Larian Studios - Swen Vincke Interview

Remove all ads!

INT Magazine interviewed Swen Vincke:

​

Baldur's Gate 3's Swen Vincke: "I Believe in Agency for Both Developers and Players"

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.

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.

[...]