Divinity: Dragon Commander

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I'M A DRAGON WITH A JETPACK! YOUR ARGUMENT AND ANY OTHER ARGUMENT ARE INVALID!!

Dragon Commander is a vidya set in the Divinity setting. Straddling between political simulator, waifu simulator, real time strategy, and flight simulator/rail shooter, the game is quite in it's own category.

Story

The world is a world in constant warfare (which never changes). Until one day, it changed.

A powerful wizard named Maxos trapped a powerful demon named Corvos, and used his knowledge of destruction to design powerful weapons including giant robots resembling something out of War of the Worlds. He brought on the services of an architect (known only as the Architect) to actually build the damn things, and enlisted a powerful and regal warrior to lead the armies. Together, they conquered the races of the world (Lizardfolk, Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Undead, Imps, and Orcs) and finally brought peace to it.

The capital was moved to the human city of Rivellon, where the warrior became king and the three friends dwelled in hard won peace.

Dragons, having long left the world of mortals for a higher plane (basically Tolkien Elves), had become increasingly interested in the events of the world. One particular dragoness adopted the guise of a noblewoman and entered the court of the king. The three friends all fell in love with her, and each competed for her affections. The king won her heart in the end, and conceived a child with her. The child was hidden. The Wizard humbly accepted his loss, and became the guardian of his friend's son. But the Architect, jealous of the success of his former companion, conspired against him. More and more he listened to the words of Corvos, convincing him the king had used him as a pawn, had stolen what was rightfully his, and was a wicked being. Eventually, the Architect allowed Corvos to inhabit his body and together they poisoned the dragoness. At her death rattle, Corvos's corruption caused the Architect an orgasmic surge of emotions that caused him to have a heart attack and die on the spot, freeing Corvos from captivity and allowing him to wreak havoc on the world. The king grieved her, and buried himself in hedonism in an attempt to escape his pain. He sired many, MANY illegitimate sons and daughters and spoiled them rotten.

Meanwhile, Maxos had managed to track and trap Corvos again, imprisoning his spirit within the hull of a massive flying aircraft carrier called the Raven. There he secretly began plotting for a second great army after realizing what was soon to come.

Years later, the bastards of the court had maneuvered themselves into different positions of authority across the land and together killed the king. Thus began another military era, with a multitude of men and women controlling massive weapons of destruction and bringing death and destruction to the land once more.

Que you, the player. Your draconic heritage is not a template, and instead you are the same as your mother; a full-blooded dragon who assumes mortal form. Maxos finds you and informs you that you are the son of the Emperor of Rivellon and the Dragon Queen, and the only legitimate claimant to the throne. This gives you the loyalty of the bulk of the human kingdom, and everyone still loyal to the late king. In addition, politicians from each of the major races come to your mobile fortress to help you govern.

You also early on get to choose from a multitude of brides, princesses from each race (other than the Imps, who storyline-wise blew herself up accidentally on the way to meet you and in the real world was cut from the game due to lack of time, and the humans who you don't need to woo with a political marriage). You then follow your bride's storyline between combat missions, influencing her along different paths. You also follow the plots of your Generals, branching their stories as well.

Corvos himself is also a character, giving schematics to your engineers for weapons of war. You can sacrifice your wife to him (and get another shortly after, until none are left) if you feel a bit evil and in return get more powerful.

After vanquishing most of your siblings in the first act, Corvos breaks free from his restraint and possesses the remaining siblings. The more brides you have fed him, the more powerful he is as their hate for you contributes to his own for the world. Of course if you have not sacrificed any wives then he's still quite powerful.

After defeating him and conquering the world, you and Maxos dispose of the great weapons of the era, and all knowledge of them; never again will there be a fuckhuge war on that scale. You then retire to your palace with your bride (if any remain that is), to enjoy an era of peace (and sire many dragon children).

In the next game, in another era, you find out that the player-brought peace lasted many generations and you sired a line of Dragon Knights, although in time complacency set in and power decentralized leading to another era of conflict. Luckily, the secrets of the past remained buried (although they still exist in myth) so rather than World War 3, it was instead more classic medieval.

Generals

You quickly assemble a team of military experts to help you run your military campaign, each of whom has his or her own personal journey of character development and self-discovery to go on as the game continues.

Henry

Boisterous, lower-class type, with a half-cyborg body, a daughter he loves very much, and a self-reliance complex that threatens her safety. Better with armor units, so his power scales up as you get more.

Scarlett

Sexy chick with a flirty streak and a punk haircut. Also a closeted lesbian. Better with defensive tactics and light units, making her good in the early-game turns.

