LogInSome things have to be completed while they're good.
Larian Studios
The wild success of Baldur's Gate 3 keeps making fans ask for more, but we know Larian Studios is done with this universe. But it doesn't mean the team hasn't tried to make a sequel to the RPG of the year. In a big interview with PC Gamer, CEO Swen Vincke and writing director Adam Smith talked about the company's past, present, and future.
Vincke said that about 40 people worked on the first Divinity: Original Sin, around 120 made the sequel possible, and now the workforce approaches 500 employees. Despite the growing size, Larian has kept its "small studio energy," with Vincke standing against corporate greed.
"The energy when people talk about making things feels like a small company. Actually, somebody said something today, one of our producers, that game development is a bunch of people sitting around a screen getting excited. And that's still how it is," said Smith.
Vincke calls what happens there "chaos at scale," saying there is a lot of freedom for developers, encouraged by the company.
"Different people have to do their own thing. And then obviously, we have to manage the chaos that comes out of it, so that's a large part of the job. But the fact that we start like that, and we have been on purpose keeping studios not too large – so they're basically people that all know each other still, which is a very important part – is the thing that makes it work. It's as simple as that. So it is just empowering developers themselves."
Larian Studios
Baldur's Gate 3 was published by the studio itself, and it's no wonder: this chaos scares shareholders and publishers. They would try to scope and control it, and this is what Vincke doesn't want, as that would take a big chunk of the freedom.
There is a lot of content that only a small portion of players can see, so a publisher would likely not bother developing it, but Larian thinks it's important to reward players.
"Because it's like, why are we spending a million dollars on a dragon, which nobody's ever going to see, except like five people who made that obscure choice? Because if they see it, they have to be happy too. So that's why I put the bloody dragon there, because that's the logical consequence of the things that they've done."
The studio has come a long way, story- and character-wise as well. Divinity: Original Sin 2's story was done in 3 days only, but now, Larian spends "years discussing story and trying to develop characters."
Still, the team had to cut a lot of things, too, because "we felt they detracted. Putting more in and continuously tweaking can make something worse." For example, we could have seen Wyll at the Red War College and Gortash – in Candlekeep. A Shadow Druids hangout, a gnome village, and a non-linear map were also removed at some point.
The principle of finishing stuff while it's still good seems to be working for the Baldur's Gate 3 sequel, too, which Larian discussed first as an add-on and then as a possible fully-fledged title. But after six years of D&D, the thought of doing it again wasn't as appealing.
"Another X amount of years, same thing, exactly the same mechanics, same problems that we actually already solved, just evolving them. And then you start looking at the other things that you had planned and pushing them back, and then you've come back to your senses, because by then the vulnerability is gone."
Larian Studios
So Larian turned to thinking how it can "do stuff that we get excited about." Now, it is planning to develop 2 new games at the same time, which has proven quite challenging – the studio is just too ambitious.
"We were made for making large, ambitious RPGs and to try new stuff. One of the core problems ... to do what you're suggesting is that we actually know what we want from our gameplay systems, how to evolve them, how to do new things … and they're all big."
And BG3 is not helping, as Larian noticed it had used a lot of stuff there already. In the future, it might leave the familiar realms of fantasy and move on to something unexplored: "There's so many things that I would like to do. Just so [few] things that you can do," said Vincke.
Perhaps there could be another IP on the horizon? Vincke is fond of Ultima, but Smith believes it doesn't need to come back.
"Never say never," Vincke added. "There's another developer who I'd love to work with one day in my life and we'd get along really well. I can't tell you who, but he's a big Ultima fan, so you never know."
Hopefully, Larian will keep its principles and creative freedom in whatever next it going to show us. Read the full interview here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
Keep reading
You may find these articles interesting