Looking at Original Sin, the latest in the Divinity series, you might be excused a sense of deja vu rudely leering over your shoulder. It’s an isometric RPG, turn-based, and cooperative. If the names of a dozen different games are flying thick and fast across your mind’s eye right now, that’s OK. This is the part where I show you how this isn’t quite how you might think. For one thing, it's properly co-operative.

“ You soon add a stolen banjo to the drugs spilling out of your pockets

Larian Studios has come full circle. Ten years gone, and it's managed to go from a fledgling indie developer struggling to get a publisher to invest in their project to believing that a publisher isn’t even necessary any more. With Divinity: Original Sin , the studio is doing away with all the restrictions that kept it from making the game that it always wanted to make, and getting it right.“In the past we recognise that all of our games have been brought to market early.” CEO Swen Vincke, now a veteran of game development, has become jaded when it comes to big publishers. “We don’t want to be trapped like that again. We want to be in control of our own game so that we can happily look at ourselves in the mirror.”The demo showed a side quest off the beaten track, where the Foreman of a nearby mine is despairing because all of his workers are hopped up on some drug or another, and none of the work is getting done. The plot of the game hinges around a great war, and this mine is one of the critical assets that’s pumping out materials needed for the war effort, so stoned peons is a bigger issue than you might expect.There’s a lead or two that points towards some weird lady living on her own in the woods, and you head over to check it out. The instant you step past the threshold, the first of Original Sin’s new ideas pops up and gives you a hearty wave.When I say that the game is cooperative, that doesn’t just mean that two players can be in the same game. Everything, from the combat to the loot to the quests themselves, is about two players working together, and this even extends to the dialogue system. When appropriate, your characters will hold a three way conversation, with an NPC making up the third pillar of the triumvirate.Lines fall from the NPC, and then, where appropriate, either character can speak up, and you get to make the dialogue choices. It means that not only do you both feel involved, but you can disagree. Let that sink in for a moment. It means the great arguments over a D&D game have finally made it most of the way into our beloved digital medium. “Discussion creates gameplay.” Says Vincke. “It should be really engaging.”The only slight disappointment is that currently if you do disagree, the game will resolve things by making a dice roll, pulling in charisma stats and maybe something more applicable to the current situation, like intelligence for tests of knowledge, or strength for intimidation.But it extends beyond that; you need to explore the woman's house so that you can see if she’s the drug dealer you suspect her to be, but she’s not exactly thrilled by the idea. She’ll follow you around and make sure that you’re not touching anything you’re not supposed to. But that ‘you’, there; that’s singular. She’s only got one pair of eyes, and they’re stuck in a single body. She can’t watch both of you at once if you’re not in the same place. So one of you leads her off into one room as a distraction, while the other ransacks her bedroom. Find the secret trapdoor (there’s always a secret trapdoor) and you find the drugs, stuffing your pockets full of the stuff in the name of evidence.The Divinity games have always been known for their kitchen-sink approach to player interaction and RPG goals. In fact, as Swen is happy to admit, “In Dragon Knight Saga there were quests that had twenty four different ways of completing them.” Which is all well and good, but when twenty of those are hidden from all players except those with a fanatic dedication to the game, that’s almost a waste of development time.That kind of dedication and broad approach is working well here, judging by what was shown of Original Sin. Far from being obtuse and obstructed, the level of depth in both player interaction and (perhaps more importantly) the non player characters and how they notice what you’re doing was astonishing.If you didn’t have either of those items on your person, or just one, they might not have made that connection. “We have values that we’re tracking that trigger new events that happen in quests,” Swen explains. There are also counters for how you behave, too, whether you’re a psychopath, lawful goody two shoes or just all over the place, a chaotic force of Twoface-like proportions making decisions based on random luck rather than anything coherent.This kind of incredibly in depth development extends to the combat, too. Despite being turn based, it’s impressively fluid, based heavily around use and manipulation of the elements. Cast a rain spell and you’ll create a puddle that can then be electrified, evaporated or frozen, each with their own appropriate effects. There’s even the threat of slipping up on the ice, knocking yourself over for a turn. Despite being relatively simple with its elements, it’s obvious that there is that breadth of experimentation that made, say, Magicka so successful.All this leaves Larian with an incredibly versatile engine that allows players to pick up and move around anything that isn’t nailed down, creating make shift barricades in the middle of a fight, or just shoving anything grabbable into their inventory. Gamers are hoarders, after all. Couple that with a game that recognises that hoarding instinct, and plays off it, and suddenly you feel awfully involved in this world. Like you’re a part of it. And that’s why we play RPGs, after all. To lose ourselves to a world.Outside of the game Larian is trying to engage the players with the kind of features that make anyone with a PC awfully happy. It’s fully integrated with Steamworks for the cooperative play, but more interestingly for Steam Workshop too, as Original Sin is going to be graced with a truly comprehensive modding system that allows its players to create new worlds and systems with a remarkably intuitive interface.Just think; you could be arguing with your partner about whether to let the well-meaning drug dealer go or send her to jail before the end of the year is through. Isn’t that a lovely thought?