When a developer announces the follow-up to one of PC Gamer’s highest rated games of all time, you can bet that we’ll have questions—too many to fit into the few minutes we had to interview Larian after The Game Awards last week.
While the developer is keeping most of its next game, Divinity, secret for now, we still pried loose a few details about Larian’s “biggest most ambitious RPG yet,” including the style of combat, broad technical advancements, and how representative that wildly dark and violent reveal trailer is of the game as a whole.
Don’t get your hopes up about a release date, though—Larian isn’t throwing any days, months, or even years out yet. But if you were worried that cinematic teaser meant Divinity was just starting pre-production, we’ve got some good news. Read on for a quick overview of the key things we learned straight from Larian.
1. Yes, Divinity is still turn-based, but it’s not recycling Original Sin 2’s combat
Despite being a matter of fierce debate immediately after Divinity was unveiled, it seemed pretty unlikely that Larian would drop turn-based combat after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (and Original Sin 1&2). Now we have confirmation: Divinity will be turn-based, but it’s not just bringing back an old combat system.
“It’s a new rule set, a rule set built on everything that we learned from all the previous games that we’ve done,” Larian founder Swen Vincke told us.
2. The planned level of player agency is “much higher” than in Baldur’s Gate 3
Immediately after announcing Divinity at The Game Awards, Larian called the game its “biggest most ambitious RPG yet,” and the team elaborated on what that means in our interview. Divinity has ‘deeper sequences of consequence’ based on your choices than Baldur’s Gate 3, intended to give players even more control over how their adventure plays out.
“The level of agency that we’re going to give you is very, very high—much higher than what happened in BG3. At least that’s our ambition,” Vincke said. “And this is agency at pretty much all levels, so it’s at the narrative as well as systems level. That makes it our most ambitious. It’s the biggest game that we’ve ever made.
3. Larian updated its game engine for Divinity
Perhaps it’s obvious that a new game means some new tech, but Larian told us a bit about why updates to its game engine matter for Divinity. “Everything we do is to allow our efficiency to become higher, and then we use that efficiency to try more,” Vincke said.
For example, the motion capture pipeline is now automated to the point that “almost the moment it’s recorded it’s in the game,” and a new system “allows designers to more rapidly experiment with rules.” A better analytics engine makes playtesting more effective.
“It’s taken years and years to get to this point. Every single game we’ve improved this tech a little bit. … It’s built, obviously, on the existing tech we had before, but there are a lot of things we can do now that we couldn’t do before that’s going to be really cool. In gameplay—I think that’s going to be the bit that excites most people, other than the visual fidelity that’s obviously come up.”
4. Divinity is already in full production
Divinity has moved beyond pre-production and is in production; in fact, Larian is already recording performances and dialogue with actors. But don’t take that to mean the game’s almost finished. Vincke said that Larian will be recording “recording nonstop” throughout development.
5. Divinity may launch in early access, but Larian hasn’t decided yet
While discussing how character stories tend to evolve throughout development, Vincke said “if we go to early access,” suggesting that the studio hasn’t decided how it plans to release Divinity yet.
Given how well early access worked out with both Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, my bet is that Larian will end up going with the same path this time.
6. Divinity is Larian’s darkest game yet, but it’s not nonstop grim
PC Gamer’s Harvey Randall has already guessed that Divinity’s gross-out reveal trailer may not set the tone for the full game, and in our interview Larian writing director Adam Smith pretty much said: Yep! It’s dark, but it’s not just dark.
“We’re not in the grimdarkness where there’s only war,” he said, referencing the Game Awards reveal of Total War: Warhammer 40,000. “There is light and hope. We don’t want to make something that is all that tone. We want to confront you with horror and then say, ‘What are you going to do with it? And about it?'”
Vincke added that D:OS2 was already pretty dark, but the game’s more limited graphics and pulled-back camera meant you “didn’t see them cinematically.”
“Now you can see it cinematically, and it makes everything more intimate and direct,” he said. “It makes for a much more engaging experience. When you see the darkness you’re going to understand that this is a game about contrast, where you can really be the beacon, the last hope of everyone, or the one that really fucks everything up.”
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