Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Eurogamer's Interview with Swen Vincke

https://www.eurogamer.net/larian-on...ew-era-and-games-youve-never-heard-about

It's pretty good.

there's poll at the end of article and Baldur's gate got 4%, while Starfield is taking the lead.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing the link!

Not that surprising.
Especially since it's apparently an old poll that pre-dates Diablo 4 release, so chances are most of the votes are from a time when the hype machine/marketing push for BG3 wasn't in full steam yet.

Yes we need to date this as BBS
Before Bear Sex

Very interesting stuff.

Ultima 7 - The Black Gate and Serpent Isle was the peak of the Ultima games. It's a good standard to go to and one of my formative games. I would love to go back and play it and see what I think 30 years later.

I met Richard Garriott a few times in Austin. He used to host these great halloween parties at his castle. After he sold his company to EA he lost a lot of respect in the gaming community because EA destroyed that IP. I understand he still works in gaming but he hasn't done anything noteworthy for a long time.

The lesson - don't sell your company to EA unless you want your legacy flushed down a toilet.

I was already aware of the fondness of Swen Vincke for Ultima VII (a trait we share, incidentally) since the time I used to comment on his personal blog, 10+ years ago.
Which admittedly is something that made even more puzzling for me to learn that he had no problem at giving up a day/night cycle for BG3 as one of the first decisions they made during development.

Swen said the studio will need to manage its growth. How much do you think this will affect Larian as a whole and the games they will make in the future? What are your predictions?

Thanks for sharing, Tuco. An interesting read, and looks like BG3 is likely going to get a positive review from Eurogamer too.

Not such good news for folk like me who have been keeping their fingers crossed for DLC/expansions to carry on the story of our BG3 protagonists to level 20, given that even if Larian is persuadable if BG3 does well, it doesn't seem to be where their heads are at right now. Which isn't all that surprising given everything I've heard about the flexibility of higher level D&D and the consequent difficulty of implementing it in a cRPG, let alone the fact we're talking god-level conflict, but still I was dreaming

CD Projekt did the mistake of growing too fast, too much and ended up unable to organize it properly. It's the general thought of former and current employees from what I managed to investigate.

If Larian stays as they are now they can produce games in the scope of BG3, I think bigger is not required as of now (besides, bigger=/=better), it looks like this will be (I hope) a new standard for RPG games for a good few years to come.

Only the management knows how well all the teams work, I think it's a good thing, being aware of this. It bodes well at least.

Maybe the fanbase can have a little expansion?
As a treat?

Nice interview.

I think a DLC could also be new companions and/backgrounds like the Durge for not so evil, but unique playthroughs. Maybe the artificer class or some more subclasses.

+1
And a few new locations, a bit of post game, and a small handful of levels. Nothing to level 20! Just like 1-4 more levels 🥺

Yeah, Swen may not be keen on higher level caps but he did say they were interested in innovating inside the space. Maybe he meant these sorts of games in general, but I took it to mean innovating with BG3. So new subclasses, new classes, etc.

Oh yes! I can still hope for an artificer class/Barcus companion DLC for the BG3 adventure even without any requirement to implement higher levels

If Larian is reading this:
AlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfiraAlfira

OmeluumOmeluumOmeluumOmeluumOmeluumOmeluumOmeluumOmeluum

Yes, we have to namedrop Barcus more to get the Halsin effect 😁

Swen: "Everybody tells me that [they want levels higher than 12]! But that's god-like levels and it's like, how do you make an RPG with these things? It's insane."
- Fair and reasonable. High level D&D characters are extremely powerful.

Swen: "Actually there's a strong push within the company now to consolidate in size, because we grew much more than we wanted to."
- Press F for the Larian employees who are going to get laid off.

But yeah, overall a solid interview.

Well, after reading that article, it sounds like there was a very sound reason for that decision. If you are lighting every cinematic like scene from a movie, having dozens of different possible locations for the sun would be an impossible task.

Great interview!




I hope sales are outstanding so that Larian’s next game can be a great cinematic story-based rpg like BG3!!!🤞🤞🤞