Preface（Jini）
A story both intelligent and humorous, a convincing world worthy of exploration, and above all else, roleplay based on free and independent decision-making.
RPGS with such qualities, the kind I fell in love with, are hard to find nowadays. But despite this, one developer shines brilliantly, like a lighthouse illuminating dark waters. I’m speaking, of course, of Larian Studios and its keeper Swen Vincke.
As editor-in-chief of I.N.T., I am compelled to ask this leader what truly gives an RPG value. With this as my goal, our six-month-long negotiations for an interview concluded with us departing for Kuala Lumpur, the location of Larian Studios, and we had the honor of being the first Japanese people to interview Swen Vincke.
Planning, Editor, and Interviewer: Jini
Interviewer: Daichi Saito
Author: Shu Chiba
Photographer: Akihiko Iyoda
English Translation: Caitlin Beggs Kojima
English Translation Review: Rie Ihara
Interview date: October 3, 2024
Why RPGs?
Jini:
It is truly an honor to be here with you today, Swen Vincke, one of the busiest game creators in the world.
Allow me to first express my gratitude to you as a CRPG fan. You saved the once-stagnant CRPG culture with masterpieces like Divinity: Original Sin. I never thought in my wildest dreams that such CRPGs would be playable in this day and age, in an even more incredible form…
Vincke:
Now let’s dive into it.
Jini:
(clears throat) … Well then, allow me to get to the heart of the matter.
Why do you make RPGs? What is the real thrill of RPGs?
I read in an interview that although you guys made an RTS (real-time strategy game) called The L.E.D. Wars at first, that was not your true intention. After that, you’ve continually made RPGs.
Vincke:
Both RTSs and RPGs have their own merits. It may come as a surprise, but I aimed [to make] an RTS like Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. What led me down the path of making RPGs was, in a sense, fate.
I founded our studio in 1996, and as I was searching for a game to make that would sell, I came across Ultima VI: The False Prophet1… I played it and became completely enthralled, and being in my early 20s at the time, I thought, “Now this is a game I’d like to make.” That was the beginning of Larian making RPGs.
Jini:
So you were inspired by Ultima VI, and not ordinary RPGs.
Vincke:
But in the late 90s, the CRPG market was in decline, and few companies were willing to invest in it. That’s when a publisher came to me saying that they’d fund us if we made an RTS. It was right when the market was experiencing rapid growth with Blizzard’s release of Warcraft … It was a time when you could sell an RTS just by making one, so it was our opportunity as a newbie Belgian developer to enter the market.
So we were under contract to receive funds from a publisher and make an RTS. We planned to work on The L.E.D. Wars during the day, and develop our RPG at night.
I tried to make it into an RPG comparable to Ultima VI, incorporating all the love I had cultivated for fantasy novels, as well as their story-telling techniques, and the tactics of turn-based strategy games.
Looking back on it now, it was an absurdly naive idea born out of my youth. My vision was clouded with overflowing ambition and a sense that I could do anything. I had no idea what terrifying forest I was about to step foot into…
Yes, I came to realize my own ideal art of RPG. And the art of RPG is an RPG in which all the characters, objects, and creatures of a game interconnect through all the interactions, including the dialogue, battles, and encounters. In other words, it must be systemic. Let’s say for example that you want a character to be able to autonomously walk around and have conversations. If that’s the case, you need systems for that character. You need one to conduct conversations, you need one for avoiding obstacles when walking around, and you need one for the character and enemy creatures to mutually detect each other. In this way, everything becomes interconnected, and precisely because it is a world where the player can exhibit their ingenuity as they wish, it becomes an RPG that feels free and authentic to the player.
Jini:
That’s an ideal common with that of the genre that would later come to be known as the “immersive sim.” So nearly 20 years ago you were already aware of the art of RPG as you actualized in your work Divinity: Original Sin.
Vincke:
Yes, and the art of RPG is extraordinarily difficult to actualize. That’s why the RPG we made concurrently with The L.E.D. Wars, titled “The Lady, the Mage and the Knight,” didn’t make it to completion. But I decided then that I would make it my life’s work and one day create my ideal RPG. Afterward, I released the first of the Divinity series, Divine Divinity, and began my pursuit of the true art of RPG.
