Larian General Discussion Thread

[Infinitron]

 

[Drakortha]

"Without Compromise"
...

Except for day / night cycles.

 

[LESS T_T]

From an interview with David Walgrave, musing about Larian's future: https://wireframe.raspberrypi.org/issues/45

Larian has mainly been about Divinity, itself clearly influenced by D&D and Baldur’s Gate. Now you’ve got the big game, where do you go? Have you peaked? Or will it be LED Wars 2?

I have no idea! I don’t think anyone from LED Wars is still at Larian apart from Swen [laughs]. He could probably write it himself… I honestly have no idea. There are ideas we had that are public, like we wanted to make a tactics game. We postponed it, but it is something we’d still like to do. In order to do that, we need to build a company that can work on two projects at the same time. Last time it didn’t work out because there were certain key people we needed on our game that you cannot share between games. This was a couple of years ago, so I think if this is something we wanted to do we’d first have to try and build the type of company that can support more than one game at the same time. I don’t know if that’s something Larian Studios wants to do, I also don’t make these decisions. Personally, it’s something I would like, having different teams working on different things, because having that variation and possibilities for team members would be very motivating.

I don’t think the Divinity saga is finished yet – there have always been things we wanted to do with Divinity, one of them is probably closure [laughs]. There is something Swen calls ‘the RPG that dwarfs them all [it’s not Baldur’s Gate III]’ – I don’t think this is dwarfing them all. I know what he means by that, what his definition of dwarfing is, and we’re not there yet. It’s something we want to be able to build, and to be able to build that we need not just technology but also a lot of insight. Even after all this time, we’re not 100 percent there. There are certain things that we want to be able to do in an easier manner than what we’re doing right now – right now, building games is still a very manually scripted job, and we’re trying to put in a lot of generics and systemics, and we really want to put more of that stuff in because it gives you more of a sandbox. We’re succeeding in making that stuff, but we want to keep improving on it – so the future of Larian… I think there’s still a pretty big RPG that’s going to put the others to shame, probably because of all the nonscripted stuff going on in it.

What about pivoting to sci-fi?

If you asked around at Larian who wants to work on a sci-fi game, you can imagine how many people would want to stop working on making their 143rd dungeon [laughs].

But there’s still the love, isn’t there?

Larian is a studio with a lot of soul behind its games, after all… When we were growing very fast all of a sudden, when Original Sin II was a really big success, we saw money coming in, and you need to do something with that money or Belgium takes everything [laughs]. So you need to grow your company. Then you need to start thinking [whether] it’s something you actually want to do, because it’s a lot of fun building a game like this with 100 people – but will it still be a lot of fun when you build it with 300 people? You know it will be very challenging, and we had to hire a lot of people all of a sudden that we never had before, people who had to think about this stuff – accountants and lawyers and COOs and all that. We used to just be game developers, so all of a sudden you become a serious business – and then you start thinking, ‘I hope we don’t become a serious business, because that’s just boring’.

So we started thinking about the idea of what it is to be Larian – what we needed to change, on one hand, so we didn’t explode or implode, but also what the values, ideas, philosophies, and directions are that we should never change, no matter how big we are. I think that’s the soul and fun and humour and all of that stuff. As soon as that goes out of a Larian game, it’s not a Larian game anymore… and someone probably bought us [laughs].

 

[Darth Canoli]

The studio has found critical acclaim and commercial success without compromise

What about the retarded itemization with levels (with penalties when you use higher level items) ?
And cooldowns...

If that not compromise (and/or senility) i don't know what is.

 

[Infinitron]

What about the retarded itemization

Not a compromise if you've always done it.

 

[Darth Canoli]

What about the retarded itemization with levels (with penalties when you use higher level items) ?
And cooldowns...

If that not compromise (and/or senility) i don't know what is.

Not a compromise if you've always done it.

Divine divinity has a very different itemization with items having attributes requirements (diablo like, combat too is inspired by diablo) instead of straight character level.
It's slightly better.

By the way, their 71% inspiration coming from Ultima VII is bullshit, cut it by half and give 40% to where they belong, aka Diablo (aka the very beginning of the decline)

 

[HoboForEternity]

What about the retarded itemization with levels (with penalties when you use higher level items) ?
And cooldowns...

if it's already there from the start it's not compromise. it's a birth defect

 

[LESS T_T]

With the foundation of Larian Guildford, they're hiring a bunch of programmers. And interesting thing is some of them are from the studios that are assisting BG3 development, like Fool's Theory and Anshar Studios.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsczendzina/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawidnoras/

Also they're looking for even more writer: https://larian.com/jobs/294cbc77-e782-4021-90e7-fc27d993a919

 

[Gyor]

With the foundation of Larian Guildford, they're hiring a bunch of programmers. And interesting thing is some of them are from the studios that are assisting BG3 development, like Fool's Theory and Anshar Studios.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsczendzina/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawidnoras/

Also they're looking for even more writer: https://larian.com/jobs/294cbc77-e782-4021-90e7-fc27d993a919

The Larian studios' Empire expands yet again.

