The Divinity series isn't the story of a world, but an ambition. Since 1999, Larian Studios has had its sight on one thing – surpassing Ultima VII. It's been a bumpy road, with 2002's Divine Divinity biting off more than it could chew, and subsequent games being marked by fantastic, original ideas – be soulbound with an evil knight! Turn into a dragon! – often undercut by some shaky RPG foundations, and the ongoing battle to simply keep the lights on.

With Divinity: Original Sin, however, all the pieces finally came together. Kickstarter proved that the thirst and funding for classic-style RPGs was there, while a new approach to development provided a rock-solid foundation for Larian's crazier ideas, such as element-focused combat, chatting with rats in the dungeons, and – most ambitiously of all - giving players the power to not just explore the world, but try to break it.

The trick was to focus on multiplayer first – not purely with an eye to being a full multiplayer game, a la Neverwinter Nights, but also as a means of forcing the team to create systems and scripts capable of handling anything a chaotic player might try. Murder everyone in town? Abuse teleportation to skip a trigger? Divinity can handle it. Bosses, for instance, aren't immune to tricks like being teleported out of their arena. With the right spell, you can kill the final boss in one hit. In one of the best interactions, you can even run a two-man con on the NPCs by engaging one in conversation while your partner loots their stuff.

The result was a triumph. D:OS instantly validated Larian's hard work in the eyes of its critics, as well as delighting fans who'd been there for the long haul. The only major issue was the overall story, which was packed with fun moments but overall a bit of a mess, and lacking the instantly memorable characters we were used to from games like Dragon Age and Ultima.