Larian boss Swen Vincke says the studio is 'deep in the trenches' on its 'crazy-ambitious' follow up to Baldur's Gate 3, hopes to show it off no later than 2030 because 'my wife will divorce me if it takes longer'

In a new video interview with GameSpot, Larian founder and CEO Swen Vincke revealed a little bit more about its much anticipated next project, as well as everything the studio's doing to make itself a well-oiled RPG machine that still keeps its developers happy and excited.

Vincke told GameSpot's Tamoor Hussain that, after an eight-year journey on Baldur's Gate 3, Larian wanted to "go out with a bang" by delivering Patch Eight's exciting new additions, "then hand it over to the modders." Larian does still remain on call for bug fixes and compatibility support, while Vincke also added a "never say never" regarding any surprises.

Vincke joked that he "painfully remembered how much work it is to make a game," now that Larian is "deep in the trenches on our next thing," but he also said that it's "shaping up quite well, actually. It's crazy-ambitious."

But the studio is also mixing things up this time, with a second project also in the works for later down the line. Vincke said that this new method is "not the easiest thing in the universe, because we make very complicated games, lots of permutations, lots of agency for players."

He explained that the reason behind this change was to address a major pain point in game development: The lurching stop-start of pre-production into production and back again.

During the earliest high-level design phases of a project, devs in charge of more granular aspects of the final game⁠—animation, 3D modeling, scripting, and more⁠—can be left "idling" until the game's direction and schedule is set.

"When that very large group is finished," said Vincke, "and the people at the beginning are not ready, then everybody is fucked, because everybody has to wait. That's what we're trying to avoid."

You can see variations of this problem and attempts to address it elsewhere in the industry. Developers at Studio ZA/UM alleged that skipping over the crucial pre-production phase altogether to speed up development helped doom a now-canceled Disco Elysium expansion.

BioWare recently saw massive layoffs and reassignments elsewhere in EA, as much of the Dragon Age: The Veilguard team had nothing to do while Mass Effect 5 was in pre-production.

Vincke's plan actually reminds me of what fellow RPG studio Obsidian has been doing, but at a larger scale and with bigger projects. Obsidian has been notably disciplined about the scope of its recent games, while keeping multiple in development at the same time.

This has resulted in a streak of great games at a surprisingly rapid cadence⁠—when The Outer Worlds 2 comes out later in 2025, we'll be at five games in six years.

But even if Larian's new process results in a faster pace of releases eventually, it's going to take a while for it to get going. "I hope I can tell you five years from now: We cracked it. We figured it out," said Vincke. "This is what we're doing now. Here's game one, we're making this completely different thing. Game two, and when game two is going to be ready, we already have another thing that's gonna come.

"If we can make that work in a really good way, that we enjoy our lives, that's gonna be mission accomplished"

He allowed that things may not go according to plan: "In practice, we will probably be miserable, and there's going to be plenty of stuff that went wrong." But Vincke is hopeful that this will let Larian execute on as many exciting RPG ideas as possible "without killing ourselves."

I still think it would be an all-time bit to have one of these new games be "Divinity: Original Sin 3," and the other one just "Divinity 3," but there are also some Dragon Commander 2-wanters on the PCG team. Whether five years from now means the game releases in some fashion or we just find out more about it, 2030 seems to be some kind of deadline. Vincke quipped that "My wife will divorce me if it takes longer."