In the past few years, regardless of whether the games they made have been failures or successes, we’ve seen so many companies lay off staff in huge numbers. Studios owned by huge conglomerates, such as Sony and Microsoft, are often among the worst hit, with many teams disbanded altogether.
Larian, therefore, finds itself in a unique position. After the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, it didn’t have a publisher it needed to share the profits with, so it started to grow. As part of this growth, a new studio has been formed: Larian Warsaw.
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I spoke with the head of the studio, Urszula Jach-Jaki, and associate lead of RPG design, Anna Guxens, at the Game Industry Conference in Poland where the pair were on a recruitment drive. Despite this push for new devs, Guxens tells me that there is a method behind all of this growth.
“It’s on a need-to basis,” says Guxens. “I know I need an RPG designer, so I’m opening a position for an RPG designer, rather than [saying] ‘I just want more people’.
“The focus is always on making the game we want to make, not just making [Larian] big for the sake of it.”
Right now, Jach-Jaki tells me that Larian, a company of more than 400 people, is quite small for what it does. Since becoming the head of Larian Warsaw, she says she’s travelled a lot, meeting more than a hundred people across all of Larian’s studios, but isn’t interested in hiring just anyone to boost the numbers.
“We have very small operations […] looking at the whole group, because we really want to hire good people, sharing the same values, passion, [and] culture,” she says. “But some things you might learn or gain through experience, like passion, you cannot teach that.”
It’s an odd time to be building a studio. Support for Baldur’s Gate 3 is still ongoing, with yet another huge patch expected that will add crossplay and a photo mode. Then, there are the two new RPGs that Larian has teased.
“Every new person that is coming in basically immediately starts contributing and working” – Urszula Jach-Jaki
The team in Warsaw can’t tell me the specifics of what they’re getting up to, but it does involve helping with Baldur’s Gate 3. As Jach-Jaki puts it, her responsibilities involve “keeping [her] hand on the pulse of what is happening” across Larian, which includes helping out with fixes for the latest patch and listening to fan feedback.
“I was just saying to Anna that I’m a little envious of all of the previous studios that had the opportunity to open before the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, because we really just want to do our jobs and create games, and build a team,” says Jach-Jaki. “Sometimes, the success is additional pressure.
“I really like to focus on things that are down to earth. [Because] I was not on board [for BG3] there is imposter syndrome.”
Because of Baldur’s Gate 3’s success – and the fact that Larian has two more games to work on – it means that new devs are immediately put to work. “Every new person that is coming in basically immediately starts contributing and working,” Jach-Jaki explains. “And it really doesn’t matter to me whether this specific programmer is fixing something for BG3 or just working on the new [project] for the future. We immediately feel that we are part of the team and we work together.”
Is Baldur’s Gate 3 A Win For CRPGs?
Unlike Jach-Jaki, Guxens was there during Baldur’s Gate 3’s development. She therefore has some insight into why it found the success that it did.
“It doesn’t need to be as narrow as just a CRPG,” she says. “The thing with BG3 is that it offers a very broad type of experience, so that different players can find different things that appeal to them directly. So if I’m more interested in the social aspect of it, the companions and the characters, I can really dive into it and not pay that much attention to combat… Or if I’m really into the tactics of it, I can really crank it up, kill everyone, and really dive into making the optimal builds for myself.”
Naturally, I ask if this means that those who only play for the romances have Larian’s stamp of approval, and the answer is yes. “All are valid to me,” she laughs.
“It’s always [about] the teamwork. There’s not one thing that is like, ‘Oh yeah, only that person did that’.” – Anna Guxens
Arguably, another thing Baldur’s Gate 3 has going in its favour is how hand-made it is. As we see other companies talk about the potential of AI, a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 simply couldn’t be made without a human touch.
Unsurprisingly, this is a very involved process. So, I asked Guxens how she managed this as an RPG designer.
“We own regions of the game in terms of development responsibility,” she explains. “So, early on, we work a bit more as narrative designers, designing the sort of stories that happen, the sort of quests, what characters you can find, the choices you can make. We design the high-level aspect of this, and then we gather our world-building team. So we have scripters, writers, combat designers, level designers, cinematic artists. There’s a whole team that comes together to make this vision happen. […] We work together with the whole team to actually flesh it [out] and make it fun to play.
“We constantly play and review and say, ’Yeah, this is exactly as designed, but it’s not fun, so let’s change it’. We’re kind of like guardians of the player experience. We play as players and start doing random s**t that we didn’t design for.”
If that turns out to be fun, it gets to stay in the game. This process continues throughout development, with each team adding to the outline set out for a certain area in the game. “It’s always [about] the teamwork. There’s not one thing that is like, ‘Oh yeah, only that person did that’. Everything is like a collection of the best of everyone.”
As she’s an RPG designer, I try to get some details about how Larian is approaching its next games, but there’s nothing to share at this time. “It should feel like a Larian game. That’s as much as I can say,” she laughs.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s Unprecedented Post-Launch Support
Baldur’s Gate 3 has also stood out for its post-launch support. Opinions on this are mixed. On the one hand, we’re getting tonnes of new content, the likes of which we never usually see in single-player releases.
On the other hand, it has introduced some issues, like cut content for Minthara accidentally seeping in and causing her to break up with players, or Wyll hating us for no reason. Then, there’s the larger debate about when development on a single-player game should just end.
Jach-Jaki can’t say if Larian’s approach with Baldur’s Gate 3’s numerous updates will be replicated in its future games, but in the case of its latest release, she says it “feels natural” to keep supporting it.
“It started with the Early Access, and then there was the release, and there is no cut [off]. But it fades at some point,” she says.
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The studio is also still noting fan feedback. “We still talk to them. We always talk to them. We listen, we observe. It’s not like, ‘Now we will close and disconnect ourselves from the community.’”
So, for now, work continues on Baldur’s Gate 3, and the two other RPGs that the studio has in development. We know that neither of these are another Baldur’s Gate game, and it remains to be seen if one of them is a return to the Divinity series. But in the meantime, work on the next patch is ongoing. Time will tell if this is the last one.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.