Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Hamster]

 

[Joggerino]

Yup, it's on.

The only ethical way to play this

 

[Tyranicon]

according to the other codex thread, they made shield last until a long rest.

shield spell looking... pretty good (no mention about single time)

Larian really can't into balancing.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-set-in-the-world-of-dungeons-dragons-arrives

The Strange Story Behind ‘Baldur’s Gate 3,’ One of the Year’s Biggest Releases​

Larian bulked up while building the epic Dungeons & Dragons-themed game. It will need to sell many copies to justify the growth.

Much to fans’ surprise and delight, the video-game company Larian Studios recently announced that the upcoming role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 will make its debut four weeks earlier than expected. For an industry that frequently delays products and rarely beats deadlines, it was an abnormal move. But, then again, little about Baldur’s Gate 3, out Thursday, is normal.

Its scope — 174 hours of cut scenes and 17,000 possible ending variations, according to the developers — is unprecedented. The six years it took to create the game — due, in part, to disruptions from Covid and the war in Ukraine — is unusual. And Larian Chief Executive Officer Swen Vincke, who is also the game’s director, is unlike any of his peers at the top of the industry. He’s a hardcore gamer and fan favorite who hosts company livestreams while clanking around in a coat of platemail armor and stars in quirky, comedic videos in which he might, say, pretend to knock out a fellow executive before storing his soul in a jar.

“I take a lot of enjoyment from doing this,” Vincke said in a recent interview. “I like going to work.”

For Larian, the stakes are also unusually high.

The company, which is based in Ghent, Belgium, hasn’t released a new title since 2017. During that time, it has swelled to 450 employees from 140 in offices across six countries, including Canada and Malaysia, making it one of the industry’s largest privately owned video-game companies. To justify its expanded size, Baldur’s Gate 3 will need to sell a ton of copies.

So far, its prospects are looking good. The early buzz from players and reviewers has been mostly positive, and for months the game, which is landing during an era of heightened, popular interest in all things D&D, has hovered high on the top-selling charts on Steam. Piers Harding-Rolls, research director at Ampere Analysis, said he expects Baldur’s Gate 3 to be a hit, citing the strong fan reactions to an early-access version and noting that “preorders have been robust.”

Baldur’s Gate 3Photographer: Larian Studios
Vincke, who is 51 and grew up in Belgium, founded Larian in 1996, inspired by the classic role-playing games he enjoyed as a teenager, such as Ultima VII: The Black Gate. The company’s first few games sold only modestly, and Vincke said that during the early years he often felt stressed about making payroll. In 2014, Larian scored its first hit with Divinity: Original Sin, which sold half a million copies and led to a critically acclaimed sequel. Following its 2017 release, Divinity: Original Sin 2 sold more than a million copies in two months.


Amid the buzz, Vincke was approached by Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro Inc. the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, with a tantalizing offer to make a new game in the iconic Baldur’s Gate franchise. Although the series had been dormant for nearly two decades, the first two games, which attempted to re-create the vibe of the classic D&D tabletop experience, were beloved by fans for their rich stories and enticing worlds.

Vincke signed on. But to meet Baldur’s Gate 3’s ambitious goals, the studio was forced to expand rapidly, much to Vincke’s chagrin, resulting in a slew of inefficiencies and communications issues. “We did it because we had to,” he said.

Unlike previous Larian games, Baldur’s Gate 3 features lots of film-like dialogue scenes with close-ups of characters’ faces and expressions. “It’s like making a movie — or many movies at the same time,” Vincke said. “We didn’t expect we’d need a lighting team, or a cinematics QA team or such a large audio team.”

The game is oriented around player choices, and almost every storyline has multiple potential outcomes. One early plotline pits a zealous gang of religious goblins against a grove of haughty druids. Players can side with either faction or find creative solutions to the problem, such as assassinating specific leaders.

