Divinity: Original Sin adds "AI personalities" in first official patch

The first official Divinity: Original Sin patch has been released, boasting a litany of fixes and changes that's far too long to get into here.

patch has been released, boasting a litany of fixes and changes that's far too long to get into here. More significantly, it also introduces "AI personalities," a big update to how your characters interact that Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke talked about in an interview earlier this month.

Even in single-player mode, Divinity: Original Sin features two protagonists, and it's not a situation where one character is "you" and the other is a mule. They're equals, and they'll sometimes disagree, and it all sounds a bit weird because you're effectively arguing with yourself; but the new patch promises to give those arguments a little more flavor, because your AI counterpart will now actually have a personality.

Prior to the update, AI characters had either a random personality or no personality at all, as Vincke explained, or would be unflinchingly loyal and just do everything you did. "We will add five or six AI personalities, and they have distinct opinions about things, and so it's basically your partner. [And] people will be able to create their own personalities," he said of the update, which at that point was still in the works. "They make decisions based on certain type of personality, and it makes the game quite different, actually, because then it's really like playing with a human being, to a certain extent."

As promised, today's update does just that. "During character creation, you can now select a specific personality for your characters," the Steam patch announcementstates. "When a personality is active the AI will automatically make dialogue choices (based on its personality) for the avatar that isn't selected."

There are also a great many bug fixes and balance changes, and users of the Divinity Engine Toolkit can now publish their work to the Steam Workshop. The full list of changes, which includes "making sure the fabulous flag is on"—hey, don't ask me—can be found on the Larian forums.