Larian confirms Divinity will be turn-based, go through Early Access, and how they’re using AI

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke has revealed some key details about the freshly announced Divinity and the direction that the studio is heading with their game creation.

In short, Vincke confirmed that Divinity will be a turn-based RPG, building on the successes of the Divinity: Original Sin games and Baldur’s Gate 3. He also stated that they will bring Divinity first to Early Access, just as they did for BG3, and divulged just how Larian is using generative AI within the creative process, and how that gels with needing humans to actually make games.

“It’s a turn-based RPG featuring everything you’ve seen from us in the past, but it’s brought to the next level,” Vincke said in an interview with Bloomberg ahead of Divinity’s announcement. He also discussed the split from working on a Baldur’s Gate 4, saying that “Conceptually, all of the ingredients for a really cool game were there except the hearts of the developers,” and that instead of using tabletop system, “Here, we’re making a system that’s made for a video game. It’s much easier to understand.”

Vincke said they plan to do an early access release of Divinity, and that, while 2026 is not an expected release for this, the development cycle is hopefully going to be shorter than it was for Baldur’s Gate 3. He’s aiming to release much sooner, as “I think three to four years is much healthier than six years,” Vincke said.

Is AI a part of that? Larian has invested pretty heavily in bringing generative AI into how the studio works, but with the company now standing at 530 employees globally, this is still a huge studio. Larian is now larger than Insomniac Games or Naughty Dog, which is honestly quite surprising.

Vincke says that there won’t be AI-generated content in Divinity, but the AI tools allows for things like developing concept art, dropping in placeholder text, for internal powerpoint presentations and more quickly exploring ideas. At the end of the day, Vincke states that “everything is human actors; we’re writing everything ourselves”, and that while there was some pushback internally, “I think at this point everyone at the company is more or less OK with the way we’re using it.”

Even so, the use of generative AI within the game development pipeline could be a bone of contention for the studio’s fans and gamers at large. In the instance of generating concept art, it can be seen as a tool and aid for the artists at the studio, but it could still mean that there’s fewer artists employed by Larian or less work being outsourced, and what images and artwork were the models they’re using trained on?

Larian will have to be vary careful to ensure that no AI-generated concept art of placeholders slip through to any public builds of the game, that’s for sure.

But if you’re excited for Divinity and want to play something that’s been created before the widespread proliferation of AI in game development? Well, Divinity: Original Sin 2 just got a free upgrade for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2, and it’s on sale for all consoles as well.

Source: Bloomberg

Tags: Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity, Larian Studios