Catherine

Well-dressed lady from a nation where traditional medieval gender roles were flipped. Kind of a bitch about the whole "female superiority" thing, but she mellows out if you push for gender equality and meet her halfway. Naval expert who reduces enemy numbers, and has the potential to gain the most skills.

Edmund

The only non-human among your generals, and the only one to wear a classy suit-and-monocle combo. The lizard's genius is matched only by his arrogance, and he starts the game with a very low opinion of pretty much everyone who isn't him, though he liberally mixes in some racism and classism for good measure. An offensive specialist with a powerful starting skill, falls off a little late-game but never enough to make him useless.

Races and Ambassadors

Elves

Elves are presented as both nouveau riche and old upper-class liberals in the game, being in favor of "Drudanae leaf" which apparently has both medical applications as a sedative and for recreational use, being for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and being defiantly against anything that harms the environment including deforestation and factory farms. They are also not as morally upright as they'd have you believe; your ambassador asks for an Imperial pardon for an Elf that lead a dictatorial government in your name simply because it would be a talking point against the Elves were he to be recognized as having committed crimes against humanity/sapient beings.

If you pursue the ideals if the Elven race to the fullest, you end up implimenting labor reforms like establishing minimum wage, outlawing child labor, giving holidays off, and setting up a regulated work week.

Imps

Imp politics are complicated simply because most Imps don't care about issues unrelated to their interests. They support anything that expands industry, supports scientific research, and are against any form of social control including a limitation on the amount of children one can have and of breastfeeding bans in public. At one point, their ambassador simply flips a coin to decide his position, and is angry when you go against the result.

Maxing out their favor ends with you allowing them to dig up ancient Elven cemeteries and dump the bodies in landfills to get uranium to build atomic bombs.

Lizardfolk

Lizards, as they are usually called, are probably the closest race to modern liberal-centrists. They generally support reasonable, moderate options, and are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Their senator is a grand, cool-headed old lady who will generally be much more cordial about you disagreeing with her than the many angry, angry old people that surround her, and she generally comes out as the most principled of them all. Also, yes, the lady-lizards have boobs. Please, check your rage at the door, our stewards will return it to you when the voyage is over.

Maintaining their favor will lead to the institution of a democratic government, to massive popular support but the abject horror of every other race's governments and, depending on how one interprets the "Luck" stat, the gods themselves. Heh.

Dwarves

The dwarves, as one can probably expect, are basically the Republican party. They are both socially and fiscally conservative, being in favor of both deregulated big business and old-tyme "family values." Their senator is, naturally, never not wearing a top hat, fox-fur ruff, and about ten pounds of bling. He also has a thick Scottish accent, because some things are unavoidable.

Toeing the dwarf party line will lead to smoking being taught in schools to children. You'll be rolling in dosh from all the money tobacco taxes bring in, but population will drop like a rock from all the cancer going on.

Undead

The undead, hilariously, are the hyper-religious faction. They are all super-uptight, generally in favor of horrifyingly medieval punishments for criminals, and reproduce entirely via alchemical processes that grow new skeletons. Their senator, Yorick, is... well, he's probably exactly what you're picturing.

Sticking with with the undead will generally lead to old-testament treatment of enemies, giving morale penalties to enemy troops but turning public opinion against you in a big way.

Princesses

After your first few battles, you will be given the chance to select a monstergirl princess to marry from one of the other races in the game. You recieve a boost to reputation with that faction, and after every battle you can visit your bride in your quarters (which has been redecorated to her tastes) and engage in dialogue which will advance her story as well as provide effects to your reputations, morale, and coffers.

What's that? Where's the human princess? We don't take kindly to your type around these here parts. (You yourself, by being half-human, represent humanity and as Maxos informs you there's no need to curry favor with a population that already sees you as their genetic representative.)

You can also be a dick and sacrifice them to Corvus for more power by leading them to him and trapping their souls in a constant state of agony for his pleasure. Unless you are an aloof completionist who doesn't want to play the game multiple times, don't do this. It's just a really bad idea in both the short and long term.

If you are, well, you are allowed to select a new bride afterwards, so you can get more achievements and dialogue from killing off your spouse after completing her quest line.

Lohannah, The Elven Princess

Lohannah actually requested her father to send her as the potential bride for the Elven race. She is completely enraptured by you, believing that the Dragon Emperor and the Elvish Princess would be the perfect romance, just like in her favorite stories!

As you live with her, your decisions will more or less involve the questions of xenophobia and of pride. She can break tradition and do things like eat meat and wine with Dwarves whereupon she becomes a popular cultural icon among them (while Elves protest by destroying effigies of her) or withdrawing and sticking to Elvish tradition and ensuring the continued dickishness between the two races. In one plot ending, she becomes a prim and proper Elvish queen. In the other, a cultural phenomenon and fun to be around.

