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The long, winding road to Baldur’s Gate 3 was paved with these Larian games

A group of four adventures stands on the ends of a cliff in Baldur's Gate 3.
Larian Studios

A career-crowning achievement as monumental as Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t come out of nowhere. From Divinity to Dungeons & Dragons, Larian Studios has long been one of the loudest advocates for rich storytelling and true, meaningful freedom in Western RPGs.

Larian Studios’ story is a rags-to-riches tale about a group of passionate developers whose deep and diverse portfolio of games piled up for nearly three decades before Baldur’s Gate 3 ever saw the light of day. Amid canceled projects, Larian narrowly skirted total bankruptcy. In order to survive, there are several points in its history when the independent studio experimented. There were dives into real-time strategy, educational games for the Belgian kids’ TV station Ketnet, the Diablo-esque Divine Divinity, and Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, a third-person action RPG built on Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine.

It’s an eclectic list of projects that underlines a truth about the artistic process. You don’t build a masterpiece without some trial and error along the way, and Larian’s artistic journey proves that lessons can be learned in even the most unconventional places.

The L.E.D. Wars (1997)

The L.E.D. Wars (1997) gameplay
Larian Studios

Larian Studios lost not one, but two publishing deals for its original RPG, tentatively titled Ragnarok Unless (later The Lady, The Mage, and The Knight) before ever successfully launching any game at all. According to Robert Zak’s 2019 interview of Swen Vincke, the Larian team ended up scrapping its original vision for a deep, co-op-capable, story-driven roleplaying game much like what we now see in Baldur’s Gate 3. Instead of diving right back into the roleplaying world, Vincke and the remaining Larian staff ended up doing work-for-hire projects for the Belgian government while working on their own real-time strategy game.

Coming out roughly between the release windows of Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, both of which invariably dominated the real-time strategy landscape for years, Larian’s The L.E.D. Wars silently gave its own spin on the genre with what was known at the time as the most advanced and challenging AI in any RTS game According to MobyGames, it’s still considered one of the most difficult in the genre, which is impressive given that Larian’s small team only spent six months developing the entire game.

Divine Divinity (2002)

Divine Divinity (2002) gameplay
Larian Studios

Five years after its initial debut, Larian returned to PC gaming with the rather obviously Diablo-inspired Divine Divinity and its sequel, Beyond Divinity. Both ARPGs received critical acclaim for their far deeper questing and character customization systems in comparison to Diablo 2. The latter was single-note by comparison, but came with more polish and Blizzard backing its commercial success. Unfortunately for Larian, the early Divinity games didn’t catch on quite as well with the broader RPG audience, and it would take far longer for Divinity to become a household name.

KetnetKick (2004)

Creating hardcore PC games was one way to earn favor with gamers, but Larian had bills to pay. It would need to take an unexpected detour to keep producing the kinds of games it was interested in. In the early 2000s, Larian teamed up with Belgian TV provider VRT to create a game for the kids station Ketnet. The result was a game called KetnetKick, an educational platformer that’s designed to teach kids basic math and other important concepts and that resembles a simplistic version of Super Mario 64. Larian still features the old trailers and cutscenes from their old Ketnet games on its YouTube channel, and frankly, they’re a hoot to watch in 2024.

Creating games like KetnetKick allowed Vincke and the growing Larian team time to learn lessons and gather resources as they worked toward their true passion: role-playing games. And we saw that take shape with the Divinity series’ jump into fully 3D environments in Divinity 2.

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (2009)

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (2009) gameplay
Larian Studios

When people say “Divinity 2,” the first game that may come to mind is the highly successful CRPG Divinity: Original Sin 2. But older fans know what’s up. Divinity 2: Ego Draconis — you can currently buy the definitive edition of the game, Divinity 2: Developer’s Cut, on Steam — represented Larian’s shift back into the Divinity series after a five-year hiatus. Larian used the lessons learned from developing its educational games to bring the series to glorious 3D. It featured tons of action combat, plenty of lovingly nerdy fantasy writing, and its most iconic sequences had you riding a dragon. It also used Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine, the very same engine used to create Starfield.

Monkey Labs (2009)

While Divinity 2 was getting its expansions — and eventually, a developer’s cut — between 2009 and 2012, Larian split its resources and went to work on a few more educational games. According to a press release featured on GamesIndustry.biz in September 2009, Monkey Labs utilized the power of bananas (and once again, Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine) to teach Belgian students between ages 7 and 14. Larian uniquely designed it to accompany real textbooks used in real Belgian classrooms rather than a TV show on a network, aà la KetnetKick. Its sequel, 2011’s Monkey Tales, even made a splash in the PC gaming world when it was released on Steam in 2014.

