Larian's Divinity AMA Live Coverage - All the news as it happens

That's it for now, but we'll be gathering up all the juiciest bits and pieces from the AMA over the coming days, so keep an eye out!

If you're looking for a broader tonal feel, Vincke says he's incredibly inspired by this picture of some giant inflatable ducks:

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lol, lmao even

We've got about another 40 or so minutes to run, according to Swen's Twitter account.

There's some more responses about what Larian learned from BG3's mods. Those range from "car wildshape" to player appearance mods ("our character team is always *eyes emoji* those and we take note of what our community wants") to notes being taken "on all of the UI mods" - the team had hoped to do more on that front but couldn't fit them in.

Details are starting to come through thicker and faster, and one I like is that Larian is changing the magic armor system that's currently affecting me in DOS2. Pechenin says that Divinity won't maintain the same system.

In the Original Sin games, characters have separate guages for armor and magic armor, and while they've still got a type of armor intact, they can't be affected by relevant spell effects - if someone casts a fire spell, for instance, a character with magic armor will lose some of that armor, but they won't take burning damage. It's a system that encourages you to work out how best to use your characters' skills against certain foes.

I don't hate it, but it seems it's a major gripe for others, and it's not hanging around. Pechenin says that "there will be ways to protect your characters from harm, but you will not have to wait before you can use your fun skills on enemies." Instead, Larian's "still cooking" a system to make sure you can't just stunlock bosses from level one - "but it won't be tied to damage."

There's an interesting little snippet about scope in these answers - asked about previous comments that Larian's next game after BG3 would be smaller than that game, Vincke says that those comments were made "when we were thinking of another DnD game." That's clearly no longer the case - "that ship has sailed" - so it seems that Divinity is going to be much chunkier than those initial comments suggested.

There's a fun little tease from Nick Pechenin, head of design, buried down the list. Asked whether there were any fun new mechanics they were proud of, they said "there was something that bothered me when I explored the starting areas of DOS1, DOS2, and BG3." That something "stares you right in the face," Pechenin says, but Divinity will finally fix it.

It's deliberately cryptic, but something that might have already been solved. All three of those games start on a beach, but there's no ability to swim in any one of them. If Larian's chosen to amend that particular design choice, it'll be a big change, potentially to several aspects of the game - imagine if water traversal had been available in BG3 and how many different routes might have opened up.

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The bad news so far is that there's no sense of when we might see gameplay. Vincke says that the team is "in full production mode [...] but still have truckloads of work." That means there's not even a hint as to the next reveal beyond the extremely vague "we'll see."

Co-op confirmed! Larian's technical director says that "co-op will be available for release," but we're not entirely clear on how many people will be able to play together at once. That will depend on the final party size.

But also - modding confirmed! They point out that since players will be able to mod Divinity, they'll be able to have as many coop partners as they like, because there's no "hard limit" within the code. We also learned that "the camera will work very similar as in BG3," with a "hybrid" of top-down and third-person.

That first question I mentioned - about the limitations potentially provided by working within the owned franchise of D&D - has an answer from Vincke. He says that Larian "had all the freedom we needed on BG3," but the problems lay with being based on D&D 5e. That system, which was "made for tabletop, not for video games," provided "most of the limitations" the team faced.

That's a topic that Vincke's touched on before, suggesting that the ruleset Larian had to stick to with BG3 meant it couldn't adapt systems that weren't working for the team. I'm replaying DOS2 right now, and I can see where many of those adaptations have come from - the later Divinity games are clearly ones that learned a lot from D&D, but weren't afraid to drop those rules where they needed to.

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That's a notable shift. Clearly the backlash landed, and while Vincke says that the u-turn doesn't mean no AI will be used at the studio going forward, it's clear that the stance has shifted. No AI in concept art or ideation is a relatively firm point of view, but Larian will continue to investigate efficiencies that the tech may offer.

Perhaps most importantly, it says that if it does use AI for anything creative, it'll only use AI that's been trained on data that Larian owns, and if the team can't be 100% sure of the data's origin, it won't use it.

There might be some more information to come from that over the course of the next few hours - while it's clear that some are reassured, others would like a little more detail. I'll keep an eye out.

We've also had an important snippet from Swen Vincke, specifically about AI. Answering a question about his opinion of the role of generative AI art in game development, he says the following:

"First off, there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity. I know there's been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion.

So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development.

That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art."

The actual biggest detail so far comes from Nick Pechenin, head of design, who says that Divinity will share BG3's attitude to loot, not DOS2's. In the Original Sin games, loot was randomized - find something in a container, then reload a save from before you found it, and the next time you look you'll find something else in its place. By contrast, in BG3 you'd find the same 'handcrafted' item everywhere you looked, which made build-planning significantly easier.

