Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are in for a treat. After revealing their next RPG, Divinity, everyone is keeping an ear out for any information on Larian Studio’s upcoming project.
With the game designed to match the intelligence of the studio’s existing fanbase, Divinity is already shaping up to be something special. However, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke has now confirmed that the game will be great for all fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 when it eventually releases.
Speaking to Bloomberg after The Game Awards, Vincke confirmed that the upcoming Divinity RPG will be another turn-based game like Divinity: Original Sin and BG3. While some believed the studio would return to its action-RPG roots, the upcoming series reboot is firmly turn-based.
“This is going to be us unleashed, I think,” Vincke said. “It’s a turn-based RPG featuring everything you’ve seen from us in the past, but it’s brought to the next level.”
In the Bloomberg interview, Vincke also confirmed that generative AI will not be used for the actual game of Divinity, saying: “everything is human actors; we’re writing everything ourselves”. However, the technology is used to explore ideas and design concepts that are then taken over by human developers at Larian.
“It’s going to be a single-player game, and it’s also going to be a cooperative multiplayer game.”
Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke
Alongside the turn-based gameplay confirmation, Vincke confirmed in a second interview with IGN that the game will “most likely” release in early access, although the studio is still undecided. However, the developer did confirm that the game has been worked on “for over two years in development” with the game “now in full production”.
“We’re not ready to do anything in early access yet, but I think it’s worked well for us in the past,” the CEO said. “We had the player community and their feedback, and that has made all of our games that were in early access much better. So yeah, I think we would very much like to do that again. But that said, we don’t want too many people playing in early access, because we do need to ‘cook’ and it’s still a period of development. So that might be a little bit problematic, but we’ll see.”
Vincke confirmed that Divinity will also have multiplayer in the same way that Baldur’s Gate 3 had multiplayer, allowing players to manipulate the game world and “break our systems” in unique ways.
“We certainly want to innovate, yeah. But there are some core pillars that we don’t need to change,” the CEO continued. “It’s going to be a single-player game, and it’s also going to be a cooperative multiplayer game. Obviously, all within our formula, and there’s still plenty of room for innovation. So you will see. There will be more agency for sure, more freedom for sure, more shenanigans that you can do for sure. So, in the combination of all these things, that’s the thing that will surprise people the most.”
Vincke explained that the “pressure is high” after working on Balfur’s Gate 3 as the studio has now set “high ambitions” alongside the expectations from the communtiy. However, Vincke explained that “there’s always anxiety” when making any game, and Divinity is no different in that regard.
“It’s a mess [to make games], but we’ll be fine eventually,” he said. “The team is good, we have trust, and we know that they know what they’re doing, that eventually we’re going to get what comes out of it. But if you were to go and look now, it’s as messy as a building that is under construction, right?”
There is currently no release date for Divinity at the time of publication.