As a result of the narrative variability, no player will ever see all the game has to offer. While some executives might question the value of putting so much time and money into scenes that will only be seen by a fraction of players, Vincke said the strategy boosts word-of-mouth marketing by sparking viral moments that fans may share. Also, he said, he and his team want to accommodate players’ choices as often as they can, even if it means absurd possibilities like, say, having sex with a druid who has shapeshifted into a bear.


“Once you stumble upon these things as a player, they engage you,” he said.

The ambitious scope of Baldur’s Gate 3 was made possible by another unusual move. In October 2020, Larian put the game into early-access mode, allowing players to buy and play through an unfinished version of its first act. More than 2.5 million people went on to purchase the game, which allowed it to stay financially viable even as the scope expanded and the development dragged on. Whereas most big-budget video games shy away from such moves because it can set a bad first expectation and muddle the final release, the decision worked for Baldur’s Gate 3, Vincke said, by letting players experiment with the game’s characters and systems without spoiling the entire story.

Baldur’s Gate 3Photographer: Larian Studios
Meanwhile, as work on the game continued, Larian struggled through several additional challenges. During the pandemic, performance-capture studios shut down, hampering the game’s ongoing development. More recently, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Larian had to shutter its office in St. Petersburg and evacuate its staff.

In March, another obstacle arose. Microsoft Corp. announced that one of the year’s other big RPGs, Starfield, would come out on Sept. 6 — the same week that Larian planned to release Baldur’s Gate 3. Vincke called a meeting with his staff, who after six years were ready to be finished and were nervous that their boss was going to delay the game. Instead, Vincke said that they would put out the PC version four weeks early to avoid Starfield and the other big releases in the fall — an unusual move that has thrilled fans.


More than two decades after starting the company, Vincke and his wife still own the majority of Larian’s closely held shares. Recently, a list speculating about potential Xbox acquisitions, which was circulating far and wide on social media, included Larian as a possible target. Vincke said that although such conjecture is “always flattering,” he has no plans to sell anytime soon. “I’m getting older, but I’m certainly not done yet,” he said.


A new owner might pressure Larian to maximize profit while curtailing its creative choices, Vincke said. “The strength of this company is that I’m very invested in the gameplay, and I also make the ultimate decisions,” he said. “We can do things in service of the games we’re making.”

Vincke said he doesn’t yet know what Larian will do next, although he hinted that he hopes to work on multiple games and expressed a desire to make something smaller next time. He certainly doesn’t want to spend another six years developing a single game, he said.

For now, the growing hype over Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t helping Vincke sleep at night.

“That’s what worries me,” Vincke said. “I prefer being the underdog.”

 

[Cryomancer]

Yup, it's on.

The only ethical way to play this

Disagreed. HE is using M$ Windows. I'm using Linux and paid for the game in Argentine peso since piracy is wrong.

 

[Darth Valer]

according to the other codex thread, they made shield last until a long rest.

shield spell looking... pretty good (no mention about single time)

This single handedly would justify refunding the game. What the actual fuck.

 

[Latro]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-set-in-the-world-of-dungeons-dragons-arrives

The Strange Story Behind ‘Baldur’s Gate 3,’ One of the Year’s Biggest Releases​

Larian bulked up while building the epic Dungeons & Dragons-themed game. It will need to sell many copies to justify the growth.

Much to fans’ surprise and delight, the video-game company Larian Studios recently announced that the upcoming role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 will make its debut four weeks earlier than expected. For an industry that frequently delays products and rarely beats deadlines, it was an abnormal move. But, then again, little about Baldur’s Gate 3, out Thursday, is normal.

Its scope — 174 hours of cut scenes and 17,000 possible ending variations, according to the developers — is unprecedented. The six years it took to create the game — due, in part, to disruptions from Covid and the war in Ukraine — is unusual. And Larian Chief Executive Officer Swen Vincke, who is also the game’s director, is unlike any of his peers at the top of the industry. He’s a hardcore gamer and fan favorite who hosts company livestreams while clanking around in a coat of platemail armor and stars in quirky, comedic videos in which he might, say, pretend to knock out a fellow executive before storing his soul in a jar.


