scraping by. But based on Larian’s track record with the
Original Sin games, Vincke is maybe the only founder of
a 40 0-person studio who can get away with saying:
“We’ve never been about the money.”
“I guess a lot of people say that, but it’s really about
what we need to make this game,” he said. “I would
literally have a revolution inside of my company if I
forced them to lower their aspirations, the things they
want to do. They’re really proud of Baldur’s Gate III.
They really want to reach the ambition that they have,
because they all played Baldur’s Gate
I and II in their youth. This is a very
important project for them. I’m
happy we’re doing it this way,
because I think it deserves it, and we
have the means of doing it because of
the success of the previous games. I
would not have wanted it to be a
game that had to be scaled down.”
Larian’s stratospheric growth
required restructuring, putting more control and
responsibility into smaller teams dedicated to different
game systems and features. “I play a lot, and I say what I
think but they don’t necessarily listen to me anymore,”
he laughed. “Which is a good thing, right? That’s where
ownership comes in. I still guide them together, but the
team has evolved a lot, matured a lot, as we had to.
Otherwise the scale would’ve strangled us.”
Vincke wouldn’t spill any dirt on what Larian will do
after Baldur’s Gate III, but it’s clear he has big plans. He
said this studio expansion came “maybe one game
sooner than we wanted,” and barely seemed able to
resist talking about that next project. Vincke founded
Larian in 1996 to make RPGs because of how much he
loved Ultima. Perhaps EA’s finally ready to do something
with that licence?GATE KEEPERS
In the here and now, though, Larian’s currently
working on Baldur’s Gate itself, building out the city,
and filling out D&D’s spell library and implementing its
remaining classes. Playable gnomes are coming at some
point, too, which Vincke accidentally let slip during a
2022 Game Developers Conference
panel. Then there’s time-consuming
polish, which is why he announced
that Baldur’s Gate III won’t be fully
finished until 2 023.
“This is a very specific niche of
game where you have a lot of
narrative with a lot of systems
coming together,” he said. “If your
agency is [limited] you’re not gonna
be happy when you’re playing it. It breaks the entire
thing. The problem is the only alternative is just,
fuuuuck, you need to cover it all. But we figured it
out, and we’re doing it.
“There were really lots of easy cuts that we could’ve
done. But then it wouldn’t have been the game that it
needs to be. We’re not going to release it if it’s not ready.
It’s going to be quite the thing, you know. When you go
to the character creation and you can select all those
classes, all those sub classes, and then you start that
journey – knowing everything you can do on that
journey, it’s going to be quite the thing.”
Wes FenlonBIG BUSINESS Four studios that started small before scaling up to make a major franchiseTRAVELLER’S TALES
Thirteen credited developers worked on
1989’sLeander. Today the Lego studio
has around 300 employees.ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS
About 30 devs worked on Urban Chaos.
250+ are at the studio now, as it makes
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.AMPLITUDE STUDIOS
Amplitude made its first 4X, Endless
Space, with about 20 devs. Now owned
by Sega, the studio has 15 0+ employees.TREYARCH
Treyarch’s 1998 debut, Die by the Sword,
has about 14 devs credited. The COD
studio now has 550+ employees.FAR LEFT: To describe
the studio as
‘passionate’ would be
an understatement.LEFT: Larian has
grand ambitions for
Baldur’s Gate III’s 1.
launch, coming...
when it’s ready.