Jini:
I see. That was an extremely crucial answer to a crucial question. However, to delve deeper into your answer, I would like to ask some more incremental questions.
Vincke:
Sure.
＊Growing up In Belgium
Jini:
First, please tell me of your past as well as that of Larian. Have you created games since you were a child?
Vincke:
I started making games at around age 12. I came down with mononucleosis and had to stay home and rest for half a year. I used to hang out with other gamer kids at the arcade, but I was not allowed to go out due to my illness. It was terribly frustrating for me as a child.
That’s when I began to use all my spare time to learn programming while in bed.
Jini:
You were born in 1972, so that would have been around ‘84. What computer did you use at the time?
Vincke:
A Sinclair ZX81. It had 1 kilobyte of memory.
Jini:
You later went on to major in computer science at Ghent University. Before you would get to that point, though, who was your mentor during your childhood?
Vincke:
My programming mentor was a small yellow manual. It was the Dutch version of Toni Baker’s Mastering Machine Code on your ZX81 that came with the ZX81. It included instructions for making a simple game, and that was my starting point.
Also, there were many video game magazines at the time, such as Your Computer and Computer and Video Games, which included example codes for games. I eagerly copied them, acquiring coding skills along the way.
Saito:
They must have been similar to Japan’s LOGiN [magazine]. Game creators of Japan’s emerging game era also learned coding from computer and gaming magazines, and they submitted their own codes too. My mentor was Koichi Nakamura, and that’s exactly how he entered the gaming industry.
Vincke:
Instead of submitting my games to magazines, I mostly showed them to my friends. An electronics store had an MSX on display. I wanted one so badly, but it was too expensive for me as a kid. So without asking, I used the store’s demo model to program games and had my friends play them.
Jini:
Without asking? Didn’t the store owner get mad at you?
Vincke:
Quite the contrary. The store was happy since it was good publicity. Customers would come in and say, “Hey, what’s this?” and I was happy to explain it to them. Then more and more customers came. So I was like a secret PR rep for electronic stores and computer companies.
Jini:
That reminds me of the late president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, who did the exact same thing. He made games in the computer section of a Japanese department store and let his school friends play them. He said it was how he started making games.
Vincke:
There is no greater joy than seeing others enjoy something that you made. Mr. Iwata must have known that as well.
Jini:
Who was the first to play your games?
Vincke:
My dad. I made a hunting simulator program for my dad, who was also a hunter. The player moved a square block that showed the gun’s aim up, down, left, or right, and hit another square block (representing a deer) running around on the screen. It was simple and silly, but my dad loved it. That game holds a lot of memories for me.
Afterward, playing with my friends became important to me. I made strategy games, especially turn-based strategy ones. I clearly remember a game titled “Conqueror.” It was a split-screen fantasy strategy game. My friends played that a lot amongst themselves. The most popular one in the friend group may have been one called “War.” It was an old-school turn-based strategy game.
Jini:
Was there anything you used as a reference when you were making strategy games?
Vincke:
What made me super fond of turn-based strategy was Empire. It was a war game based on a board game.
Another one would be Celtic Legends released by Amiga, one of Ubisoft’s early works. It’s probably long-forgotten now. But at the time, it was very impressive. It was so refined that it was ahead of the RTS boom that would follow.
Jini:
I see. It certainly seems that you’ve been influenced not only by RPGs but also by RTSs and their precursor war games.
If I recall correctly, Celtic Legends was a fantasy strategy game. Were you drawn to fantasy since back then?
Vincke:
I certainly was. The center for fantasy at the time was novels. The gateway for me into the world of fantasy was the Dragonlance series that my friend gave me. It was a story based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons. After that, I read the entire Lord of the Rings series, a founder of the fantasy genre. Each and every novel was really interesting, and I stayed up all night immersed in them. Getting stuck pulling all-nighters thanks to fantasy is how I live now too. (laughs)
＊Founding Larian and the Struggles of Living in a Non-Gaming Country
Jini:
After you graduated college, you founded Larian in 1996. I imagine it was very difficult to start a gaming company in Belgium, a country where games are not mainstream.