Divinity: Dragon Commander (2013)

Flying dragons around a massive battlefield is a very cool concept! You can do that in Divinity: Dragon Commander, which shows off everything Larian had learned about roleplaying games and real-time strategy up to its release in 2013. It’s also the first time we see the art style for Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel begin to take shape with vibrant, bold character designs and artwork that evoke the imagination. Its strategy elements were received decently among critics, but its charming tone and unique role-playing tie-ins are what truly set it apart.

Divinity: Original Sin (2014)

Divinity: Original Sin (2014) gameplay co-op
Larian Studios

Finally, we get into proper CRPG territory with 2014’s Divinity: Original Sin. This was Larian’s first attempt at what would eventually become its signature style, introducing an open-ended fantasy world full of humorous quests. But what truly made it stand out was its deep character customization systems and effortless co-op system, which let players and one friend complete the entire campaign while aiding or sabotaging one another’s progress. This set the stage for what would ultimately become the mega-innovative Origin characters systems in Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, where handmade characters could each have motives and imperatives of their own that conflicted with one another organically without derailing the story.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 (2017)

Divinity: Original Sin 2 (2017) character creation
Larian Studios

Before there was Baldur’s Gate 3, there was Divinity: Original Sin 2. In fact, there would not be a Baldur’s Gate 3 if not for the incredible commercial and critical success Divinity: Original Sin 2 garnered for Larian Studios. Everything we loved about the former took shape in the latter, and though it could still technically be considered an indie game for its time, its 100-plus-hour length, deep and immersive worldbuilding, and believably written and voice-acted characters represented the first true shift away from what we typically think of when we talk about indies. This was the moment Larian Studios launched off the ground and became the studio we cherish today, and if you’re pining for a fantastic RPG to follow up a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, there are few better  — at least, in the same isometric style — than Divinity: Original Sin 2. Just be warned that it’s even more difficult than Baldur’s Gate 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Minthara in Baldur's Gate 3.
Larian Studios

All of this built to one magnum opus: Baldur’s Gate 3.

As a genre, isometric CRPGs tend to play like giant choose-your-own-adventure books. They offer unprecedented levels of depth, conveyed through lovingly crafted text passages and often less-than-stellar graphics that give the developers tons of leeway to put the focus squarely on player choice and storytelling that evokes the imagination. Larian Studios bucked that trend with its two Divinity: Original Sin games, but never before has there been a CRPG with the level of cinematic flair and lifelike character performances that also somehow manages to be deeper and more open-ended than any other CRPG out there. That wouldn’t have been possible without decades’ worth of failure, experimentation, and triumph.

Gabriel Moss
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabriel is a freelance writer with a keen interest in gaming and technology. He has written at several sites including IGN…
Baldur’s Gate 3 drops Series S splitscreen support to release on Xbox in 2023
Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios promises to release Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox Series X/S later this year after pushing the game back because of performance problems on Xbox Series S.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC and will come out for PS5 on September 6, but an Xbox Series X/S version won't be available for a little bit longer. In a July 2023 community update, developer Larian Studios explained that this is because it needed "to ensure that the game is performing without compromise across the entire Xbox X/S ecosystem, in multiplayer and with split-screen. The Xbox Series X version was running fine, but the Xbox Series S version of the game was struggling a lot more. The Xbox versions of Baldur's Gate 3 didn't have a release window until now, when Larian Studios co-founder Swen Vincke took to X to confirm it'd come to Xbox platforms before the end of the year. That said, it will exclude one notable feature.
"Super happy to confirm that after meeting [Phil Spencer] yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time," Vincke wrote. "All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X. Series S will not feature split-screen co-op, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series."
Thankfully, it looks like Xbox players won't have to wait too much longer to play this excellent game, but it will be one of the first games to notably drop a major feature between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S versions. This follows comments by Head of Xbox Phil Spencer where he said he doesn't believe Microsoft will drop support for Xbox Series S in the foreseeable future. "I want to make sure games are available on both, that's our job as a platform holder and we're committed to that with our partners," Spencer told Eurogamer. "And I think we're gonna get there with Larian. So I'm not overly worried about that, but we've learned some stuff through it. Having an entry-level price point for console, sub-$300, is a good thing for the industry."
 
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now for PC, launches for PS5 on September 6, and will finally come out for Xbox Series X/S before the end of 2023.

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I beat Baldur’s Gate 3 in 30 hours (and killed everyone in the process)
Gale talks to the player in Baldur's Gate 3.