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  Lohannah as you first meet her.

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  Lohannah's ending appearances.

Camilla, The Lizard Princess

Camilla starts out as the only princess who actually has a job; namely, a Supreme Court Judge among the Lizardfolk. She makes it quite clear in the princess lineup that you are simply a tool to improve her political career, and she believes you see her as the same. Upon choosing her she informs you that you should choose a mistress as she's not your personal fucktoy. During the relationship, she will continue to act coldly to you but will bring up her current court cases (with your input resulting in her decision) and as a result will gain some respect for you and gradually acknowledge you as her husband. Her story fork boils down to the age old question of whether to be Lawful or Good. A Good aligned Camilla warms up, learns to relax a little with you between battles, and is generally much happier and more in-touch with her emotional side. A Lawful Camilla becomes very robotic, uninterested in the affairs of lesser beings and your regime becomes one of absolute authority in fear of you.

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  Camilla as you first meet her.

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  Camilla's ending appearances.

Aida, The Dwarf Princess

Aida is, naturally, a buxom beauty who can chug enough booze to kill ten men and crack walnuts with her bare hands (which she admits made her popular at parties and unpopular in love). Her story revolves around her rotten relationship with her nasty, abusive father, and her attempts to take control of the kingdom. It also rivals Ophelia's for sheer complexity and number of outcomes. She's also like Ophelia for being a dutiful wife, simply bringing up issues to you and obeying your decisions. She initially only wants to marry you to get away from the old man, and to get herself in a comfortable financial position for the rest of her life. She's quite prideful and cuts the Dwarf adviser off to give her proposal herself. Her father attempts to overreach early in your marriage with her and also badmouths her to tabloids. You must deal with him falling ill and assassins he's pissed off with his poor behavior in the past, although so long as you keep Aida from desecrating the old bastard's mortal remains with horny pigs after he dies and she incorporates his throne into yours, you'll make out alright.

As your can imagine, an Aida who behaves according to her darker impulses just becomes a younger female version of her father in law although she's shamed among her people forever. On the other hand, an Aida who sticks to the moral high ground becomes a beloved monarch of the Dwarves and (if the previous two aren't an indicator) is warm and loving towards you.

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  Aida as you first meet her.

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  Aida's ending appearances.

Ophelia, The Undead Princess

Daughter of the mysterious Skeleton King, Ophelia is the shy, blushing (somehow) skeleton girl. Like all Divinity Undead, she is VERY religious and conservative. As her husband you're her absolute boss and she does nothing without your permission (and a long-winded Shakespearean speech). You learn after marriage that she is dying (again) from an as-yet incurable illness and that her people see this as a direct curse of the Seven gods in their pantheon and that the only reason she was married to you (a non-Undead) is twofold for power and to remove her from the Court. Potential solutions to her malady range from transplanting her soul into a gleaming robot body (then choosing whether or not to drape it in human flesh from various corpses, flesh golem style), lobotomizing an attractive female prisoner and putting her soul into the newly-emptied fleshy form, making a deal with a demon to turn her into a vampire, engaging in magic shenanigans to draw her a body on a canvas and animating it with magic, to just being a dick about the whole thing and letting her die like her people (initially) want. The most complex of the four story-wise, and almost every outcome causes her to change models over the course of the game.

In the lobotomized form she sees herself as an abomination to her Gods and becomes mopey. In the vampire body, she quickly becomes selfish, evil, and vain. In the painted body she looks the same as her stolen body, but is overall much, much happier with the situation. When she gets the robot body, her people believe that longevity is a sign of the blessings of the gods and in a robot body she is fully immortal. She's revered as a golden prophet to her people and gives sermons daily, and even her own father is unworthy in her presence now (although she sees you as sharing in her divine nature), but it clearly isn't great for her mental health. And, finally, choose to have skin sewn over her robot body, which makes her much less popular among her own people, but also makes her about as happy as the "painted" body, if a bit more melancholic about the whole thing, and gives her a cool "Frankenstein" motif.

Also, the in-game newspapers mock your skeleton fetish right after you pick her.

Unimplemented concepts involved Ophelia pining for a fleshy form, and doing socially awkward things like using fruit as fake breasts and wearing wigs. This plot was dropped early on although the lipstick and empty corset remained, and the undead barmaid on the airship can be seen with a couple small pumpkins stuffed down her shirt as a gag.

As Ophelia became the most popular princess, she is seen as the mascot of the game and was most used in advertising.

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  Ophelia as you first meet her.

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  Ophelia's plot until the first decision summed up.

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  Ophelia's ending appearances.