Vincke:
It was. There was no gaming industry in Belgium in the 90s. As for developer companies themselves, there were a few like Appeal, the makers of Outcast, but the scale of the industry as a whole was very small.
So for me at the time, applying to work at a game company was not a very realistic option. Therefore, I launched my own game company.
Jini:
But even if you launched your own company, you’re left with the challenge of finding employees and financing.
Vincke:
That’s exactly right. There being no industry means that it is difficult to gather money and people in that field. It’s extremely difficult to get investing and human resources in such a place. But if you are going to do it anyway, you will need to teach people yourself from scratch, and you will be forced to trial-and-error all sorts of processes. This inevitably increases costs. It’s even more costly than countries with established [game] industries.
Even more, the fact that other countries deem [your country] as having no industry becomes an even bigger hindrance.
When trying to sell your game to publishers at game shows abroad, I always felt as if I had a handicap.
“Where are you from?”
“Um, Belgium…”
“Hmm. I see… Huh…”
They’d take a step back with doubtful hesitation, thinking, “Can these guys really make games?”
But at the same time, local developers in similar situations were able to land contracts easily. I remember burning with jealousy when seeing others in the industry talking with publishers so effortlessly.
Even if we landed a contract with a publisher from another country, we’d still have faced obstacles. Daily communications would have been a lot of trouble for both parties since the internet at the time was still dial-up. It was impossible to talk freely with people far away like we can today.
Jini:
It would have been an option for you at the time to develop in countries with large markets, like the U.S., but what was your reason for staying in Belgium? Also, were there any experiences or knowledge you gained precisely because you were in Belgium?
Vincke:
That’s a good question. I stayed in Belgium solely for my family–my parents and my wife. I also had friends there too. Nowadays I spend about half the year traveling the world to visit each Larian studio, but the other half of the year I spend in Belgium. Regarding knowledge I gained in Belgium, I was raised in a town called De Panne, and as it is a town by the sea near the border with France, it attracts tourists from around the world. Since my parents ran a restaurant, I interacted with the tourists who would visit and was influenced by many different cultures. Plus, Belgium has lots of nice buildings, which are very helpful when making medieval fantasies.
Jini:
Now, 30 years later, Larian has become a game studio with seven locations around the world, and you yourself have become a globally respected game creator. I’m sure a lot has changed for you.
Vincke:
Actually, even before I started my company, my greatest joy has been seeing others enjoy what I make, and that has not changed. That has been the most important thing for me since I was a boy, whether it was my father playing my hunting game or my friends playing my strategy games. I receive a lot of delight in hearing the experiences of my fans. At game shows, I love watching attendees play my games up close and hearing their impressions. Bringing joy to others has been at the core of my craftsmanship, and I believe it has made Larian into the extraordinary company it is today.
Of course, when you only prioritize making people happy, you run out of money before you know it. It doesn’t take money into account, so you often get called crazy. Instead of getting serious and releasing a so-so game in a short time span, our strategy that ultimately led to our survival was to believe in ourselves and completely pursue what we believed to be good, but it’s also true that it was luck that allowed us to make it to today. We did lots of reckless things.
Perhaps there was a future in which we continued making RTSs even after The L.E.D. Wars. Continually making an RPG was more difficult, required more manpower, and more costly than the young version of myself predicted. But in the end, it was the right choice. It’s not the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin that makes me think so; those were even more difficult journeys. In creative endeavors, there’s no point in doing what most others do. Venturing toward uninhabited territory and clearing a new path is what’s important.
Real-Time Battles or Turn-Based Battles
Jini:
Now I’d like to ask about the core aspects of creating games.
Personally, I think the biggest charm of Larian’s RPGs is their battles. The turn-based battles are immensely enjoyable. This contrasts with the battles of classic 90s CPRGs that were, quite frankly, boring. So my question is, among systemic RPGs, are you especially particular about them being turn-based ones? What about real-time-based games were you dissatisfied with?
Vincke:
How perceptive of you. The combat portion is one challenge that we pursued for a long time. Let me first clarify that it’s not that we dislike real-time-based games. I myself am quite fond of them. It’s simply that when I make a game myself, I prioritize above all else the entertainment of reading when making decisions. Especially regarding tactics, performing even deeper decisions requires time. I’m also a chess player, and it takes time to decide on each move. But real-time-based [games] don’t give you the time to carefully consider. There are real-time-based games in which you can pause, but if so, you might as well make them turn-based from the start.
