Divinity: Dragon Commander Previews
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Examiner:
The single player campaign is rife with interesting characters and political intrigue. There are two main religions: The One God religion (the new religion) and the Seven Gods religion (the religion that the protagonist belongs to). As a commander, there are a myriad of choices that you must make that not only affect how the other races view you, but affects what type of strategy cards you can garner. The strategy cards are special buffs that you can use prior to engaging in an actual battle. There are five races that you will encounter: elves, dwarfs, imps, lizards, and undead. Each of the choices you make will affect how each of the factions view you. In addition, each faction sports a beautiful princess that you can choose to marry.
What's even cooler is that Divinity Dragon Commander is not afraid to talk about controversial topics that we face in the real world. For example, the dwarfs are appalled by the display of open homosexuality and marriage. They demand that all homosexuals be relegated to a secluded part in every kingdom. As a commander, it is up to you whether you wish to segregate the homosexuals or not.
Kotaku, which wasn't pleased with the marriage mechanic:
The cheerful, colorful, steampunk-inflected style of the dragon knight's home base makes a fun venue for back-room dealing. As the player moves through the world, taking over new territories, emissaries from the various races come on board and seek to make deals to benefit their own people or the linings of their own purses and to disadvantage others. The decisions made on-board result in a number of playable cards for the dragon knight. Say you agree allow a particular religion's clergy into a territory to open hospitals. You then get a card that works as a blanket heal, but you also run the risk of that religion, say, spiriting certain folks off into the night as sacrifices.
The secondary, political features should be great, but I had one huge problem with them. Impractical armor aside, the Divinity universe has never had a history of treating its female population particularly worse than its male population. Dragon Commander changes that.
Bluntly, the back-at-base level of the game is all about women as commodities. Underdressed women of the game's five races show up as princesses, who can be married or thrown over for political and tactical reasons. I get that marriage is perhaps humanity's oldest method of securing political alliances, but throwing boobtastic models around like so many collectible trading cards, in 2012, feels particularly distasteful. And there are other ways political marriage and spousal stat benefits could have been managed.