“I take a lot of enjoyment from doing this,” Vincke said in a recent interview. “I like going to work.”

For Larian, the stakes are also unusually high.

The company, which is based in Ghent, Belgium, hasn’t released a new title since 2017. During that time, it has swelled to 450 employees from 140 in offices across six countries, including Canada and Malaysia, making it one of the industry’s largest privately owned video-game companies. To justify its expanded size, Baldur’s Gate 3 will need to sell a ton of copies.

So far, its prospects are looking good. The early buzz from players and reviewers has been mostly positive, and for months the game, which is landing during an era of heightened, popular interest in all things D&D, has hovered high on the top-selling charts on Steam. Piers Harding-Rolls, research director at Ampere Analysis, said he expects Baldur’s Gate 3 to be a hit, citing the strong fan reactions to an early-access version and noting that “preorders have been robust.”

Baldur’s Gate 3Photographer: Larian Studios
Vincke, who is 51 and grew up in Belgium, founded Larian in 1996, inspired by the classic role-playing games he enjoyed as a teenager, such as Ultima VII: The Black Gate. The company’s first few games sold only modestly, and Vincke said that during the early years he often felt stressed about making payroll. In 2014, Larian scored its first hit with Divinity: Original Sin, which sold half a million copies and led to a critically acclaimed sequel. Following its 2017 release, Divinity: Original Sin 2 sold more than a million copies in two months.


Amid the buzz, Vincke was approached by Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro Inc. the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, with a tantalizing offer to make a new game in the iconic Baldur’s Gate franchise. Although the series had been dormant for nearly two decades, the first two games, which attempted to re-create the vibe of the classic D&D tabletop experience, were beloved by fans for their rich stories and enticing worlds.

Vincke signed on. But to meet Baldur’s Gate 3’s ambitious goals, the studio was forced to expand rapidly, much to Vincke’s chagrin, resulting in a slew of inefficiencies and communications issues. “We did it because we had to,” he said.

Unlike previous Larian games, Baldur’s Gate 3 features lots of film-like dialogue scenes with close-ups of characters’ faces and expressions. “It’s like making a movie — or many movies at the same time,” Vincke said. “We didn’t expect we’d need a lighting team, or a cinematics QA team or such a large audio team.”

The game is oriented around player choices, and almost every storyline has multiple potential outcomes. One early plotline pits a zealous gang of religious goblins against a grove of haughty druids. Players can side with either faction or find creative solutions to the problem, such as assassinating specific leaders.

As a result of the narrative variability, no player will ever see all the game has to offer. While some executives might question the value of putting so much time and money into scenes that will only be seen by a fraction of players, Vincke said the strategy boosts word-of-mouth marketing by sparking viral moments that fans may share. Also, he said, he and his team want to accommodate players’ choices as often as they can, even if it means absurd possibilities like, say, having sex with a druid who has shapeshifted into a bear.


“Once you stumble upon these things as a player, they engage you,” he said.

The ambitious scope of Baldur’s Gate 3 was made possible by another unusual move. In October 2020, Larian put the game into early-access mode, allowing players to buy and play through an unfinished version of its first act. More than 2.5 million people went on to purchase the game, which allowed it to stay financially viable even as the scope expanded and the development dragged on. Whereas most big-budget video games shy away from such moves because it can set a bad first expectation and muddle the final release, the decision worked for Baldur’s Gate 3, Vincke said, by letting players experiment with the game’s characters and systems without spoiling the entire story.

Baldur’s Gate 3Photographer: Larian Studios
Meanwhile, as work on the game continued, Larian struggled through several additional challenges. During the pandemic, performance-capture studios shut down, hampering the game’s ongoing development. More recently, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Larian had to shutter its office in St. Petersburg and evacuate its staff.

