I recently had the chance to sit down with Swen Vincke, the charismatic CEO of Larian Studios, almost a year after the monumental launch of Baldur’s Gate 3. The studio has been showered with awards, and the team was gathering in Barcelona to kick off development on their next big RPG. There was an electric feeling in the air, a sense of a team ready for a brand-new adventure after creating a game that redefined a genre.
Table of Contents
It’s hard to imagine that not too long ago, Larian was a comparatively tiny studio. Vincke guesstimates that the team for Divinity: Original Sin was around 40 people. For Original Sin II, it was about 120. Now, Larian is approaching 500 employees spread across seven studios worldwide. This incredible growth is a direct result of the trust and freedom they’ve earned through their success.
So, what’s next for one of the world’s most influential developers? In our conversation, Vincke shared insights into the studio’s unique ‘chaos at scale’ philosophy, why they decided to step away from making Baldur’s Gate IV, and what their ambitious plans for the future hold.
🎲 The Hard-Earned Freedom to Create
Larian’s design philosophy, as Vincke describes it, is ‘player-first, always.’ This is why their RPGs are famous for their incredible player agency. They give you powerful tools like teleportation early on and design their worlds to react to your most creative (and chaotic) solutions. This approach, however, means creating a staggering amount of content that most players will never see.
Vincke posed a rhetorical question that I think perfectly captures their mindset: ‘Why are we spending a million dollars on a dragon, which nobody’s ever going to see, except like five people who made that obscure choice?’ His answer: ‘Because if they see it, they have to be happy too.’ This is an approach that would terrify most publishers, which is precisely why Larian has remained fiercely independent.
He attributes their current success to their biggest failure: Divinity II: Ego Draconis. The game was too ambitious for its small team and was released before it was ready. That experience taught Vincke a crucial lesson and led him to drop publishers, embrace digital distribution, and turn to Kickstarter and Early Access to fund his vision. This path gave them the freedom to make the games they wanted to make, a journey that culminated in the masterpiece that is Baldur’s Gate 3.
🐉 Moving On from Baldur’s Gate IV
With the phenomenal success of Baldur’s Gate 3, the obvious next step would have been an expansion or a sequel. In fact, Vincke revealed that they actually started working on one. The production machine was still warm, and they quickly had playable content. But as they played it, the team had a collective realization.
After spending six years in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, did they really want to spend another three to five years on the same thing? The initial excitement of making an expansion, and then even starting on Baldur’s Gate IV, gave way to a feeling that they were retreading old ground. After a much-needed Christmas break, Vincke made the call to move on.
He described the team’s reaction as feeling ‘liberated.’ Morale is now super high because they’re working on new, original projects again. It wasn’t an issue with D&D, but a creative need to tackle new challenges. They needed to find that spark again, and that meant returning to their own worlds and their own rules, much like the ambition that drove the creation of another classic RPG I wrote about, The Witcher 3.
🚀 Two Ambitious New RPGs on the Horizon
So what is Larian doing next? Vincke confirmed that they are planning to develop two new, large, ambitious RPGs concurrently. He admits this is already proving to be a challenge, as the ambitions for the first game have temporarily ‘swallowed’ some of the staff from the second. But this is the scale at which Larian now operates.
When I asked if they might rein in their ambitions and make a smaller game, Vincke’s answer was telling. He said they always say they will, but ‘the machine is meant to make large games.’ They know how to evolve their gameplay systems and try new things, and those ideas are always big. The biggest challenge now, according to writing director Adam Smith, is avoiding repetition. They did so much in Baldur’s Gate 3 that they’re constantly asking themselves if players have already seen a particular idea or emotional arc.
While Vincke remained tight-lipped about the specifics of these new games, he did hint at a continued desire to explore new genres and settings beyond traditional fantasy. What’s clear is that the best RPG developer in the world is now free from all constraints. Given their trajectory over the last decade, their next adventure could be their most impressive yet.
- Megabonk: A Complete Items, Stats, and Unlocks
- Black Desert Online: A Decade of Community and Conflict
- Baldur’s Gate 3: Deconstructing a Modern Masterpiece
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance – A Guide to the Best Mods
- Is Cyberpunk 2077 a True RPG? An Analysis of Player Agency
- Finding Immortality: The Unlikely Story of Planescape: Torment
- One More Turn: A Complete History of the Civilization Series
