The announcement of Divinity is old news by now, but I wanted to talk about it because of the circumstances around it. First, it’s kind of funny that it’s getting much more attention and discussion than Highguard, the chosen “one more thing” at the end of the show that was supposed to set the internet ablaze. I’m not sure why they’d ever think that yet another “hero shooter of the week” could do that, but whatever. Second, Larian decided to go, uh, strange, with its teaser trailer.

The first hint we got of Divinity was that very weird, very (well) demonic-looking giant statue that Larian and the VGAs plunked down in a random spot in the California desert. I don’t think anyone guessed that it had any thing to do with the Divinity series, though, mostly because most thought that such a stunt would be more in character for the likes of Blizzard (and its very deep pockets). Also, Divinity as a series seemed like it was over after Larian made Baldur’s Gate 3 and then declared they it wanted to move on to new projects.

Okay, time to go back to that very, very disturbing teaser announcent at the VGAs themselves. I’ll embed it below in case you haven’t seen it yet, but I really don’t think watching it is necessary. It’s a new Divinity game, and it’s gonna be intense to say the least. I guess that’s cool and I’m all for a new Divinity game, but I’m wondering whether it’s going to be something for me. I don’t do well with body horror and fleshy stuff, so I might wind up passing if it’s as front and center as this initial teaser is implying.

Well, I’m not really here to complain about it. I just think it’s very interesting what developers and PR / marketing companies come up with to push their games. Will this style of reveal equate to more sales? I’m not so sure.

I’m pretty sure, though that similar stunts in the past didn’t do much. Niche series like Divinity sell on buzz, sure, but usually only on a certain kind of buzz: game play promises and impressions buzz. There’s no game play yet, so very little that’d get people who aren’t already fans to pre-order. But, maybe the point of all this is to clue those who only played BG3 into the fact that Larian makes other games too. Guess we’ll see how things go, yeah?

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What’s your take on all this? Do you think this kind of marketing will generate sales? Are you psyched for the game? Let’s discuss below!

Image from the Divinity initial teaser trailer