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Somewhere at Larian Studios is a well-worn whiteboard with a bulleted list labeled in marker, "The grossest stuff we can think of." At least, I assume so, and I also assume that all of those listed ideas went into the reveal trailer for Divinity, the next hotly anticipated RPG from the makers of Baldur's Gate 3.
"The new Divinity trailer was great," reckons fellow RPG mastermind Josh Sawyer in a Bluesky post, "but it is wild what people will get upset about in games, content-wise, and then be completely fine/enthusiastic about Wicker Man x Event Horizon."
Deserved and rapturous applause for the Divinity reveal comes, of course, on the heels of very public moral stubbornness in the case of Horses, an arthouse horror game banned by Steam, banned by Epic Games Store, briefly banned then reinstated by Humble Bundle, and treated by the most fragile people alive as an unthinkable ceiling of debauchery when in reality it might at most be inches off the floor. Divinity, from this trailer alone, looks to be a few notches above. "For adult audiences only," the trailer begins.
That reveal really was something else – three minutes of a man burning alive in sizzling detail, public orgies, pigs eating vomit (twice!), and a levity-mandated child in the crowd watching alongside her mother with a mix of excitement over the vigorous festival and understandable concern over the sprouting blood demons. Who among us has not played the pigs eating vomit card, thought, "Damn, that hits," and immediately played it again? Who hasn't enjoyed Bring Your Child To Execution day? If you were nodding off in the late hours of the time zone-hostile The Game Awards 2025 showcase, it was surely nice and defibrillating.
"I was genuinely feeling like it was too much," Iconoclasts creator Joakim Sandberg replied to Sawyer's post. "It wasn't from a puritan view, it was more the sheer indulgence and attempt at grotesque." I don't disagree; I was thinking it might be a bit much the second time I watched it. It is indulgent and grotesque, and the reaction online seems to echo feelings toward a particularly graphic The Last of Us Part 2 trailer which gleefully indulged in violence of its own, but I won't begrudge developers some nastiness or discomfort. It is certainly memorable, and discomfort in art is not something to be feared or shunned. Clearly, the world of Divinity is not comfortable. Message received.
"A friend pointed out the first BG3 trailer also features pretty extreme body horror and I don't remember there being a similar reaction to it," reasons senior level designer Nicholas Cameron of Respawn Entertainment. "Not sure whether to chalk it up to a more puritanical attitude in our culture today or that there was sex in this one."
And yeah, go back and watch the Baldur's Gate 3 cinematic teaser from 2019. We've got the contorting flesh, the public massacres, and most importantly, the vomit. None of this is unprecedented for games or for Larian.
"And at that time people had said this trailer was brutal..." a fresh comment on that teaser reads.
In its appeals to Valve over Horses, developer Santa Ragione said it heavily amended a scene – that it suspected to be a deal-breaker for Steam clearance – which once involved a young girl riding the shoulders of a naked woman who'd been reduced to the role of a "horse" in the power dynamics of the game's twisted world. In the game that was released, both the women in this scene are clearly adults. I await comparable outrage and pearl-clutching over Divinity holding public orgies next to public executions with a little girl standing mere feet away.
I'm kidding, of course; both games – both aesthetics, rather, as Divinity is still just one trailer and a statue – are completely fine and it would be ridiculous to treat them as unacceptable or ban-worthy. But as Sawyer says, the extremes and timing of Divinity's reveal do highlight strange and undefined standards for acceptable grotesqueries, palatable violence, and an arbitrary moral compass that always seems to short out when the hype train whistles loud enough.
