Baldur's Gate 3 dev shares Larian boss Swen Vincke's response to the RPG's explosive launch: 'You know what this means? It means we get to do it again'

Aug. 2, 2024

“We were looking at the Steam numbers, seeing the numbers going up and up and up”

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After Larian metaphorically, and quite possibly literally, wiped up the champagne and vacuumed the confetti after celebratingBaldur’s Gate 3’s long-awaited full release, studio boss Swen Vincke joined writing director Adam Smith around a monitor to watch the RPG’s Steam numbers rocket into the stratosphere. Vincke’s response to the game’s surprising success was simple: “We get to do it again.”

This fun little anecdote comes from a newPC Gamerinterview with Vincke and Smith, who discussed Baldur’s Gate 3’s development and release for the game’s one-year anniversary.

“We launched, and we were nervous as hell, " Smith says. “Early access helped with that, because you knew that people enjoyed what you had, but it was still really nerve wracking. And I remember at some point in the night, we were having a celebration. We were looking at the Steam numbers, seeing the numbers going up and up and up. And the first time I spoke to Swen after launch, I said something like ‘Did you expect this?’ And he said, ‘You know what this means? It means we get to do it again.’ That was really it.”

Of course, Larian isn’t doing the same thing again. Vincke stresses the importance of doing new things that inspire a creative spark. “Morale is super high, just because we’re doing new stuff again,” he says, commenting on Larian’s decision to axe any add-on or sequel plans for Baldur’s Gate 3. “We’re doing our own thing again, we’re not rehashing, we’re not trying to convert rules from 50 years ago into something new.”

“It’s the question everyone was asking: are you excited?” he adds. “You have to have that.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 dev explains in painstaking detail how and why players get to break the game: “The easy thing would be to block players … but we don’t like that at Larian.”

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