Larian Studios’ upcoming Divinity game still doesn’t have a release date, but the upcoming turn-based RPG is quickly becoming one of the most highly-anticipated titles for PC gamers.
With the game described as being Larian “unleashed”, the upcoming turn-based RPG will see an advancement in the mechanics seen in the studio’s prior work with Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, and that also means a return to an early access launch.
However, with surging RAM prices as companies rabidly support AI datacenter demands expected to continue well into 2027, Larian CEO Swen Vincke has explained that the team will have to refocus its optimisation efforts to ensure that even the game’s earliest versions will be playable on the average PC.
Speaking to The Gamer, Vincke explained that “another [issue Larian is facing] is really the price of RAM and the price of SSDs, and f**k, man. It’s like, literally, we’ve never had it like this.”
“It kind of ruins all of your projections that you had about it because normally, you know the curves, and you can protect the hardware,” the CEO continued. “It’s gonna be an interesting one. It means that most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimisation work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point in time. So it’s challenging, but it’s video games.”
Of course, Larian Studios itself has been criticised for its admission of using generative AI during development, the very cause of the spike in RAM prices today. While Vincke has claimed that no generative AI will be present in the final game, Larian Studios is using the technology for “ideation”.
“We’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI,” Vincke said on Twitter. “We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use Google and art books. At the very early ideation stages, we use it as a rough outline for composition, which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.”
AI content in video games is also becoming increasingly commonplace with Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders making frequent use of AI-generated voices in-game, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 being littered with terrible AI-generated artwork.
With the price of RAM, GPUs, SSDs and other hardware continuing to climb, there is an expectation that games will have to go through lengthy optimisation periods as consumer-grade technology plateaus to make way for AI datacenter demands.
As for Divinity, major optimisation usually happens in the last stretch of game development, but it would seem that major technical optimisations will be needed to bring the extensive RPG to early access as technology stagnates.
