Larian Studios head Swen Vincke and his colleagues gave a great interview on the occasion of Baldur’s Gate III’s first anniversary. During the conversation the developers both looked into the past and talked about the studio’s future projects.
Below we have selected the main things from the conversation:
About the studio’s work
Despite the fact that Larian has grown to nearly 500 people, the organization retains a small studio atmosphere. Lead writer Adam Smith joined the team to work on BGIII. According to him, he was worried that he wouldn’t have time to experience that atmosphere, as Larian is rapidly expanding its staff. However, nothing has changed.
It’s incredible. While chatting about making the game, you can still feel the energy of the small studio. Someone said today – maybe it was one of our producers – that video game production is when a bunch of people gather around a screen and they all marvel at the work they’ve done. And that statement still holds true for Larian.
Adam Smith
According to Vinke, this has been achieved through creative freedom for professionals. The manager does not imagine that it is possible to work in any other way. However, the result is chaos and managers have to deal with the problem. Larian tries not to bloat the staff of departments so that their employees know each other. “This is an extremely important component that makes everything work. It’s so simple. It gives strength to the developers,” Vinke said.
On how Sven Vincke almost left the industry
Divinity 2: Ego Draconis from 2009 can be called the low point in Larian’s history. It is the third game in the series. According to Sven Vinke, the title would have been a blockbuster if the stars had aligned differently: “It was ambitious. It had so much going for it, but none of the components were properly realized.”
There were several reasons for this: too much ambition on the part of the team, too small a staff, and serious pressure from the publisher – he insisted on releasing the project when it wasn’t ready.
I fought it very long and hard, because at that moment I was thinking of giving up. Well, you can’t go from slip-up to slip-up. You at least have to get something right. As you know, I refused to work with publishers after that experience.
Sven Vincke
So in the next title, which was Divinity: Original Sin, the director decided to improve the aspects that had failed in Ego Draconis. A renewed approach to development without the “320,000 middlemen who only cut the budget”, together with the blossoming of Kickstarter and early access, paid off. Larian was able to fund two parts of D:OS and make money from them. And there and to the phenomenal Baldur’s Gate III was not far away. By the way, everyone in the team expected that the release of the same Starfield would draw all the attention of the public, but the sales of the threequel only continued to gain momentum.
About Baldur’s Gate IV
On the wave of success of the third Baldur’s Gate all eyes were fixed on Larian. Everyone was interested in what the team would do next and whether any sequel was planned. The developers themselves felt as if they finally got out of the cramped cave, where they spent a lot of time. They were emotionally exhausted, but full of hopes for a good reception of the game.
So at a time like that you tend to go for the most obvious thing – to make a supplement, a standalone addon or a full-fledged sequel, because that’s the easiest way. And we’ve really started working on it because we’ve got the engine and everything else in hand. All you have to do is add more levels or come up with more stories – is that hard?
I think [Baldur’s Gate IV] you would love it. I’m sure you would.
Sven Vincke
According to the studio boss, the process went pretty quickly – the production machine hasn’t had time to cool down yet. Some segments were even playable. Later, however, the developers caught themselves thinking that they would have to solve the same problems and create in the same setting for a few more years, putting their own ideas on hold. Then the “easiest way” lost its seductiveness for Vincke and his team: “We have to devote ourselves to projects that make our eyes burn”.
After an extended New Year’s break, the executive evaluated the pros and cons and talked to the team about moving forward. In the end, Larian decided to drop the Baldur’s Gate sequel and the move was one of the most successful for the studio. Mol, the developers have never felt better – morale is at an all-time high because there’s something fresh to do.
Winke and Smith reiterated that it wasn’t about D&D itself. In their opinion, Baldur’s Gate was one of the coolest things the studio had ever worked on. It all came down to the fact that Larian was tired and needed something new to recharge their batteries.
About future games
Currently the studio is working on two ambitious titles, and it’s getting hard to keep the balance between them, Vinke said. Larian has decided on the order of the games, but there were some employees who liked the other title better, which will be released later. In the end, they were still “consumed by the ambition of the first project.” “We will try to develop them at the same time, but we need to figure out how to get behind people,” explained the head of the studio.
Despite the fact that Larian has two projects in the forge at once, the developers have no plans to scale them down. They say that Larian is a machine that creates huge games. However, now employees often ask themselves, “Wasn’t what we’re working on in BGIII?”
It turns out that we had already pulled a lot of things off in Baldur’s Gate III. But the same thing was happening during production of the latter. Was this pattern already being used? Were these words already recorded in this order? Did we have an emotional arc like that? You’re constantly trying to make sure that players have new experiences, and you yourself don’t fall into self-repeating and giving away content just for the sake of content.
Adam Smith
The team isn’t going to inflate the scale just for the sake of that scale either. Short RPGs can be great too, such as Disco Elysium, Smith emphasized. However, Larian’s games are designed for multiplayer, and also give users the opportunity to create their own adventure. “The sense of discovery is important, and for that you need space for people to explore the environment and then be like: ‘Holy crap, I found something new here.’ That’s what you need space and a longer duration for,” the screenwriter explained.
Even in the already gigantic BGIII developers included not all of their ideas. For example, Will had his own area – the School of Red War. Also, the game could have added a village of dwarves, the possibility to meet Gortash in Candlkeep, where the very first Baldur’s Gate began, and so on.
Sven Vincke recently revealed that if Larian hadn’t managed to get the license for Baldur’s Gate, it would have taken on Ultima or Fallout. A few years later, the executive is no longer as fired up about the idea. Smith agrees with him: “I love Ultima, but I don’t think it should come back. Nevertheless, the head of the studio does not give up the idea of touching someone else’s franchise again in the future. Mol, there’s a certain developer he’d like to collaborate with. “I can not give his name, but it’s a big fan of Ultima,” – pronounced Winke.
As a reminder, Larian is currently working on the seventh major patch for BGIII. The update is scheduled to launch in September, and right now its closed testing is underway. To celebrate the anniversary of the threequel, the new YouTube-channel of the studio should soon have some celebratory videos.