In March, another obstacle arose. Microsoft Corp. announced that one of the year’s other big RPGs, Starfield, would come out on Sept. 6 — the same week that Larian planned to release Baldur’s Gate 3. Vincke called a meeting with his staff, who after six years were ready to be finished and were nervous that their boss was going to delay the game. Instead, Vincke said that they would put out the PC version four weeks early to avoid Starfield and the other big releases in the fall — an unusual move that has thrilled fans.


More than two decades after starting the company, Vincke and his wife still own the majority of Larian’s closely held shares. Recently, a list speculating about potential Xbox acquisitions, which was circulating far and wide on social media, included Larian as a possible target. Vincke said that although such conjecture is “always flattering,” he has no plans to sell anytime soon. “I’m getting older, but I’m certainly not done yet,” he said.


A new owner might pressure Larian to maximize profit while curtailing its creative choices, Vincke said. “The strength of this company is that I’m very invested in the gameplay, and I also make the ultimate decisions,” he said. “We can do things in service of the games we’re making.”

Vincke said he doesn’t yet know what Larian will do next, although he hinted that he hopes to work on multiple games and expressed a desire to make something smaller next time. He certainly doesn’t want to spend another six years developing a single game, he said.

For now, the growing hype over Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t helping Vincke sleep at night.

“That’s what worries me,” Vincke said. “I prefer being the underdog.”

Ah, it’s got their support. Figures.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Location: Romania

Location: Belgium

Heh, I think I'll be fine.

Seethe some more and cope while doing it.
I'll also get all the updates and tell you all about it.

 

[Joggerino]

Yup, it's on.

The only ethical way to play this

Disagreed. HE is using M$ Windows. I'm using Linux and paid for the game in Argentine peso since piracy is wrong.

He should be using pirated windows too, I agree cryomancer.

 

[Yosharian]

Guys this is unverified because I haven't finished installing.

Someone on Discord said that he went Paladin 1/Warlock 1 and his Paladin spell slots progressed

 

[racofer]

 

[Tyranicon]

according to the other codex thread, they made shield last until a long rest.

shield spell looking... pretty good (no mention about single time)

This single handedly would justify refunding the game. What the actual fuck.

Nah bro, just play a god-tier sorcadin like intended.

 

[Child of Malkav]

He should be using pirated windows too

I cannot confirm or deny this.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

300k all time peak. damn. Biggest CRPG launch of all time?

https://steamcharts.com/app/1086940

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/how-baldurs-gate-3-morphed-larian-studios-into-wild-new-shapes

How Baldur's Gate 3 morphed Larian Studios into wild new shapes​

"If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes"


The distance from the roof of the Counting House to the nearest building in Baldur’s Gate is vast, by design. The waterfront bank where the city’s great, good and gangster store their gold stands with its back to the sea, while a long and well-guarded bridge extends from its maw, like a money-hungry tongue. Legend says its top two floors are entirely without windows, the House an eyeless god to the citizens who reside on the hillside that slopes down toward the docks. So how was Gale, the wizard prodigy, able to bound from a faraway balcony to the brim of the bank, as if stepping lazily out onto his porch with a mug of coffee? Some say strange sorcery was afoot, but I’ve seen his character sheet, and so can be more specific.

Upon levelling up, Gale multiclassed as a sorcerer - an odd choice, but one that allowed him to unlock the ability to throw magic from a great range. Suddenly, while casting a teleport spell, this hybrid mage was able to reach across the wide moat of the Counting House and land safely on a high ledge. It’s one of many obscure class synergies via which, Larian imagines, you’ll be able to break their level design in unexpected and entertaining ways.

