Larian’s Reddit AMA on Divinity has concluded, and with it comes a number of new details on the Baldur’s Gate 3 developer’s next game.
We’ve rounded up all the new information revealed during the Reddit AMA from the various Larian members of staff who took part.
First up, Larian CEO Swen Vincke explained how the developer itself has changed since the blockbuster launch of Baldur's Gate 3 back in 2023. "We were 411 people at the end of BG3 and have around 500 people working on Divinity now," he confirmed. "Our teams evolve in function of the games we try to make and what we think the size of the market is. We grew a lot during BG3 because we wanted to make a cinematic RPG with loads of choice and consequence but we also knew there was a market and scaled accordingly. Our growth has slowed down a bit as we have most of the team in place to make a big cinematic RPG but there are still a few things that we didn’t do before that we are doing now."
Moving on, Larian confirmed Divinity’s looting system will include handcrafted items, as Baldur’s Gate 3 did, as opposed to random and level dependent loot seen in the Divinity: Original Sin games. As you'd expect, Divinity will have mod support via modding tools, but it's unclear if they will be available for launch.
Larian confirmed Divinity will have co-op at launch, and that modders will be able to up the player count. “Yes, coop will be available for release!” technical director Bert van Semmertier said. “The amount of players playing together will be depending on the final party size. But since modding is planned for this project as well, player will be essentially free to extend this. There is no hard limit to the amount of coop players.”
However, Divinity will not support native keyboard movement controls such as WASD right out of the box, which means modders will have to do their thing again, as they did for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Meanwhile, Divinity will run on Larian’s proprietary engine, which includes “significant changes.” “For each game, we are bringing significant changes to our engine,” head of gameplay Artem Titov said. “Since Divinity Engine is fully our own creation, it makes it easier to alter it to serve a new game rather than write a new engine from scratch.”
Divinity finally adds swimming to a Larian RPG?
As for new mechanics, head of design, Nick Pechenin, teased: “There was something that bothered me when I explored the starting areas of DOS1, DOS2 and BG3. It stares you right in the face if you think about it. In Divinity I can finally do the thing I wanted to do in every previous game.” Most believe this is about swimming.
As for the camera perspective, Divinity’s camera will work “very similar” to Baldur’s Gate 3’s, so expect a hybrid of top down and third-person camera.
Larian CEO Swen Vincke couldn't say when we'll see Divinity gameplay. "We'll see," he commented. "We're in full production mode now but still have truckloads of work." Larian wouldn't be drawn on the playable races and classes, either, but did say there are clues as to Divinity's races in the much-discussed announcement trailer.
Divinity tone, lore, and story
Writing director Adam Smith discussed the tonal difference between Divinity and Divinity: Original Sin 2, saying: "it's more grounded and you might have picked up on some folk horror vibes in our trailer. But with games the size of DOS 2 and Divinity, there are lots of tonal variations as you move through the world and meet new characters. I hope it'll make you laugh, frighten you, shock you and delight you."
Smith also commented on Divinity's place in the overall Divinity series lore. "It's in the same continuity, but it's a standalone story," Smith said. "Long-term Divinity fans will find lots of familiar things but it's never just fanservice - it has to serve the story we're telling. The Divinity universe is full of weird and wonderful characters, and I'm really excited to be part of that legacy."
Bert van Semmertier also touched on this, saying: "Divinity is a different universe than Baldur's Gate. While you do not need to play the previous Divinity games, it would certainly improve your enjoyment if you do! You'll perhaps recognize certain characters or situations or learn to explore the large universe the was already built for Divinity!"
Nick Pechenin confirmed Divinity will not keep the magic armor system from DOS2. "There will be ways to protect your characters from harm, but you will not have to wait before you can use your fun skill on enemies," he said. "We are still cooking a system that makes sure that you have to work harder to stunlock solo bosses with."
Divinity's character customization will be "even better" than Baldur's Gate 3's, art director Alena Dubrovina said, "more colors, more options, more control!"
Size and scope of Divinity compared to Baldur's Gate 3
Vincke touched on the size and scope of Divinity compared to Baldur's Gate 3, saying: "Divinity takes everything we learned from BG3 & D:OS 2 and improves from there. In regards to BG3 - I think the main thing will be more agency and a rulesystem that was made for videogaming in addition to higher production values. Oh - and some really cool new friends to meet."
Then: "more agency, more consequences. We don't know ourselves yet how big it will be. We're still making it."
Larian will do its best to make Divinity playable on Steam Deck, given how popular Baldur's Gate 3 proved on Valve's portable game machine.
Here's a fun one: will the new engine render moving ropes correctly and will we be able to look up in to the sky?
"There is no real engine limitation to allow looking at the sky," technical director Bert van Semmertier replied. "How the camera works is entirely a design choice. Alternative camera angles are always considered. If they benefit the game, we will for sure add it. As for the ropes: you can expect substantial changes to our physics engine in the future games!"