 

[HoboForEternity]

They have the budget to pull off divinity 2 scale ARPG now and i hope they do because it was damn fun.

Let's hope larian ARPG includes what makes div 2 fun (talking to ghosts, mind reading, etc)

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I pray daily for Divinity 3. But hope is low.

 

[Roguey]

Glassdoor review from last month.

"Good for beginners, bad for pros, awful for dreamers"
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
Doesn't Recommend

I worked at Larian Studios full-time for more than a year

Pros

Working on large projects can boost your resume.

Cons

Don't fall into that hype made by Metacritic scores. The everyday reality is different.


If you are a beginner it is a good place to start. You can learn a lot working on complex projects. Though be prepared. Larian is not a cool indie family but rather a corporation with several studios around the world. Most of your time you will be working and communicating online with people you never met in person.

If you are a grown up professional this place is not for you. The custom engine is a headache and the development process is chaotic. Be prepared to be shocked by a level of professional incompetence of your superior, the company is filled with people who are in charge of things, because they are here from the beginning. Salaries are low compared to other studios. Benefits and bonuses for overtimes and crunches from successful releases are laughable and rather insulting. Working on large scale open world games is boring and exhausting.

And for those who are passionate enthusiasts who dreamed about groundbreaking open world games. Your expectations will be crushed here. Most of your time you will be doing the same routine job, over and over again, trying to fill another open world with countless assets, quests and bugs. You'll be doing it with hundreds of other coworkers whose names you don't even know. You will have to do that because the game has to be big to be praised by players and journalists. To earn more money.

No matter your experience and position in the company you are just a machine inside a big factory. But unlike a traditional factory where employees have fixed work hours, clear goals and established pipelines, you will be working in a chaos, often surrounded by unprofessional colleagues, crunching without deserved benefits.

Don't fall into that trap. AAA gamedev is dying and needs significant changes. But if you are curious and want to experience what it's like to work in a sick industry, Larian or CD Projekt are great places for that.

but I don't doubt that part about Larian having less-than-suitable leads because they happened to be the best of a bad bunch back when they made Divinity 2 and well, what can you do? "The custom engine is a headache" is also funny considering how better-feeling it is than Unity, though given how unpopular the mod tools are, I can believe it.

 

[lukaszek]

sounds like swen is holding pesky devs by the ballz, bg3 gonna be gud

 

[LESS T_T]

the company is filled with people who are in charge of things

Funny that I had similar thoughts about their hiring, seeing titles like Associate Writing Producer, Associate Writing Lead, and etc.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Sounds like someone who got fired for being shit at their job.

 

[zapotec]

If i was in Microsoft i'll buy them too, better safe than sorry.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

That review:

Comparing Larian and CDPR feels like a stretch, but maybe. Larian seems to do better on releases. On the plus side, both companies seem to care about their ports, I think (the Switch ports for DOS2 and Witcher 3 seemed to be good?).

Reading that review, can only conclude that review must have taken what remained of that employee's soul.

Still, the "Most of your time you will be doing the same routine job, over and over again, trying to fill another open world with countless assets, quests and bugs." It still seems like adding quests would be... well, fun? If you make routine quests that are boring to implement, I feel like the problem is the designer, not the company unless the quests are dictated to you.

Was this review written around the time Gavin Jerkins or Colin McCuck left? Still confused about what either one did for Larian, but made me Numenera-level wary of anything they touched.

 

[Roguey]

Still, the "Most of your time you will be doing the same routine job, over and over again, trying to fill another open world with countless assets, quests and bugs." It still seems like adding quests would be... well, fun? If you make routine quests that are boring to implement, I feel like the problem is the designer, not the company unless the quests are dictated to you.

Was this review written around the time Gavin Jerkins or Colin McCuck left? Still confused about what either one did for Larian, but made me Numenera-level wary of anything they touched.

They were both writers. This review obviously comes from a scripter.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

They were both writers. This review obviously comes from a scripter.

My money is it was written by Swen.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Drakortha]

So, day and night cycles?

 

[fantadomat]

So, day and night cycles?

Better without it,our machines can't handle it.

 

[taomcio]

OMG, Swen you madman, stahp

 

[HoboForEternity]

It's gonna topple with one single flop. Like Achilles except if Achilles is an overweight elephant

 

[fantadomat]

It's gonna topple with one single flop. Like Achilles except if Achilles is an overweight elephant

Yup,you must be really retarded to have 7 international studios when you are producing mediocre games for niche genre. One flop and he will be selling his grandma's furniture.