Not that Gale’s new vantage point offered any obvious entry points - only austere, imposing brickwork. That and a narrow pipe, through which smoke might leave the building. Popping open a flask, Gale gulped down a potion and instantly assumed gaseous form - drifting through the pipe into the House as a misty cloud. Once inside, he had only to dodge the traps, the guards, and the regularly-placed alarm posts which promised to trumpet his presence to anyone within hearing distance. Then to break into the vaults themselves - the keys to many of which can be pilfered from the pockets of individuals dotted throughout the Sword Coast’s metropolis.

It’s a deliciously deep and complicated heist scenario that would slot perfectly into a Dishonored game - rich with vertiginous architecture and open-ended opportunities to solve your navigational problems. And yet it’s just one tiny corner of Baldur's Gate 3, a three-act campaign which, besides being an isometric immersive sim, is also an enormous story-driven RPG stuffed with branching Bioware-style cinematics that account for countless variations in your character build, companion selection and dialogue choices.

Image credit: Larian Studios
The titular city, which takes up almost the entirety of the campaign’s final act, defies comparison and belief. On the surface it doesn’t look so different to Novigrad, say - but that which is set dressing in The Witcher is three-dimensional here. The busy crowds buzz with overlapping conversation as you walk by, hinting at dark deals and quest threads waiting to be pulled. A mysterious explosion rocks the ground floor of a building as you pass. And, should you leave the street, you’ll find dozens and dozens of individual homes dressed with the density and care you’d expect from Larian’s prior work in the Divinity series. The enormous scale of Baldur’s Gate has come with very little apparent compromise - though that wasn’t the original idea.


“The plan for the city was going to be smaller hubs connected by portals,” says Larian CEO and creative director Swen Vincke. “It would look like you were in a big city. But you would go to a location, and be teleported to the other side of it. And so we didn't have to make it that dense.”

But the prototype Larian made - which Vincke expects will be shown to the public as a historical curio in the fullness of time - simply didn’t work very well. “It was certainly easier to make, but it wasn’t that good,” he says. “The thing that it failed to do was capture what you had in the first act, which was that freedom of being able to go anywhere. It didn’t have that. And so it was like, ‘It’s not the same game, guys. What are we going to do?’ Well, there’s only one right way of doing it.” Some vistas remain that can’t be reached, “but the city is now very large, so it feels like you’re really in it.”

Image credit: Larian Studios
The maximalist conclusion that Larian reached is one of the reasons that the developer has swelled, from 120 people at the start of the project to almost 450 today. Besides the HQ in Ghent, there are also now Larian studios in Kuala Lumpur, Barcelona, Guildford, Dublin and Quebec. For a little while there was one in Russia, too, before the war in Ukraine forced it to close. “The growth was necessary to be able to make this type of game, and that was the ambition,” Vincke says. “We want to be able to tell you a cinematic story that’s fully driven by your choices. And if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.”

Beyond that standing army, there are the many less visible partner studios that Larian work with outside their own ecosystem. To pick one example, there’s Fool’s Theory - the Polish developer of The Thaumaturge and the upcoming Witcher Remake, whose underplayed 2017 RPG, Seven, has similar immersive sim leanings to Baldur’s Gate 3. They’ve provided Larian with gameplay and tools programming support. If you were to add all of the partner studios to the total number of staff working on Baldur’s Gate 3, well... Vincke doesn’t even know what the figure would come to. “I just know it’s large.”

On one level, that’s extraordinarily exciting. The bravest indie RPG company in the world found such success with the Divinity: Original Sin games that they're now, against the odds, the wild card of AAA. Think CD Projekt Red on the cusp of Wild Hunt - a European outlier at the peak of their abilities, building on the triumphs of two prior releases, ready to reshape the genre for a mass audience.

On another level, however, it’s alarming. Developers that rapidly expand to meet a project’s needs often go through cultural convulsions - losing part of their identity in the process.

Image credit: Larian Studios

Larian, to their credit, have attempted to protect against much of that - building new studios around trusted partners they've worked with for a long time. The team in Barcelona, for example, had previously worked on the Switch version of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and so were a shoo-in to help with Baldur’s Gate 3’s staggered multi-platform launch. “We noticed that if there’s ownership inside the studio of the content, you get much more creative drive than if it’s a work-for-hire relationship,” Vincke says.

