DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN 2: LARIAN STUDIOS, WHEN THE PAST MEETS MODERNITY
On the occasion of the release on Divinity Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition console, we flew to Belgium to try the game and meet the team.
Just enter the main office of
Larian Studios, a spectacular villa of 1870 not too far from the center of the lovely Belgian city of Ghent, to understand many, many things right away. Because it is there, between the stunning walls of a mansion with frescoed ceilings, antique parquet floors and daring rococo, in the ancient residence of local baron that seems all that less than what you would expect from a software house in which they develop video games in 2018, which is born and feeds the very essence of a team like Larian. A study with an eye to the present and one to the future (since on the third floor of the villa the art department was already working on a project still to be announced and apparently not exactly imminent ...), but never forget the past, that era of
Divinity Original Sin 2 .
RPGs in destiny
Speaking of
Larian Studios means in any case to speak inevitably about
Swen Vincke, the founder and above all the mattatore of a company born in the now distant 1997. A company that between difficulties, jolts and not a few risks - suffice it to say that for the first periods the employees were hired with weekly contracts renewed every Friday, because not there was the certainty that the following Monday society would still exist! - today represents not only the fulcrum of the whole development scene in Belgium, but also an absolute reference point in the microcosm of the so-called CRPG. Vincke, a middle-aged man with a lively look, who transmits a sincere and difficult to hide passion in those blue eyes, speaks with evident pleasure of his creature. There is an almost fairy-tale detail that emerges strongly from his anecdotes, a story that suggests that his life could only go in the direction in which it actually went. "
I grew up in a small seaside town to the north. there my parents had a restaurant. Next to my room there was a games room, and inside that game room I spent my childhood and witnessed the evolution of video games, starting from Pong to move to Centipede, Frogger etc etc. ", tells me Vincke."
Then, at twelve, I suddenly got sick. A serious illness, those that reduce you to bed for months, panicking anyone around you (you suspected it could be leukemia, Ed). Someone at one point gave me a ZX81, a computer with 1k of memory accompanied by a yellow book that taught to program in Basic, and that was the real turning point: since I could not go to the game room, I started to make them alone,".
NOT EXACTLY THE TYPICAL CEILING ONE EXPECTS TO FIND IN A SOFTWARE HOUSE.
The very first is a game of hunting dedicated to the father, followed by a simulation of skis and various turn-based strategists (plus the prototype of an RTS ante litteram, soon abandoned because "I believed that nobody wanted to play something similar, and that is was the worst mistake of my career! ", confesses Mr. Larian laughing). Meanwhile, the hardware also changes: there is a sequence of
Commodore 64 ,
Amigaand PC, with the creations of the young Swen that gradually begin to spread locally, enjoying some success among friends and more. And, right at the time of the PC, here comes the idea of an RPG. A thought born well to see nothing at all by chance: Vincke reveals in fact to have always been fascinated by fantasy - and, specifically, from paper role-playing games - albeit with some limitations of nature ... let's say logistics: "
I read all the manuals, but I had no one to play with. I was intrigued by the mechanics, by that kind of universe, but neither I nor the others in my group wanted to do the master. On the contrary, I wanted to be the hero, I wanted to play the hero who lives fantastic adventures ... and had to be precisely the computer to play the role of the master, which is the basic premise of the CRPG . "
An approach that, even in distance of many years, it has not changed at all. "
When we create our games, I still think that the computer must be in a sense the master: it must reward experimentation and exploration, and therefore the user must have the maximum possible freedom. I do not want there to be a limit such as 'you can do this or that, there are two alternatives'. It's something I really care about, and I believe that by observing our titles there is always this feeling of freedom . "Vincke, who quotes
Ultima VI and
Ultima VII as his main inspirations ("
have forever changed my world ") , however, is aware that the secret of Larian Studios' success lies in the team's importance,
OUR GAMING STATIONS, WITH 4K SCREENS AND PS4 CONSOLE AND XBOX ONE X: WHEN THE OUTLINE ALSO WANTS ITS PART.
"
Money, especially at the beginning, has always been the real problem: finding the necessary funds is the key to paying people, because if you want to dedicate yourself to a big role-playing game, you will inevitably need a lot of people. time, a good portion of the team has remained the same for years and I think we have all improved over the course of our history: today we are much better than what we were at the beginning, but I think there is even more to learn. we always try to do new things, we try to push ourselves further and further. "A shared momentum from 2015 in four different studies, from Saint Petersburg to Quebec City - through Dublin and obviously Ghent - working in parallel, allowing them to take daily back production for seventeen hours a day.
