Baldur’s Gate 3 – that wee game that you might have heard about after its award-winning, chart-topping ascent last year – put all eyes on developer Larian Studios, but despite such a massively successful game under his belt, Larian CEO and founder Swen Vincke reckons an earlier RPG is still the “highlight” of his career.
Before Baldur’s Gate 3 made the studio a household name, two crowdfunded Divinity: Original Sin games are what opened the door to for the D&D RPG to exist in the first place. “The highlight of my career so far was most likely the release of Divinity: Original Sin one, which was our first breakthrough hit, because that changed everything for us,” Vincke said in an interview with BAFTA.
“If I would have to pick one, I would probably pick the release of Divinity: Original Sin because it was really a sense of relief – finally, we managed, after all these years, we managed to break through,” he continued. “We [could] now start doing the things that we really wanted to do all this time. That’s probably my favourite one.”
Vincke doesn’t brush aside the sweeping success of Baldur’s Gate 3 either, though. “Obviously winning the BAFTAs, winning The Game Awards, this entire year has been insane, so there were many, many highlights,” he said, selling himself a little short since Baldur’s Gate 3 was actually the first game to ever grab gold in all major game award ceremonies.
It would be easy to just build on the hype with a Baldur’s Gate 4, but the company announced that it was done with the D&D license and was hammering away at an all-new RPG. Though, some developers are apparently finding it hard to create something totally new because, it turns out, they “did a lot of things in Baldur’s Gate 3.”