Even so, hiring extra staff has been tricky. Larian subscribe to a highly particular and permissive design philosophy that impacts all sorts of development disciplines - so having worked on an acclaimed hit game doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good fit for Baldur’s Gate 3.

“It’s horrible, to be honest,” Vincke says. “We used to work on pedigree, and we don’t do that anymore. You gotta take a test. You get these people with enormous CVs, and you think, ‘I know you can write, I’ve seen your writing, I love your writing. But I don’t know if you can write for us.’ We do things differently because of our systems approach. And so either you love it, and then you’re fully engaged. But you’ll equally find writers that said, ‘I hated it.’ That’s OK. We like a very specific thing that’s not the norm.”

Much of Larian’s growth has been driven by their new cinematic bent. “We underestimated that,” Vincke admits. “We also didn’t expect that we would need the 174 hours of cinematic content that’s been recorded and mo-capped. But it was necessary for the reactivity. If I just lost the person that was most dear to me, and there’s a scene happening afterwards, it needs to react to that. Otherwise I don’t buy it anymore.”

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios
A big chunk of Larian’s cinematics team - which has enabled the Bioware-esque close camerawork of Baldur’s Gate 3 - came from Telltale. Few developers have as much prior experience with dynamic cutscenes impacted by player choice. But even they initially struggled with the ludicrous number of possible permutations the game accounts for. “It was a beautiful marriage of two worlds that normally don’t meet each other,” Vincke says. “And as with any marriage it was tumultuous.”

A scene in Baldur’s Gate 3’s early access build acted as a litmus test, and turned into a “big argument between systems, combat and cinematics”. It kicked off with a shouting goblin on a roof - a classic Python-style comedy setup. But as the systems and combat teams pointed out, a player might have pushed said goblin onto the ground before the cinematic even started. “That got so much discussion,” Vincke says. “Where the fuck do I put my camera? Everywhere?”

By now, as evidenced by the Baldur’s Gate 3 seen in streams and trailers, the various disciplines of the expanded Larian Studios are simpatico. The next question is, with the game launching today on August 3rd, what happens afterwards.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios

“There’s degrees of how well the game has to do,” Vincke says. “If it flops? Well, that's gonna be a different conversation than if it does OK, which is gonna be different than if it does good or very, very good. Certainly we can manage the future. But we do need some sales. If we don’t have any, it'll be like what you would expect for any studio. So we’ll see. We’re dependent on the market, like any company is.”

Larian have plenty of plans for their next projects, however. “We have a number of things that we’re working on, that are in early pre-production or concept phase,” Vincke says. “We’ll see where it goes.” There will be support for Baldur’s Gate 3, but there’s also an eagerness internally, after more than half a decade in production through Covid and the war in Ukraine, to work on something else. “It’s gonna be time to do new things,” Vincke says.

“I think the next year will be a pretty cool period because it will be a lot of experimentation,” he adds. “There’s a lot of stuff that we want to try out that we haven’t had the time to. There will be new techniques and procedures and technology. Probably the biggest challenge from my point of view will be to keep the plans manageable, rather than the opposite.”

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

according to the other codex thread, they made shield last until a long rest.

shield spell looking... pretty good (no mention about single time)

View attachment 39602

Larian really can't into balancing.

Good. Fun is more important.

I'm going with a 2h Paladin, since I want to avoid class redundancy with my companions. They've simplified a lot of the interactions in the initial areas which kinda makes sense, since they were probably trying to see how interactions worked before spreading them all over the game.

The encounter with the dying mindflayer (the girl who you can transform in the ship) is still a point where you level up, though.