Therefore, apart from an RTS where units are moved on a divisional basis, we came to the conclusion that a turn-based system is preferable for an RPG where you only move a small number of units.
Jini:
But your early work Divine Divinity was real-time based. It shifted to turn-based with Divinity: Original Sin in 2014. What shift of opinion did you experience between these points in time?
Vincke:
It’s true that our first RPG, Divine Divinity, was a “hack and slash,” a genre that Diablo established for fantasy RPGs. And of course, the combat is in real-time. The game sold reasonably well and was a critical success. I, however, was unhappy with it. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted more choices and depth to the decision-making in battles. So I thought of switching to turn-based battles with the sequel. In fact, we began development on the sequel as a turn-based game.
However, my agent and publisher strongly opposed this. At our pitch at E3, the publisher demanded that we switch to real-time, saying that turn-based games were a thing of the past and that it wouldn’t sell unless it was real-time, so we had no choice. I reluctantly continued the real-time route in the second and third games of the series, Beyond Divinity and Divinity II: Ego Draconis.
Jini:
But you were not pleased with the combat portions of those games.
Vincke:
In our games, the combat portions were always our biggest weakness. Even so, we had to continue with real-time combat for business reasons. For me, Divinity II was a failure. I continually asked myself why it failed, and I came to a single conclusion: that you have to make every single little detail of a game fun.
For example, even if a certain part of your game is fun, that alone is not enough for the player to spend dozens of hours playing. Everything has to be fun, or else it’s not worth playing.
The weak point of our titles was the combat, so we needed to prioritize remaking them.
Production for Divinity: Original Sin was already underway when I realized this, and the battle system for the game was the same real-time one as the previous three works.
That day, I called everyone on the development team to my office and announced, “Let’s change everything. Let’s make it a turn-based battle [system].” I said it’d be a quirk of ours.
Making an RPG with a good turn-based battle [system] is what we really wanted to do. It was a turning point in the first half of our company Larian, and it was also at a time that if this didn’t go well, it would all be over.
Thinking back on it, it was the right decision. By looking at our past mistakes, discovering what we could correct, and focusing on that, we arrived at Original Sin.
Connecting Players and Developers: Larian Studios’ Philosophy of Agency
Jini:
As a result, the Divinity series became a huge hit with Original Sin, with the latest title Baldur’s Gate 3 alone said to have sold over 20 million copies. With the money you earned, you’ve expanded your locations and are developing games on an even larger scale. I heard that during D:OS2, you had 200 employees, and now your numbers have increased to 500.
With things expanding so much, I’m sure the development environment is not the same as it once was. What has changed in your game development style, and what has remained the same?
Vincke:
Absolutely everything changed, and at the same time, nothing changed at all.
Jini:
What do you mean by that?
Vincke:
Because our goal has always been to make games in which the player can influence the story with their own choices.
Jini:
You mean a story for the player?
Vincke:
In RPGs, the story is both what has been provided and what the player writes themself. This story must provide a motive to continue the game and be fun and full of freedom for the player to do whatever they want whenever. The art of RPG that I touched on at the beginning of the interview is a state in which all elements in the game are interconnected with all interactions, and I refer to the values that we must pursue as the “FUME” principle. Each letter stands for the following:
F—Freedom
U—Universe, the world in which you exercise this freedom
M—Motivation, your reason for pursuing the universe
E—Enemy, the interesting enemies that you must fight along your pursuit
I’ve held this principle ever since The Lady, the Mage and the Knight, and to this day I keep this principle in mind when checking games. Without all four elements, [the game] is missing something, at least as an RPG.
As a result of trying to stay faithful to the FUME principle, we have improved ourselves. We’ve become better at building worlds and stories, and we’ve mastered mechanics, systems, simulations, and visuals. We’ve developed technologically as well, but our goal remains the same.
Jini:
It becomes more difficult to control operations the larger the scale of the development team. However, it seems that you have continued to control things precisely. How do you manage this?
