‘We’re happy the secret lasted as long as it did’: Larian boss on Divinity’s blockbuster reveal and THAT statue stunt

Rarely has a studio been so thrust into the spotlight following a single release as Larian Studios was after the release of the endlessly Game of the Year-winning Baldur’s Gate 3.

While Larian was a name among the hardcore set of RPG fans, Baldur’s Gate 3 crossed over into a genuine mainstream hit, making stars of its cast and shining a huge spotlight on the Belgian studio.

Larian’s next game, Divinity, was announced last week at The Game Awards in Los Angeles, California, following a blood-and-guts trailer that captured the attention of the in-person audience and the millions watching around the world.

“I think people reacted really well,” said Swen Vincke, who co-founded the company nearly 30 years ago, in an interview with VGC. “It was really nice to see the love for the studio across all the fan communities. It was really, really fun. People are intrigued, which is good. There’s interest in what we’re making, which is really what we wanted to achieve. It’s up to us to deliver.”

Larian has released five main Divinity games since 2002 – Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity, Divinity 2, Divinity: Original Sin, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 – but this will be the first entry since the mainstream attention garnered by Baldur’s Gate 3.

We wanted to know what Vincke made of the fan reaction to the game, and if there was a divide between those who came to the studio for the Divinity games, and the new swell of fans that appeared after their big Game Awards win in 2023.

“It was really nice to see the love for the studio across all the fan communities… There’s interest in what we’re making, which is really what we wanted to achieve. It’s up to us to deliver.”

“You see two types of reactions, right? So there are people who played Divinity Original Sin 2, which is a lot,” he said. “There were over 10 million people who played the original game, so they recognised that Divinity Original Sin 2 was a blueprint for Baldur’s Gate, they’re excited to see what comes.

“Then there are people who played Baldur’s Gate 3 that didn’t play Divinity Original Sin 2, and so they are intrigued because they are trying to understand, ‘OK, what is this game?’ So we’re seeing renewed interest in Divinity Original Sin 2. We’ll do our best to show them why they should try Divinity.”

Just this week, Divinity Original Sin 2 received a free upgrade on console, bringing with it an increased framerate and higher resolution. “There’s a lot of pressure,” Vincke mused. “When we finished with BG 3, we said ‘we know how to make an RPG now,’ and then the game itself said ‘I don’t think you do,” Vincke laughed.

“So we learned the hard way. In the face of trying to make big RPGs, it’s best to stay very, very humble because the problems that you have to deal with are insanely large.”

Of all of the trailers at The Game Awards, the trailer for Divinity was the most extreme. Depicting gore, sex, and immolation, calling it post-watershed would be putting it lightly. Vincke told us that while the trailer may have shocked some, it’s in keeping with the franchise.

“It’s an interesting thing, because if you take Original Sin 2, and you made it cinematic, that is what you would see, so it’s very on-brand, actually. Baldur’s Gate 3 was also pretty dark. The funny thing is that the game is about hope, and about bringing light into the darkness, or snuffing out the light, so I wanted to show that. We also want to show a more grounded world.

“There are people who played Baldur’s Gate 3 that didn’t play Divinity Original Sin 2, and so they are intrigued because they are trying to understand, ‘OK, what is this game?'”

“Parts of our universe are all over the place,” he continued. “It’s time to clean that up, so we did that. We still want to respect everything that came before, we want to offer continuity to the players, so we spent a lot of time defining what our universe actually is and what the lore is going to be.

“This game is going to be set after a big event from a previous game, so things that happened in the past have happened. They helped shape the world, but there’s a new dawn, there’s a new time coming. We wanted to show that we have a more grounded universe, so that was in there.”

Vincke said the trailer is supposed to serve as an example to players of the extreme consequences of the events that take place in the game, and the player’s role within them.

“We wanted to take an opportunity to say to players that the trailer was a scene you could have prevented. You could have said no, you shall not burn this man, or you could have been the person who put him inside the Wicker Man. The trailer has a whole bunch of little clues which people haven’t figured out yet.”

While some corners of the gaming industry are moving towards games that appeal to the widest audience possible, challenging, hardcore games are having their moment in the sun. Elden Ring, a game lauded for its high difficulty, has sold over 30 million copies.

One of the most high-profile and hotly anticipated releases of 2025, Hollow Knight: Silksong, is also a brutally tough adventure. We asked Vincke why he thinks that audience is flocking to these kinds of games, and what that says about how publishers should approach their audiences.

“In the face of trying to make big RPGs, it’s best to stay very, very humble because the problems that you have to deal with are insanely large.”

“Our publishing director, Michael Douse, said it’s about treating people as if they are intelligent, and our players are very intelligent. This is a game for a mature audience. I think if you do that, there’s going to be an interest, because there’s certainly been a trend of dumbing things down. So we’re doing the exact opposite.

“They’re not very hard to get into, right? They’re turn-based RPGs. You get a bunch of actions, then you get a bunch of choices, and the rest tells itself automatically; it’s not very complicated to get into. But what you learn is that these games respect your agency, so it’s a really cool feeling, rather than being put on rails. Here’s this open world, go and do your thing, and react to it. Just trust the game master.”

With Baldur’s Gate 3 having released just two years ago, some were surprised to see Larian announce its next project this early, but Vincke noted that the studio was keen to open dialogue with its community during production, as it has done in the past.

“We’ve been at it for two years now,” he explained. “We’re at the end of year two of development. We’re a studio that’s always worked very closely with our community ever since we went into independence around the first Original Sin, so I think that’s important to us. We need to start a conversation, which we’re starting now. We want to know what fans expect. We want to know what they think of what we’re doing.

