After a lot of back and forth on the internet regarding what Geoff Keighley’s demonic obelisk could mean, it was finally revealed at The Game Awards that the statue was related to Divinity, the next game from Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios. Shortly after that reveal, we at GameSpot received an email asking if we would like to go sit with game director Swen Vincke and writing director Adam Smith to talk about the game once the show concluded.
Post-TGA plans sorted.
Returning to Divinity was always, eventually, in the cards for the team at Larian, but it wasn’t the original plan following Baldur’s Gate 3. “ We were gonna do more Dungeons and Dragons, so we were in the process of figuring out what that was,” says Smith. “And one fateful day, we sat down and realized that we weren't excited and we don't wanna make a game we're not excited about. And so we said, ‘Can we go back to Divinity right away?’”
In order to do that, the team knew that they had a lot of work ahead of them. While Rivellon, the setting of the Divinity games, has been deeply explored in previous entries, Larian had never actually sat down to build their universe from the ground up before.
“We learned from BG3 the importance of having a ruleset, allure, and a world solidified behind you,” says Vincke. “It was quite a lot of work actually. [Now] we know what the days of the week are. We know what people eat in the evening. We know the way they dress. All these things needed to be sorted out. So as progress grew, we started saying, ‘Okay, well this is a really good cornerstone for everything that we've built. And there's never been a real Divinity, so let's just call it Divinity. People will henceforth refer to it as the Divinity Universe quickly and like it.’”
Both Divinity and Baldur’s Gate 3 share a lot of connective tissue; rich, fantasy worlds filled with magic and a diverse roster of races. However, when it comes to gameplay, the two are quite different. While the Original Sin duology bears somewhat of a resemblance to Baldur’s Gate 3, previous installments prior to those games have looked more like titles such as Diablo and The Witcher. So what should players expect from this new Divinity? “Agency,” says Vincke plainly. “Agency at every level. In the systems and how you can develop your character, your identity, and then also obviously in the narrative and the choices that you make.”
Vincke then points out how dark the trailer for the game that premiered at the TGAs is. “ We have this thing that the player will be the one that brings light into the darkness or pushes it completely into deeper darkness,” says Vincke. “ We want you to be surprised at the level of things that you can do.”
When pressed for more granular details on the gameplay, Smith adds that the team wants the game to speak for itself when it's ready to be shown. “You don't want to be told, 'This is what it's gonna do.' You want to see it,” says Smith. “You know the kind of games we make, so you can speculate from there. But we'll put it in front of you as soon as we're ready to, and then you'll see what it is.”