Vincke:
By believing in the agency that exists within everyone. During the production process, there comes a moment when the dev team members comprehend the game’s core. Once they realize this, all you have to do then is give directions and they will naturally create things that harmonize with the game as a whole.
Getting to that point is difficult. You need to revise things over and over, give detailed instructions, and lay out a general path while also giving freedom to the dev team members. By repeating this process, they will at some point understand everything and even add their own original ideas.
Before long, something is born that you could never have created by yourself… It’s the moment that all your development work pays off, the shock of something you could have never conceived.
Jini:
Specifically, how do you convey your intentions to the team members? In usual game development, it’s common to use proposal documents and meetings, but these methods make it difficult to foster a sense of agency.
Vincke:
Yes, for that reason, I regularly stream myself playing game within the company. As I play the game that we’re working on, I explain the gist into the mic and say what I feel, what I see, and what I want changed.
These videos of me reviewing the game are made available internally so anyone can see them. I’m the first player to give direct feedback.
All employees view the live stream and write their comments on a provided Slack channel. I’ll play a specific place, let’s say a tutorial scene for example, and say, “This bothers me. Please change it,” Once I repeat this enough times, they begin to understand what I want, and after that, I no longer need to say anything. I don’t have to go through the trouble of making reviews anymore; the dev members realize what isn’t functioning well and begin doing the same thing themselves. In this manner, we form a sort of collective intelligence, and the game dramatically improves. Even with masterpieces, the first prototype is usually terrible. It’s polished through repeatedly exchanging feedback.
It’s more efficient to communicate through live streams than text. I only leave notes to summarize tasks to be done. Usually, it’s just screenshots and records of things that bother me.
If you go to the Slack channel for BG3, there’s a long list titled “Swen Reviews,” listing points that need improvement, and within that are my review videos, which are helpful in understanding the context of the requests.
What’s interesting is that the dev team conducts reviews in the same manner amongst themselves. Before I review anything, they are already reviewing things with each other, which leads to improved quality. It’s a self-sustaining, continuous process.
Jini:
What do you pay close attention to when you are live-streaming a game?
Vincke:
Everything. The thing that’s most important for me when I’m checking is not one specific aspect but whether all the aspects are convincing… In other words, their believability. The whole game and its whole world must be believable in their entirety. This pattern appears throughout the game experience.
Does the story make sense taking into account everything that has happened so far? Is it intellectual and interesting? Is it not boring the player? Do you feel connected with the world?
The flow of things is essential for believability. Three factors—timing, flow, and pace—must be suitably configured, otherwise things will feel off. A fourth factor is deja vu. If it’s something you’ve seen before, you should avoid it. Always keep things fresh and surprising.
These are the main things I check for.
Saito:
I see. I have to say that’s incredible. Your RPGs are not simply just massive, there is meaning, value, and beauty in all their components. I wondered how you implemented it all, but it makes complete sense that using “Swen Reviews” to communicate with your mighty, autonomous dev team members would result in a masterpiece impeccable in both quality and quantity.
Vincke:
By the way, we make it a priority to evoke a sense of agency not only with our dev team but the players as well. Can the player interact with the world in a fun way? Are they able to make interesting decisions? Without this, it’s not a game, but more like a book or a movie in which they are disconnected and just observe what’s happening. So it’s extremely important that the player can play with agency with the world and everything.
The same can be said about combat. There’s a structure to the battles and a rhythm to their storytelling. Am I making interesting choices in this battle? Have I seen this type of battle before? Is this battle significant to the story? Is the reward worth the challenge? …It all boils down to the reason why that battle is there. And one more thing: are you making the player use the mechanics in different ways than before?
Jini:
However, having agency in the game is sometimes difficult and exhausting for the player. What sort of measures did you take for such players?
Vincke:
We’ve put a lot of effort into providing the player with hints for how to act and think. A measure we often take is to have the enemy AI perform a certain action to make the player realize that such an action is possible. The moment the player realizes that they can do this, they get a rush of adrenaline and dopamine and are enthralled with the game. Then they seek even more pleasure and begin testing out all sorts of actions. We want to encourage and reward the player’s agency as much as possible.
Jini:
Even in BG3’s default “Explorer” mode, you have all the enemies defeat the player in creative ways. So you’re saying that wasn’t just for the sake of making it difficult, but to stimulate the player’s sense of agency?