“Eventually, we’ll want to go into Early Access, although we’re not 100% confirming it yet, because you never know how the industry changes, but it is our intention to work through the early access to make the games better.”

Why was it important for Larian to reveal the game in front of such a big audience? “Well, we’re a company that has been at every single PAX,” Vincke laughed. “We really like the physicality of interacting with our players. We like to learn how they experience the game, what they enjoy, and what they don’t enjoy. So it’s important to us.

“We need to start a conversation, which we’re starting now. We want to know what fans expect. We want to know what they think of what we’re doing.”

“I think for our studio, it was really important to see the reaction of the audience when they saw the Larian logo, which was a big explosion of joy, which was really empowering for us, very motivating. But, we didn’t know. It could have been that they hated it. So we were very nervous, but they really enjoyed it, it was really cool to see. It means we’re somewhere on the right track.”

In the weeks leading up to The Game Awards, organiser Geoff Keighley began posting images of a mysterious statue and tracking information that placed it in the Mojave Desert. Following this, wild speculation began among fans about what the statue could be teasing.

Because of the dark nature of its design, which appeared to have various people, demons, dragons, and such growing out of it, suggestions swirled that it could relate to franchises such as God of War, Diablo, Fallout New Vegas, and Doom.

However, shortly before the full reveal, it was noticed that trademark information that matched the statue was registered, pointing to Larian. By the time of the show itself, those paying attention to gaming news knew to expect a new Divinity game – a small frustration for the game’s developer.

“There was a bit of cursing,” Vincke laughs. “It’s a thing that happens, right? It’s not the end of the world. There are way more important things in life. It was really cool to see that the audience was engaged with the Hellstone. It really was a lot of fun. We know, obviously, what every single thing on that stone means, which we will reveal over time. It would have been cooler if it had remained a secret.

“Jason Schreier knew about it almost instantly with his vast network, so good on him for not leaking it, but he could have leaked it right away. It’s his right as a journalist. We’re happy it lasted as long as it did. You saw on our Twitter account that we made fun of it. We still got our reaction from players, so we were happy.”

“We know, obviously, what every single thing on that stone means, which we will reveal over time. It would have been cooler if it had remained a secret.”

And where is the statue now? Does Vincke now find himself with the world’s most elaborate paperweight? “It’s going to travel. You’ll be able to see it at various conventions. It’s 3,500 kilos, so it’s travelling… slowly.”

As Vincke gears up for years of talking, thinking about, and promoting Divinity, we wondered what the lasting lessons were from the Baldur’s Gate 3 era, and how that’s informing what he’s doing going forward.

“I think we are much better at tracking things. These past games require quite disciplined tacking of how much time things take and how much effort they require. We invested enormously in automation. In the past, it took us three weeks to see the result of a recording inside the game. Now we can see it in two hours. That allows us to iterate more.

“This is the fifth generation of our engine. A lot of the things that we have added to the engine are actually really process things that we can do more efficiently. There are also stupid things that for us are huge things, like if a human kisses a dwarf, what do you do? It’s a complicated problem called retargeting. We’ve got way more efficient ways of doing that than we did on Baldur’s Gate 3.”

It’s still very early days, but part of the reason Baldur’s Gate 3 enjoyed such huge mainstream success was the fact that it was available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles. So does Larian intend the same approach with Divinity?

“The platforms didn’t know the game existed until The Game Awards,” Vincke chuckled. “They just found out, so we still have to go and talk to them, so it was a fun reveal for them too. We really wanted to keep it a secret, which is really a pity that the leak happened.”

While Baldur’s Gate 3 may have made Larian’s name as a leading studio in games today, it also made stars of its cast. Devora Wilde, Theo Solomon, Neil Newbon, Samantha Béart, Dave Jones, Aliona Baranova, and the Game Award-winning Jennifer English all became massive names thanks to Baldur’s Gate. We asked Vincke about the process of casting a game of this size.

“The platforms didn’t know the game existed until The Game Awards. They just found out, so we still have to go and talk to them, so it was a fun reveal for them too.”

“I think we’ve been blessed in each game with really good casts. We’re casting and recording already. But you’ll see in due time who is going to be in it. I think we want to continue the tradition of having really good actors, driving the characters inside the game.”

Speaking to VGC ahead of a record-breaking night at The Game Awards for Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Aliona Baranova called on the show to create more awards for performers. Vincke said he was conflicted on whether this idea would work in such a disparate industry.

“I think there’s a yes and a no to this,” he mused. “Because you have the VFX artists, the 3D artists, you have the writers and art designers, the QA, and there are a lot of categories that need to be covered. So if you’re subdividing it, then I think you should recognise everybody that’s inside of it. So that would be practically complicated, I would imagine. So that’s the flip side of it. Behind every single actor, there’s an entire team of people that make sure their performances can shine.”

Now that fans know what Larian is doing next, the studio isn’t slowing down. While Vincke was guarded about when exactly his team will next show off what they’ve been working on, he’s confident that the next time Divinity appears, it’ll be in the form of gameplay.

“The next thing we want to show you is gameplay,” Vincke said. “So it will take some time to get the gameplay ready. We are being super silent in purpose right now about mechanics and that kind of thing, because we want to you them rather than talk about it.

“I’m a very short-sighted guy and focus on the next goal, then on to the next one, so the goal is to show you the gameplay, and then we’ll go from there.”