 

[Elthosian]

300k all time peak. damn. Biggest CRPG launch of all time?

https://steamcharts.com/app/1086940

It showed me 370k in Steamdb

Got past character creation and stopped because I have to get a few meetings out of the way and then cook for me and the wife, but rest of the afternoon is free. Can't wait.

 

[Infinitron]

300k all time peak. damn. Biggest CRPG launch of all time?

https://steamcharts.com/app/1086940

Probably not, but certainly the biggest PC-exclusive CRPG launch of all time.

 

[AwesomeButton]

First annoyances:

1. Is there no way to hide this humongous version number from the screen? Who the hell forgets such a thing on.
2. My characters are running like Forrest Gump towards objects which are within walking distance. Very immersion breaking. No way to switch to walking only.

 

[Morgoth]

Baldur's Gate 3 dev says it's not interested in being acquired, but finds speculation "flattering"​

Following talk of Microsoft interest.

Image credit: Larian Studios

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has spoken a little about acquisitions following recent reports the studio had, at one time, been on Microsoft's consideration list for a potential buy-out, saying it has no plans to sell to anyone anytime soon.

Microsoft's watchlist for potential studio acquisitions first surfaced back in June during its court battle with US antitrust agency the Federal Trade Commision over its planned Activision Blizzard deal, with the likes of Sega, Bungie, CD Projekt Red, No Man's Sky studio Hello Games, Hitman developer IO Interactive, Pokémon Go creator Niantic, and Hades studio Supergiant Games all appearing on its 2021 "consideration set".

Also on there was Larian Studios - which has made the acclaimed likes of Divinity: Original Sin prior to today's eagerly awaited Baldur's Gate 3 - and, now, founder and CEO Swen Vincke has shared more of his thoughts on such acquisitions in an interview with Bloomberg.

Vincke - who still owns the majority of Larian's shares along with his wife - calls such attention "always flattering" but tells Bloomberg he has no plans to sell anytime soon. Vincke says a new owner might ultimately curtail creative choices in favour of maximised profits, whereas currently, "The strength of this company is that I'm very invested in the gameplay, and I also make the ultimate decisions. We can do things in service of the games we're making."

"I'm getting older," he added, "but I’m certainly not done yet."

Vincke also says that while Larian is yet to settle on its next project - or possibly even multiple projects - he's keen to turn his attention to something smaller and doesn't want to follow-up Baldur's Gate 3 with another game that takes six years to make.

What's next for Larian isn't likely to be of much immediate concern for fans of the studio, of course, given that its hugely anticipated - and simply just huge - Baldur's Gate 3 finally launches today on PC, with a release that's already garnering massively positive early feedback. A PlayStation 5 launch is up next, and Larian is also hoping to get the game onto Xbox Series X/S just as soon as its solved ongoing issues with split-screen co-op on Series S.

As for Eurogamer's thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3, our final opinion may still be some considerable way off, but you can read some of Robert Purchese's early impressions of its fascinatingly faithful recreation of Dungeons & Dragons right now.

Fuck off Microsoft.

 

[Latro]

300k all time peak. damn. Biggest CRPG launch of all time?

https://steamcharts.com/app/1086940

It showed me 370k in Steamdb

Got past character creation and stopped because I have to get a few meetings out of the way and then cook for me and the wife, but rest of the afternoon is free. Can't wait.

Keep it a secret from your wife or she’ll think you wear her panties at work

 

[KIss My Ass]

Genitals choice: Vulva B, Vulva C, what the fuck?

Is this real... omg

 

[Swen]

Location: Romania

Location: Belgium

Heh, I think I'll be fine.

Seethe some more and cope while doing it.
I'll also get all the updates and tell you all about it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

IGN:

TOO MUCH CHOICE​

Gaming journos:
"It's too big!" "I can't fit it in!"

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Okay. Rolls aren't artificially in your favor apparently. I've already failed two STR checks even though I have a +3 bonus. I'm glad this was reverted. I was succeeding every roll during EA's latter patches.