Pechenin says that "the BG3 approach of handcrafting every magic item worked well, and it's something we've always wanted to do for DOS2." The Original Sin approach, he says, was "frequently confusing," and Larian had to add so many rules and premade patterns to loot that "in the end randomization did not save us much time."

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Titov also revealed some of the main lessons Larian learned from BG3: "Short and direct communication is a must for quick decision-making and iteration," he says, which means that you should "avoid middlemen in any process and try to bring people working together on the feature as close as possible to each other."

Interestingly, he also says "automated testing and unit tests is lifeline to keep such a big project alive and going," which sound like the first hint we've had as to Larian's stance on automation in this AMA so far.

There's nothing official in the 'Answered' section of the AMA page, but there is actually a piece of concrete info. Asked whether WASD movement would be added to Divinity based on how popular that mod was for BG3, Artem Titov says 'No.' So that's that.

Important update from publishing director Michael Douse:

This is always the slightly awkward bit of an AMA, where it's technically started but you're waiting for the answers to start actually filtering through. As soon as we have a concrete bit of information from Larian, I'll let you know.

One question I like so far is whether Larian is planning a re-run of its Dark Urge situation from Baldur's Gate 3. Widely considered to be the 'main character' of BG3, Durge was an origin character with a horrible secret that even they weren't wholly aware of. Having explored a similar narrative device with DOS2's Lohse, the team might distance itself from the idea, but if it ain't broke, why fix it?

There are no answers just yet, but there are a few questions trickling in. Most of those are about how things have changed since Baldur's Gate 3, with the top question so far asking if there are things that Larian wasn't allowed to do for its previous game that it's hoping to do this time around. Wizards of the Coast owns the D&D franchise, and may have put a hard stop on some choices, whereas Larian is the master of its own fate now, and can (in theory) do whatever it likes.

Several other questions ask about the lessons learned and changes made since BG3, as well as more intricate gameplay details, like camera perspective, the possibility of co-op, and whether loot will work like it did in BG3 or like it did in DOS2.

That's a lot more developers than last time, and it's evidence that Larian is expecting to answer some tricky questions about its processes. There are multiple different artistic disciplines represented here, and we're also clearly digging into the technical aspect of development with some of those names.

Larian says it's hoping "to offer the opportunity to ask your questions about Divinity, Larian, and our development processes" with this AMA, and says that it aims to answer as many questions as possible "over the next few hours." And I'll be here to help you keep track of as much of that as I can.

We have a link. The Divinity AMA is live on the Games subreddit, with a veritable glut of Larian staffers. Swen Vincke is here, but there's also:

• Adam Smith, writing director
• Kevin Vanord, senior writer
• Greg Lidstone, head of animation
• Gabriel Bosque, machine learning director
• Michael Douse, director of publishing
• Nick Pechenin, head of design
• Alena Dubrovina, character art director
• Jarold Sng, concept art director
• Artem Titov, head of gameplay
• Bert van Semmertier, technical director

I've been reading back over the original Baldur's Gate 3 AMA from March 2020 to get a sense of what we might learn from today's version. Admittedly, this is information from before BG3 went into early access, so there was an awful lot that was subject to change over the following 3.5 years leading up to full release, but there's a lot in here; stuff about classes; D&D rulesets; what players could expect from early access itself and how that might change over time; hidden boss encounters, and significantly more. There are entire lists of questions from single users that Vincke went through to answer one by one, so it does seem like we'll be getting some serious detail.

We're still a little way off the AMA starting, but if you want something to wrap your brain cells around before then, there's a little teaser floating around social media. Vincke's current Twitter background is some kind of wave-form/audio file that he told YouTuber Wolfheart was a puzzle ready to be figured out.

Sadly, there's been no real progress on that so far. It's definitely an audio file expressed as an image, but noone's been able to reliably turn that image back into a sound more detailed than raw static. The Divinity community is having fun suggesting oft-repeated voice lines from the games that it might be, but unless one of them has a tool to turn spectrograms back into sound (and assuming that Twitter hasn't compressed the file beyond viable conversion), we're probably going to be waiting a while.

I know I've said I'm not about to teach you the entire history of Divinity, and that Swen Vincke says you probably shouldn't go back and play things like Divine Divinity that are 20 years old, but if you do want an option on how to get into the series, there's one really good way in.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the single best entry to the series you're likely to get; it's a classic CRPG, so it's the exact style that the new Divinity game is likely to be in; it might be a sequel, but the story stands relatively effectively on its own - I'm replaying it now for the first time in years, and I'm not lost in narrative jargon; and it's just had a new console overhaul, which makes it accessible on everything up to Switch 2. It's also very, very good, and you can see eactly how it led into Baldur's Gate 3, which in turn transformed Larian into one of the most acclaimed developers in the world.

