Larian on signing baldursgate3, approaching a new era, and games you've never heard about. A ginormous interview
I saw sides to Baldur's Gate 3 last week - at an event for the launch version of the game - I didn't realise were there. I saw the game transform into a horror not far removed from Silent Hill, in an eerie Victorian-style hospital where nurses with rotten faces cooed around a grotesque surgeon who had scalpels for fingers and torture on his mind.
It's with the studio on the precipice that I sat down with Larian founder Swen Vincke at the event, for a long and candid conversation about the studio's history and the origins of the Baldur's Gate 3. And, of course, where it goes from here. I can see how proud you are of it when you're demoing it. Is there something in particular you're most proud of?We wanted to marry a cinematic, triple-A RPG with systemic freedom, which is basically the two things that we've always been trying to do, but never at this scale, never at this level. The fact that we managed to do this is really an achievement.
Now, definitely, in this last month towards release, things are tenser because it's just a lot of stuff that has to come together, and it's very hard to do that nine-to-five. But until a couple of months ago, I think the average [overtime] was ten or twenty minutes, or something like that. I know there are specific differences but broadly speaking, you're around the same size as CDPR was back then, you're making an RPG and self-publishing it, you're European, and there's a similar level of hype surrounding what you're doing. Like them, you're on the cusp of a new era, I believe.I can understand why [you said it]. We certainly approached the RPGs from a different perspective, but I can see why you would see that similarity.
I know what we want to do - we had six years to sit on other ideas - but we need to see if there's a market large enough to carry this type of game. And if there is, then we can continue innovating in it, and if there's not, then we have to shift gears somewhere. That's something you can't know upfront.
That's the game. Everybody has this game that defines them. I played Ultima 6 - it was my first real RPG, and that was still with a lot of text on the sides. And then Ultima 7 was the first modern RPG in my eyes. It had a shit combat system [but] so much freedom and so much interactivity - so much, in fact, I had no clue what I was doing. I just knew this was cool.Wow! That is a meeting that should happen.No. So the publisher back then was basically self-publishing, so they were a developer.
I suppose that ties into what you're nervous about now - how big the market for turn-based can be, versus action. I started playing in a regular D&D group around the same time Baldur's Gate 3 hit early access , so it's interesting to come back to BG3 now and see it from a slightly different perspective. And BG3 is now influencing how I play D&D, and vice versa.
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