Vincke:
If the combat is too easy, there’s not a lot of room for the player to be stimulated. It’s the high difficulty that makes them want to take on the challenge and try different techniques. So difficulty is one of our trademarks.
Jini:
There’s a word used among Japanese gamers, “shoken goroshi” that refers to when you first encounter an enemy without knowing how to deal with them, and you’re instantly defeated.
Vincke:
Oh, we prefer to reduce HP to 1. Once you die, you lose your sense of immersion, and we want players to be forced into desperate situations and wonder how in the world they can climb out of this hell. We want them to get the thrill of overcoming these extremes from the gameplay.
Jini:
In Japan, we’d call that masochism.
Vincke:
Same in Belgium.
Narrative and Characters
Jini:
Let me ask you about narrative and experience. What intrigued me was that the characters in Larian games are extremely human-like, whether enemy or ally. In other words, not only are they not simply categorized as good or evil, but rather everyone is both good and evil, strong and weak. This is a very sophisticated approach. Even more, this tendency is more pronounced in the origin characters who can become the protagonist’s companions or even the protagonist themself. This seems to be a consistent intention, but what are your thoughts on this?
Vincke:
We put a lot of emphasis on human weakness when building character arcs. That is, we look to the character’s shadows, such as fears, losses, betrayals, and emotional scars, to find elements that define them. Also, how the characters deal with their negativity is tied to their portrayal. Do they try to hide it from others, or do they reveal it? The individual reactions themselves may not be very interesting, but a classic storytelling device is to bring to the forefront the character’s internal changes throughout the gameplay by layering these fine details.
Jini:
A modern literature method. I believe Émile Zola called that “naturalism.”
Vincke:
However, there is a crucial difference from movies and novels when it comes Larian RPGs. The character’s arc diverges in different directions depending on the player’s choices. That’s why Baldur’s Gate 3 is also a story of the companions—the origin characters. Within their interactions with others, they must decide how to act toward whom. The relationships and connections between the characters in the party directly link to the characters’ personalities.
We polish and probe for the character’s individuality and at some point decide that this is how the character will be. Sometimes it differs from our [original] idea, and sometimes it fits surprisingly well. I can grasp the impression a character gives with the reaction of the dev team members first. If in the idea stage it looks like the team members are excited to play that character, then I know that the player will take an interest in them as well. Conversely, if the team’s reaction is poor, we sometimes abandon that character at that point in time. Either way, it’s a time-consuming process.
Jini:
Entrusting the story to the player’s choices is emphasized again and again as Larian’s dogma. In truth, the game offers an extreme variety of choices, whether in conversation or action. But this means that compared to other games, you have to create an outrageous amount of content. How are you able to manage such labor?
Vincke:
We do it to bring significance to the player’s decisions. The more possibilities that weren’t chosen, the more special your decision becomes. Of course, to highlight this specialness, you must ensure that all choices are meaningful. So even for events that only 1% of players will discover, we devote just as much attention to events that 99% of players discover. We want all player to believe in their own worlds that they explore.
As the players make more and more choices, they learn that all their choices up until this point were meaningful, and they become aware of the uniqueness and one-of-a-kind nature of that playthrough. At the same time, they start to want to try out all possibilities, giving rise to the player’s agency.
Saito:
That’s… I know what you mean, but… Isn’t that an insane amount of work in terms of developing the game?
Vincke:
Yes, it is. But we must aim for that insane summit. That’s what Larian does.
Jini:
The romance in BG3, too, depicts extremely sophisticated relationships and represents diverse sexualities.
Vincke:
Love and romance are parts of human nature and interpersonal relationships, appearing when you spend a lot of time with another. If you wish to tell a story of humans and their interpersonal relationships in a sophisticated narrative, it would be difficult to ignore [romance]. Otherwise, the story that is supposed to reenact the world loses its believability. However, committing to romance should not be the only option.
Jini:
You said that you paid just as much attention to the choices made 1% of the time, but even so, isn’t it entirely too challenging to prepare options of making each of the origin characters the protagonist—meaning the huge cost of making each with their own unique script? As an RPG that aims to instill agency, everyone basically plays as their own custom protagonist, with statistically 93% of players selecting a custom protagonist (as of 2024). Is it really necessary to go that far for the remaining 7% of players? …At least, that’s what most executives would think.