Vincke explains that the four offices of Larian Studios are united on both an aesthetic and conceptual level: "
there are some fundamental principles for Larian. First of all, we consider ourselves extremely independent: even the fact of having an office like ours, with this kind of look, I think is an important declaration of intent. It is a place that embraces both the old and the new, which makes the two coexist. Which is exactly what we do: creating a bridge between ancient and modern. We like to devote ourselves to game ideas that have not been explored in the past because they are considered unprofitable by publishers, reporting those same ideas in a current context. Original Sin for me is literally that: the soul of titles like Ultima VII, enriched with multiplayer, of local co-op in split screen, of modern production values and of all that it was not possible to do many years ago. I hope this".
IN A 1870 VILLA CONVERTED INTO A DEVELOPMENT STUDIO, IT HAPPENS THAT THE CELLARS BECOME A SMALL RECORDING STUDIO.
Regarding the difficulties with publishers and the decline of a specific type of experience, Vincke seems to have an extremely clear opinion: "
in the 2000s, when video games have become more and more a business and some formulas have been defined, they are lost to some ideas [of game design], the things we were and are still interested in investigating have become more complicated to develop, because publishers no longer invested in that kind of projects. like Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout 2 ... and then there was obviously Diablo.The one that was most successful, earning more money, was undoubtedly Diablo. So everyone started repeating obsessively that they had to do their own Diablo too, putting into practice a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that established that only Diablo emulators could be developed and developed, rather than video games in the spirit of Fallout 2. "
An attitude that has certainly not favored a reality like that of Larian: "
The complexity of Baldur's Gate 2 frightened publishers, while Diablo's money attracted them ," continues Vincke.
You do not know how many times we heard you say 'Turn-based role-playing games based on a certain type of deep narrative are too complicated, nobody buys them and what they sell is something else'. A mantra that I was obsessively repeated every single time by a random marketing guy, at any meeting I went. And at the time there were no alternatives to find money, so that became the end of any conversation. In fact, not by chance, very few exceptions have been made to this rule, to say nothing, perhaps . "
THE BIG SECRET OF KICKSTARTER: APPARENTLY EVEN 25% OF THE BACKER DOES NOT COLLECT THE REWARDS FOR WHICH HE PAID (COLLECTOR'S EDITION, IN THIS CASE).
However, the publishers' far from favorable approach has done nothing but nurture the independent spirit of Swen and the rest of the company, convincing them to fight even harder for what they believed: "I basically never accepted their words, and I've always thought they were wrong ... When the digital distribution finally arrived on the market, which allowed a studio like ours to publish directly in person, without intermediaries, it turned out that we were right we and that there were a lot of players ready to follow us ... We heard the audience say '
hey, for years we really wanted to play something like this, but we did not have the chance to do it ...' .
In short, after so many difficulties and an infinity of doors slammed in the face was the revenge of game design so dear to
Swen Vincke : "
For Larian all this is part of the attitude I referred to earlier, of the concept of creating a bridge between old and new: at the end of the '90s there were game design paths that at one point were abandoned, because funds have been cut to develop that kind of experience. We came from a true golden age made up of a multitude of experiments, which for roughly ten years was brutally interrupted. Then came the digital distribution, the indie and Kickstarter to overturn the situation ... and re-appear those ideas ready to be explored again, reworked in a current key. A lot of cool things we see today actually come in weight since the '90s, they are old elements presented with a new dress ...".
THE NAME LARIAN COMES FROM PILAR, THE DOG THAT VICKE HAD DURING ADOLESCENCE. FROM THE FOUR-LEGGED FRIEND COMES THE THREE-LETTER ABBREVIATION - LAR - THAT THE YOUNG SWEN ALWAYS INCLUDED IN THE COIN-OPS OF THE TIME.
A feeling that can not do anything but feed the near future of Larian Studios, even more so after the triumphs of a game like
Divinity Original Sin 2 (the PC title with the highest Metacritic score of 2017): "We will continue to create what we like to play, because we do not want to do anything else: you will see other RPGs under the Larian label, and they will be surprising and hopefully innovative.Perhaps for someone they will not be so successful, because we could go in a different direction from what some expect, or maybe instead everyone will say
wow, what a cool one! Why has no one ever thought of it before? Of course we will never get back to doing things already done: if you look at our career, in each of the Larian titles there has always been a strong innovation compared to previous games. After all, we have only one life to create video games and lots of head ideas, so we do not want to waste time doing what we've already done . "
Not bad for purpose, for those who until recently seemed to risk extinction due to of the little courage of publishers.