Don't believe me? I managed to get several of my colleagues hooked on DOS2 just before Christmas, and Jasmine's already poured more than 40 hours into it.

Still no link, but Larian's Divinity AMA kicks off in just under an hour from now!

Unfortunately, it's time to address the Voidwoken in the room. Shortly after Divinity's reveal at The Game Awards, Larian found itself embroiled in something of an AI controversy. A report suggested that Vincke was "pushing hard" for AI, something he denies, but that claim ignited a lot of bad feeling about the technology.

Larian's confident that its quality assurance is good enough to allow developers to use AI tech if they want to without causing problems, and Vincke says he's aware the tech "invokes a lot of emotion," but also suggests it would be "irresponsible" not to "evaluate new technologies."

Still, the backlash was potent, and led to former developers suggesting that there was notable bad feeling within the studio itself. Neither of those claimants still works at Larian, but their suggestion was that any claims that developers were ok with how AI was being used were not wholly accurate.

AI is likely to be a fairly important part of the AMA, so we should get a bit more detail when it kicks off in a little over an hour's time.

As for this game, we're likely to know significantly more by the end of the day, but currently we have a few snippets that we're sure about when it comes to Divinity. For one thing, Divinity will be a turn-based RPG, probably in the style of the Original Sin games and Baldur's Gate 3 where real-time exploration focused down into turn-based combat.

We also know that Divinity is likely to release into early access, again much like those previous games. Vincke told us Larian wants to do early access, which has been the studio's "blueprint" for its last three games, and which helped all three improve "massively" as development continued: "Players being invested in it increases the pressure and their participation in it, so you get something really cool out of that process."

If you're noticing a theme, it's that Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are pretty foundational pillars of this new Divinity game. In fact, Vincke says that those games are "the blueprint" for the next one, and that Larian's previous work has constantly been feeding into its future work, unlocking new techniques and technologies. Divinity is likely to feel pretty similar to DOS2 and BG3, and that's very muhc by design.

Now to get you caught up with all things Divinity. I'm not about to give you a total rundown of the exceeding long and complex history of the series. Suffice to say that Divinity has been many, many things over the years, from ARPGs to traditional RPGs, to the complex and almost Spore-esque tactical event that was Dragon Commander. The story spans thousands of years, jumping forward and backwards seemingly at will, and the whole thing is so complex that Vincke actively suggests you shouldn't go back and play the old games. If you like the idea of getting caught up, YouTuber Mortismal has a whole series of lore primers and timeline videos, that should just about tide you over until the AMA actually starts if you start watching right now.

The Divinity Series - Lore Primer & Overview - YouTube

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To stick with the basics, if you're not familiar with the inner workings of Reddit, here's how this is all going to go down. AMA stands for 'Ask Me Anything', and it's an opportunity for members of a community to pose whatever question they want to whoever's hosting the event. While Larian's Divinity AMA isn't live just yet (and therefore there's no link to point you towards), you'll be able to find it on the r/games subreddit, where you'll be able to read it at your leisure. You'll need a Reddit account to ask any questions yourself.

In Larian's last big AMA, those answering questions included game director Swen Vincke and now writing director Adam Smith, both of whom I'd expect to be on duty again today. Publishing director Michael Douse is also no stranger to social media, so he could be the kind of person who shows up to add some comments.

Crucially, while you can ask whatever you like, there's no guarantee that you'll get your answer. Divinity is very much the focus, and there's only so much a handful of devs can hope to respond to in the limited amount of time AMAs tend to run for. There's no sense of what that runtime will be today, but the Baldur's Gate 3 event ran for around two hours.

Before we start, it's worth a little background info. Larian revealed Divinity, a continuation of the franchise it had been working on for years before it exploded into the mainstream with Baldur's Gate 3, back at The Game Awards in December. Some of this AMA will be focused on answering community questions about the game itself, in a manner pretty similar to the version Larian did for Baldur's Gate 3 back in 2020.

Other aspects will be about the studio's design processes. After the reveal, Larian found itself in the midst of a controversy surrounding its use of generative AI in Divinity. Despite suggesting that no AI content would make its way into the final game, and director Swen vincke saying that he's yet to see significant optimizations due to the technology, the studio's 'developer first' philosophy was called into question. This AMA is Larian's opportunity to discuss that situation with some more nuance, and the topic is likely to take up some notable bandwidth.