Pick the Origin character whose personal story you most want to play through. The available evidence does not identify a best starting character in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Your choice comes down to which background premise interests you, or whether you would rather build a protagonist of your own.
The six Origin characters
A Larian Studios community forum post lists six Origin characters: Fane, Lohse, Sebille, Ifan, the Red Prince, and Beast. According to that post, you can choose any of them at the start of the game or recruit them later in Fort Joy. Because this is a forum statement rather than a current official manual entry, treat the six-character count and the Fort Joy recruiting detail as the forum’s account.
Fane
Fane is one of the six Origins listed in the forum post. The sources reviewed here do not offer a detailed, verified summary of Fane’s background, so judge this option by the premise that appeals to you rather than by a plot synopsis.
Lohse
Lohse is also on the forum list. The older character descriptions available for Lohse are early promotional-era forum material and are incomplete, so they are useful only as a rough orientation.
#1 Best Overall
- Go anywhere, talk to anyone, and interact with everything! Kill any NPC without sacrificing your progress, and speak to every animal. Even ghosts might be hiding a secret or two!
- Blast your opponents with elemental combinations. Use height to your advantage. Master over 200 skills in 12 skill schools.
- Play with your friends online (up to 4 players) or in local split-screen with drop-in/drop-out multiplayer. PvP hot-seat mode: Battle your friends in round-robin, hero to hero!
- Story mode: A new difficulty setting for players who wish to enjoy the lauded narrative, but still want to enjoy the combat.
- An entirely re-written journal to catalogue your journey and reflect on your quests. Character romance, disagreements, and unique quest-lines pushing the boundaries between fellowship and feud!
Sebille
Sebille is listed among the six Origins. The same caveat applies: the older descriptions for her are incomplete, so use them as light orientation only.
Ifan
Ifan appears in the forum list, and older descriptions of him are likewise early and incomplete.
Rank #2
- Go anywhere, talk to anyone, and interact with everything! Kill any NPC without sacrificing your progress, and speak to every animal. Even ghosts might be hiding a secret or two!
- Blast your opponents with elemental combinations. Use height to your advantage. Master over 200 skills in 12 skill schools.
- Play with your friends online (up to 4 players) or in local split-screen with drop-in/drop-out multiplayer. PvP hot-seat mode: Battle your friends in round-robin, hero to hero!
- Story mode: A new difficulty setting for players who wish to enjoy the lauded narrative, but still want to enjoy the combat.
- An entirely re-written journal to catalogue your journey and reflect on your quests. Character romance, disagreements, and unique quest-lines pushing the boundaries between fellowship and feud!
The Red Prince
The Red Prince is one of the six named Origins. Older descriptions of this character are early forum material and should not be treated as a complete account of his story.
Beast
Larian’s patch announcement refers to Beast’s story when discussing Origin characters, which makes Beast one of the Origins the official notes single out by name. The announcement does not, in the material reviewed here, establish how central Beast is to the main plot.
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An Origin is more than a name and a starting stat block. Larian’s patch announcement describes Origin-specific interactions: it says that “Party members will now engage with NPCs to play out origin moments particular to their own background stories – if the player allows them to do so.” In other words, a party member with an Origin background can bring that history into conversations and encounters with other characters, and you control whether those moments happen.
The same announcement also discusses relationships between Origin characters and refers to unique Origin skills. That places the Origin choice inside the game’s personal-history and relationship systems rather than treating it as cosmetic.
Rank #4
- Choose your race and origin. Choose from 6 unique origin characters with their own backgrounds and quests, or create your own as a Human, Lizard, Elf, Dwarf, or Undead. All choices have consequences.
- Unlimited freedom to explore and experiment. Go anywhere, talk to anyone, and interact with everything! Kill any NPC without sacrificing your progress and speak to every animal. Even ghosts might be hiding a secret or two.
- The next generation of turn-based combat. Blast your opponents with elemental combinations. Use height to your advantage. Master over 200 skills in 12 skill schools.
- Up to 4 player online and dynamic split-screen multiplayer. Play with your friends online or in local split-screen with drop-in, drop-out multiplayer.
- PVP Hot-seat mode: battle your friends in round-robin, hero to hero.
How to choose
Work through these questions in order. Each one narrows the decision without requiring you to rank the characters against each other.
- Do you want a defined protagonist? If you like the idea of playing an established person with a history of their own, choose one of the six Origins.
- Do you want to write your own protagonist? If you prefer to build a character from scratch, use the custom character option at character creation. The patch announcement refers to the character-creation screen, but the sources reviewed here do not describe every trade-off of a custom character, so check the in-game options before you commit.
- Which background premise appeals to you most? When two Origins are close, compare the kind of personal background and character-specific interactions you want, not an assumed plot importance.
- Are you worried about missing the others? You do not have to. According to the forum post, the other Origins can be recruited in Fort Joy, so your starting pick does not lock their stories away.
What the evidence does not establish
The sources do not offer a reliable, even-handed comparison of the six characters’ narrative quality, plot centrality, combat strength, or suitability for a first playthrough. No tier list or ranking can be supported from them, and no single Origin can be called the strongest or the most useful choice.
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The older character descriptions for Ifan, Lohse, the Red Prince, and Sebille are early forum material and are incomplete. If you want a fuller picture of any one character, play a short stretch with that Origin, or compare the recruitment and interaction moments you encounter, rather than relying on those descriptions alone.
Official sources reviewed here: Larian Studios patch announcement (quoted above) and a Larian Studios community forum post. No additional statistics or named quotations apply to this choice.
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