Divinity is 'past pre-production' and already recording actors, but don't read too much into that: Swen Vincke says Larian will be 'recording non-stop'

Baldur's Gate 3's fully motion captured and voiced dialogue was the clearest sign that the developer had stepped into the big leagues after Divinity: Original Sin 2. The earlier RPG had great writing and voice acting for key dialogue, but it didn't pull you into the performances in the way BG3 would a few years later. Larian knows that's what people now expect from its RPGs, and it's already bringing actors into the studio to work on Divinity.

"We're still casting, but we already have a bunch of actors in," studio founder Swen Vincke told PC Gamer in an interview after The Game Awards, where Divinity was revealed. Unlike a film that's written first and then shot, Larian's creative process entails capturing its actors' performances as soon as development is out of pre-production. "This gives you an idea of the ambition," he said.

"We built a huge studio in Guilford, with six recording studios in there. The idea is that these are going to be recording nonstop on this game, which gives you an idea of the ambition. It's big, because we want you to have lots and lots and lots of choice. This is a project where recording is almost at the beginning."

Vincke didn't give even a rough estimate of when Divinity will be released but did say that the game is already past pre-production. It sounds like much of the writing—and even deciding how the story will play out—is still to come. Writing director Adam Smith said that "because of the way [Divinity] works, the players are the most important characters."

"Anything else is reacting to them, which means you don't know what the character needs until you know what the player needs. One of the great things about working on Baldur's Gate 3 was you'd have these moments where you'd say, 'Oh shit, if I say or do this, they'd have to do this.' You hadn't planned it, but once you know them you know how they react. So you're kind of improvising along with them. We have characters that I'm already happy with, but I don't know who the hell they are yet, because I don't know the end of the journey yet. We'll know who they are then. Right now, they're a sketch, and we're starting to piece them together."

Vincke added that as the graphics are finalized through development, the look of a character can have a big impact on their identity. And if they decide to release in early access—currently still up in the air—player feedback will likely play a big role, too. In Baldur's Gate 3, Shadowheart and Astarion both went through "a journey of transformation" in early access, as he put it.

"I was talking to someone who had worked on a game and had the script locked before having a level built, and I was like, 'How do you do that?'" Smith said. "For us, we have to be walking around the game world to know the writing is good. You have to see it in the game. Obviously it's an imperfect version of the game, but the closer it is to the thing that the player will be looking at, the better we know it. We're writing for a very specific medium, and a very complicated genre within that medium."

Lead writer Chrystal Ding added: "You'd be amazed how often you find yourself writing dialogue, and you read it through in the file and you're like, 'That seems fine.' Put it in the game, and: 'That's garbage. I don't believe any of that.' You feel it in your gut, it's not even in your brain. You just go: 'I don't buy that.'"

So yes, Divinity is in production—but as for how far along it actually is at this point, your guess is probably as good as Larian's.

"Production is hell with a developer that iterates so much," Vincke said. "The game resists us, but we shall vanquish it."