Baldur's Gate 3 is such a long game that even though millions have played it, far fewer have seen the ending. Only 0.4% of players have gotten the Hero of the Forgotten Realms achievement for beating the game at the time of this writing, according to Steam. It's a game someone can put dozens of hours into, with no end remotely in sight.
That is. unless you beat it way earlier than you were supposed to.
During the climax of Act 2 in Baldur's Gate 3, I accidentally reached a premature ending -- one that my party members weren't too happy about. The ramifications of the ending definitely weren't good for the Forgotten Realms, but finding a way to wrap up Baldur's Gate 3 early just gave me an ever deeper appreciation for how personal each player's journey through this game can feel. 
Note: This article contains major spoilers for Act 2 of Baldur's Gate 3.
One last gust of Weave
Anyone who has played Baldur's Gate 3 probably knows Gale, the smooth-talking wizard who you can pull out of a portal early on in Act 1. Throughout that Act, I had to keep giving him magical artifacts to satiate some sort of curse he has, although their positive effects on Gale dulled with each new item. After doing this enough, I learned the truth: Gale was cursed by the God Mystra after betraying her. At the start of Act 2, though, Gale's former mentor, Elminster, arrives and tells Gale that Mystra has a new task for him: destroy the "Heart of the Absolute" with a Netherese Orb Blast that will essentially nuke and destroy everything around him.

This option appeared alongside Gale's other spells in menus throughout the entirety of Act 2, although using the Netherese Orb Blast early typically results in a message that said my party had been defeated and tasked me with reloading. But there is a real opportunity to use it and end things at the end of Act 2. Most of this section of the game is spent finding a way to defeat Ketheric Thorm, a Baldur's Gate 3 villain voiced by J.K. Simmons. I confronted him on top of Moonrise Towers with the help of Nightsong, who I freed, but before I could beat him, he retreated to a massive Illithid Colony underneath Moonrise Towers. Obviously, my party followed, ultimately stumbling upon Ketheric and two other villains -- Lord Enver Gortash and Orin the Red -- activating the Elder Brain that seemed to be the "Heart of the Absolute" that Gale needed to destroy.
Gale told me that this and asked me me for permission to explode and destroy everything. The first option is to tell him not to, which makes sense; there's still a whole third of the game left to play! But seeing that every major threat in Baldur's Gate 3 was here in one room and knowing how much the game had already taken over my life in a week, I told him yes.
After saying, "One last gust of Weave. One last gale to end them all," Gale blew himself up, and there was nothing else I could do as my Dream Visitor shouted, "No!" Gale blew up, killing Ketheric, Orin, Gortash, and the Elder Brain and granting me the Hero of the Forgotten Realms achievement you're supposed to get for beating Baldur's Gate 3. The post-explosion dialogue paints a gimmer future for the Forgotten Realms, though.
"Beneath the smoking ashes of Moonrise Towers, the elder brain lies destroyed," the narrator says. "But what of the tadpoles it commanded? Freed of the Absolute's control, they will complete their transformations. A plague of illithids will soon descend on the Sword Coast, enslaving all they do not affect." Credits rolled as I blankly stared at the screen, processing that this was the ending I'd worked toward.
An imperfect ending
This definitely isn't a good ending for Baldur's Gate 3; it's pretty terrible, actually. Still, the fact that I could do that speaks to a wider strength of the adventure. The best thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is how much choice it gives players. It's not just freedom in completing set objectives, but freedom to circumvent them entirely. The most fun I had with Baldur's Gate 3 was finding ways to avoid major boss fights or set pieces. Instead of picking a side in the attack on the Druid and Refugee camp, I destroyed the bridge Minthara could use to escape in the Goblin camp, killed her before having a conversation with her, and then pushed Dror Ragzlin off a ledge to kill him.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 and Hades have made me an early access believer
Astrion holds his chin in Baldur's Gate 3.

Until recently, early access games -- which allow players to buy, play and provide feedback on games during development -- still had a bad rap in my mind. Half-baked games that took advantage of the process (like DayZ, Godus, and The Stomping Land) are what still came to mind whenever I'd see an early access label on Steam or the Epic Games Store. I'd refused to even play many early access games because I was worried they’d go unfinished or not live up to expectations.

I'm finally coming around though, and that's thanks to two recent success stories. Hades, one of my favorite games of the past decade, and Baldur’s Gate 3, the Dungeons & Dragon RPG currently taking the gaming industry by storm, both started as early access games. Each came out of early access as such fully formed, enriching experiences that it’s begun to reshape my perspective on how powerful a tool early access can be.
The benefits of early access
I remember actively not being that interested in Hades back when it was announced in December 2018, and that was because it was an early-access title. The joke was on me; I felt like quite the fool when I finally got around to playing it at launch in 2020, and it became one of my favorite games of all time. I was in a similar boat with Baldur’s Gate 3, which I originally got access to on Google Stadia but didn’t play that much until its August 3 launch. Fool me twice and all that.

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