Vincke:
Not acting as the player is another option for the player. When playing with an origin character as your protagonist, you can experience all sorts of things from the perspectives of your companion characters with a custom protagonist. We have our own reasons for this, because we wanted the writers to walk in the shoes of the characters. We wanted them to see things from the character’s position and imagine how they would think and act when in certain circumstances.
Because we establish solid foundations for the origin characters’ personalities in this way (enough to be the protagonist), it gives an extra level of depth when they become your companions. In terms of the narrative, it’s literally like transitioning from first person to third, or from third person to first.
You put yourself in the world and the character’s perspective, and you live the journey with them. This is our goal when making stories. We make various efforts from all angles to achieve this, bringing out meaning and providing choices.
However, I feel that we have yet to include enough options in our games. There’s a limit to our imaginations and our mental bandwidth for processing reality. I believe that only by overcoming such limitations can we create stories open to all possibilities.
Jini:
Oh.
Larian Moving Forward
Jini:
Now for my last question. You have announced that you have no intention of making any DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3 and that you won’t make a sequel either. Though I’m sure you’re limited with how much information you’re able to reveal about upcoming works, could you at least tell us what you would like to pay attention to in future titles?
Vincke:
Yes, I can’t currently tell you what sort of new game it will be.
But our goal will never change. And that goal is to convince [players] through the gameplay that this is their own story. To make them feel as if they have wandered into another world, meet people there that feel real, and build relationships with them through their choices. To have these characters make you feel good or make you feel bad.
That is to say, a game that rewards the player’s agency. That will never change.
＊Afterword (by author Chiba)
His words, as if a chant, cast a spell on us one by one. How he had been making strategy games ever since his youth, the FUME principle, giving directions via live stream… Our astonishment never ended.
A chance encounter with an RPG instilled conviction in the heart of a young developer, bringing forth the construction of one of the greatest RPG studios–a kingdom–in a land once devoid of games.
Many RPGs tout their range of freedom and choices. These are a given for Western games, and even major Japanese RPGs, which tend to be quite linear, have sought a certain level of freedom and abundance of choice. This is probably because we players have desired it, because we wanted to discover possibilities, lives, and worlds there.
Yet, have we been careless in the way in which we establish freedom and choice?
Being free and having choice are actually quite terrifying. When shown five or six options within a single conversation, none of which is either right or wrong, and on top of that each leads to irreversible change—that is freedom. It is scary, and it is real.
Larian games constantly confront you with this harshness, whether in dialogue or combat. Each and every choice is sharpened because it is, in fact, honed to perfection. Larian’s development structure itself is designed to allow free developers to make well-honed choices. Agency permeates everything.
In that sense, Larian is not a kingdom ruled by Swen Vincke, but rather, the soul of the kingdom resides within Swen Vincke himself, as he shares his vision with all his team.
Could this be a possibility for other studios?
Exiting the AC-cooled studio, we were enveloped in thick, muggy air. It was hot, rain violently pounding the city. During Kuala Lumpur’s monsoon season, the sudden showers are incessant. The smoggy drizzle wrapped around the skyscrapers and KL Tower, lightning mysteriously illuminating them. The droplets clinging to our skin indiscernible as either rainwater or our own sweat. Perhaps they were both. Japan’s climate is said to be growing more subtropical as global warming continues, and I saw now that this place was like Japan. It was as Asian as it can get.
I turned around and look up at the building we were just in, suddenly seized by this suspicion:
Was that space real?
The entranceway lined with numerous trophies, a corridor decorated with designs from Baldur’s Gate 3 and the Divinity series, a motion capture room equipped with katanas and Western-style long swords, gallant-looking employees…a mysterious castle, and its solemn king.
We remembered what a certain Larian developer whom we met prior to the interview had told us:
“The world we’re in right now may just be a game he’s playing.”
And now I understand. This interview session was a session of a different kind. He is the game master, we are the players, and this is our TRPG session. And this article is a replay of it all.
You, too, reading this now cannot remain unconnected. Now make your choice, roll the dice. Your adventure continues.