Divinity's combat and character progression systems
Head of design, Nick Pechenin, said Divinity will have a brand new combat system. "We went through our original ideas for DOS1 and DOS2, looked again at how they worked out in practice, picked up some inspirations from our BG3 EA and post-release journey, consulted the star charts to see what we need to do to stay competitive - and cooked a new action economy and character progression system," he said.
"Feedback from BG3 players trying DOS2 for the first time has been especially interesting to us, seeing the two worlds colliding. We hope that both fans of BG3 and fans of DOS2 will find the new system intuitive but deep."
It sounds like Divinity may indeed come to Nintendo Switch 2, eventually. "We have just released Divinity Original Sin 2 for Switch 2! We love the platform and we will certainly consider Switch 2 for the next Divinity game," technical director Bert van Semmertier said.
Lizard romance?
As a Larian RPG, romance will of course be in Divinity. And it sounds like the developer expects lizards to get on well with each other. Vincke said he was particularly excited for players to experience a spot of lizard romance: "there's a lot [he's excited for players to experience] but we prefer to show and not tell. That said - Lizard romance seems like it's going to be popular."
And will the orcs have a special twist in Divinity? "Without saying which species are in the game, all of them have something unique," is all Vincke would say.
As for companions, Adam Smith acknowleged the common criticism that Baldur's Gate 3's party members don't have as much of a relationship between each other or talk to each other as much as party members do in some other games. This is something Larian is looking to improve for Divinity. "Yeah, the goal is to have more interactions between party members, and it won't always just be talking," he teased.
Divinity senior writer Kevin VanOrd expanded on companion relationships, noting the narrative improvements he'd like to see for the game: "firstly, to have more interaction between companions - not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players. Secondly, to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural."
Is Divinity going to be just like that gruesome announcement trailer?
What about Divinity's gruesome announcement trailer? Vincke responded to one fan who said they were put off playing the game because the trailer is "so nihilistic and viscerally depressing." Is the trailer an accurate depiction of what fans should expect from the game itself?
"We're creating a dark world so you can be the light in the darkness. It's a story about hope," Vincke insisted. "But of course - we do want you to experience agency - so there’s also plenty of ways to take away that hope and be the darkness that snuffs out the light."
Adam Smith also spoke of being this "light in the darkness." "If you've seen our announcement trailer, you have an idea of how dark the world of Divinity is," he said. "We want to give players the opportunity to be the light in that darkness - an inspiration, a hero, a champion. We'll also let them leave the world even worse than they found it. We're pushing as far as we can on player agency."
Larian, Divinity, and generative AI
As expected, Vincke addressed the generative AI controversy that emerged following Divinity's announcement. He insisted Divinity would not include any generative AI art, and confirmed it has ditched genAI tools during concept art development. However, Vincke confirmed Larian is using genAI across other areas of development.
Here's Vincke's full statement from the Reddit AMA:
"So first off - there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity. I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion. So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development. That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.
"Having said that, we continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think GenAI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game.
"The important bit to note is that we will not generate 'creative assets' that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own."
Machine Learning Director Gabriel Bosque expanded on this last point in a bit more detail:
"This is all new technology, so I totally understand why it’s difficult to see where the positive uses are. We believe Machine Learning is a powerful tool to accelerate and make game development more efficient and streamlined. This means that our creatives have more time doing the work that makes their jobs more rewarding and the game a richer experience.
"The important bit to note is that we do not generate 'creative assets' that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data.
"With over 100,000 voice lines scheduled to be in the game, recorded by hundreds of actors, and even hundred thousands more to be recorded that will not end up in the game, there are useful tools for us to reduce the ‘mechanical legwork’ and free up time for teams that would be bogged down doing tasks that kept them away from what they really want to be doing. Additionally, our ML R&D team monitors and experiments with anything that is state of the art and that might influence game development pipelines of the future. This is important to us because we make our own engine.
"But we draw lines in the sand too. We explicitly committed in our actor agreements to not using the recordings to train or build AI voice modelers, because we are aware of how sensitive it can be to artificially generate an actor’s voice. Even if an actor were willing to agree to this if we'd compensate them, we don’t currently feel comfortable with including an AI-generated voice in our games."
Writing director Adam Smith confirmed this stance on generative AI applies to writing, too. "We don't have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity," he said.
"We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity. Even my worst first drafts - and there are a LOT of them - are at least a 4/10 (although Swen might disagree :p), and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous. From the initial stub to the line we record and ship, there are a great many eyes and hands involved in getting a dialogue right."
So what areas do Larian use genAI on and what does it mean by a "creative asset"? "There is currently one example of ML generated assets that end up in the game and that is within our cinematics and animation pipeline," Bosque explained. "In this pipeline we try to capture the actor's performances as best as we can, so we use ML models to clean, retarget and even add motion when it's not motion captured. These models are trained exclusively with Larian data."
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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