by either the elves, lizards or imps (aka, 60% of all proposals off the bat).
-The elf advisor is a strawman of liberalism and the green party, and you will dislike him for being a huge-ass hypocrite (advocating gay rights and then hiding an elven nobleman who kills gay people, classy).
-The dwarf advisor is a strawman of conservatism and corporate interest in politics and funnily enough practically the most neutral character.
-The lizard advisor is a strawman of the democratic/egalitarian left and you will dislike her for aggressively advocating democracy in the middle of the war, but at least she is not a dick who will blame one of your generals for the damage some assassins done when they tried to kill his daughter, so there's that. It also seems the developers really liked her since she has the most reasonable personality by faaaaaar, so there's that.
-The imp advisor is a strawman of the scientific community, advocating the stereotype of scientist having no morality and only caring about results, and while the guy himself is not unlikeable, his stereotype is and he is pretty much a wild-card who can react in completely unexpected ways to any sort of proposal.
-Your general Catherine is an archetypal strawman feminist who you will hate because she is, well, a strawman feminist advocating that men a pigs and women are perfect and has an attitude where I really wanted to refuse even her most reasonable proposals simply because she was a rude, overbearing *****.
-Your general Scarlett is a gay advocate and oh boy she won't even shut up about it once she brings it up, demanding that "you" to do something about it right on the spot while, if you somehow forgot, you are in the middle of a continental war.
So yeah, not exactly a likable bunch. The bigger issue, however, is that most of the situations these characters present to you are blatant extremes and often make no sense in context. For example, your first choice of legislation is about conscription, which fits the situation really well, since you are in war and all. Then what is your second decision about? Guess.
...
It's gay marriage. Completely out of left field at the very beginning of the story. Worse, this is not the last time you are going to hear about gays in this game, oh no. In fact, after a while I was literally facepalming from the sheer number of times the issue comes up, and any time you try to make any sort of tolerant choice, the undead will curse you and you will have a permanent luck decrease in all future battles affecting your auto-resolve chances, and if you keep repeatedly pissing off the undead by not being a religious zealot, those maluses keep adding up to the point where they can make the end-game nigh unwinnable. Need I remind you, none of the other factions have such universal maluses associated with them.
And once again we are back to the binary choices. Most of these issues would have been greatly lessened if not outright eliminated if only the protagonist would have had multiple choices. Hell, even if there was only a slider that you could use to specify in which time-frame some policies would be implemented would have helped. Instead your choices usually break down to "Allow gay marriage RIGHT NOW, EVERYWHERE!" or "NEVER EVER allow gay marriage EVER!", which is hardly a nuanced system or shares any sort of resemblance with actual decision making.
In conclusion, I would say the guys at Larian Studios simply bit off more than they could chew. The system looks really impressive and the voice acting and models still make the dialogs somewhat enjoyable, but the reliance of over-exaggerated caricatures instead of actual political and sociological ideas is just distracting and silly to the point it undermines the entire concept of the game.