And yeah, Swen said that WotC gave them a lot of free reign to make the game the way they wanted to. I didn’t interpret that as a non-interference clause though. I think it’s probably more likely that WotC just thought they were doing a good job and let Larian do it’s thing. They are the ones who approached Larian to make this game (after rejecting Swen’s initial pitch years prior).
If Games Workshop of all companies was willing to fork over as much creative control to CA as they did for the Total Warhammer series I can believe just about any company would be willing to be surprisingly hands-off when handing their IPs out to studios now, I suspect in no small part due to how explosively successful GW has been through Total Warhammer under that policy. No big company sitting on a potentially lucrative IP that would mesh well with the video game format can look at that and not think "We want that too." anymore.
Gw gave up on warhammer fantasy long ago.
GW is capricious, fickle, greedy, litigious and as many other negative adjectives as you want but the fact remains Total Warhammer is hugely successful and directly led to GW rebooting the original WFB, with new codices created specifically from their partnership with CA and using their input after allowing them the creative freedom to create whole new factions and rosters which didn't exist before. It's not a huge leap to imagine a company like WotC could see that partnership, how successful it was when a competent studio was given some slack to play with their IP and decide they'll adopt the exact same strategy themselves. I see more reason than not to assume WotC isn't smothering Larian with stipulations or creative interference.
