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'
"We were looking at the Steam numbers, seeing the numbers going up and up and up"
After Larian metaphorically, and quite possibly literally, wiped up the champagne and vacuumed the confetti after celebrating Baldur'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 new PC Gamer interview 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."
Sign up to the 12DOVE Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard director says chasing industry trends with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem "starts to dilute your focus," so he wanted to get back to BioWare's "very real strength"
Former Blizzard boss says "the only thing bigger" than Sony buying FromSoftware would be if it bought Valve or Nintendo