Unnamed Imp Princess

Originally planned as a princess to marry, she would have come to you already secretly pregnant. Your plot with her would have involved your treatment of your illegitimate son Rufus, who (being an Imp) would grow up fast.

She was cut as the release deadline neared. Her lack of presence is explained by the Imp adviser at the princess lineup as she apparently was passing the time on her transport zeppelin on her way to meet you by playing the classic Imp game of "Hide The Fuse" with her handmaidens, and they lost. His demeanor suggests this isn't an uncommon type of event for his race, with a "true imp's death" apparently involving perishing in a gigantic accidental and self-inflicted explosion, and he only laments that you hadn't met her.

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  The Imp princess. Unknown if this was her initial appearance, or if it's the result of decisions.

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  Rufus, your Imp son.

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  A fan render of the Imp princess concept art.

Unnamed Orc Princess

The entire Orc race was cut from the game; originally you were going to have a dual princess/general character who was the female Orc aboard the ship. A few joke lines refers to the Orcs left in the game, which includes the Imps proposing that since they aren't scientifically categorized as people that they'd be viable as a food ration for your troops (no other race supports this) and the suggestion at the end of the game that you would keep electric fans so as to avoid having to have Orc slaves fan you and be an eyesore.

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  Concept art of an Orc bride/general.

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  Further artwork, before being cut.

Gallery

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  Concept art of the counselors.

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  The finished product of your appointed pains in the ass.

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  The early build of the game, more of a combat flight simulator than RTS.

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  Elven architecture.

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  Dwarven architecture.

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  Undead architecture.

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  A palace.

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  Tabloids keep you up to date about info in the game.

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  The Raven.

Cut Content

One of the things Dragon Commander is most known for is the sheer amount of content that was cut from the game to make the deadline. Based on what was originally planned and promised, the game was going to be the fucking Dwarf Fortress/Game of Thrones/Waifu Simulator game no self-respecting neckbeard would ever skip out on if they ever wanted to claim they'd played a video game. Sadly, taking what was planned against what was produced ends up making a fan feel as if (obligatory Warhammer reference you know was coming here) they were promised a brand new army update with neat and well sculpted female named characters, and in the end were only given a section in the fluff category about that character and a few minor buffs to put you closer to that one cheesing fucker's list.

The first thing cut in the development process was the ability to play as a female character, which would have required a fair amount of reworking of the plot and expanded the game significantly (as one of the things you tussle with is sexism, and leading an army of dudes who think women don't have real souls needs some decent attention paid to it). Also cut was an open relationship system where you need to woo your princess, and instead upon returning from incinerating an entire army Maxos simply says "Dude, we got some princesses in the hold, and I'm gonna lock the door until you pick one." Mistresses were also cut. The Orc race, and the Imp princess were both cut for time to focus on existing princesses.

Player customization was cut; you only ever see things in the first person and your dragon self is selected at the beginning of the campaign from a short list (with Steam players getting an option to shine like gold).

Boss fights were cut early. Your siblings in the first chapter are given brief description (one replaced his hands with axes, another cut her tongue out thinking it would stop the voices in her head, and one thinks he's an Undead that's not dead yet and likes tearing his skin off) but otherwise you're simply given the vague "they exist and killed papa" to go on that they're evil, and you never get the idea that they exist other than as another army after that. To beat a faction, you simply have to blow up their ultra-durable fuckhuge fortress palace (which you're hilariously still larger than) on a defensive map which will always be the last territory they control.

It's noticeable that the tiers of troops seem to culminate to a point that doesn't exist. You have troops that seem designed to counter super-heavies, but none exist other than a large battleship/aircraft carrier which is of limited use on most maps which will only have a small lagoon or bit of coastline on them. This is because the final tier of troops, including battleships on the same size level as the Raven as well as giant GIANT robots, were cut. They can be seen on some beta footage. In addition, additional pre-built buildings existed as opposed to the small number built on stationary nodes. The original dragon combat style was much more unwieldy, playing much like a real aircraft simulator requiring you to maintain altitude and not crash into things while the final dragon mode is more of a hovercar that can spit fireballs like a machinegun on a short cooldown.

The story mode saw quite a bit of trimming; rather than the planned system which would have been so complex it would put some advanced JRPGs to shame, it plays more like a "choose your own adventure" in regards to your princess while political decisions are largely just to determine which races like you and which don't. This too was more elaborate early on, while in the finished product each territory is dominated by one race or another and if they are fond of you combat and production bonuses are granted.

The generals themselves were a great deal different in earlier incarnations. Notably, in one piece of concept art Maxos appeared to be more of a Shadowrun hippie than an ancient wizard.