BG3 studio Larian is using AI to make Divinity, but there’s nuance CEO says

Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin developer Larian Studios have caused a ton of excitement (and there's no shortage of disgust) when is it presented its next big role-playing game, DivinityV Game rewards last week. But new comments from Larian co-founder and game designer Sven Vincke have dampened that excitement a bit, as the studio is reportedly using generative artificial intelligence to make games. Divinity.

Vinke told Bloomberg that Larian uses generative AI for specific tasks—to “detail PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art, and write filler text”—but that's what will eventually appear in Divinity will be created by real people. “We write everything ourselves,” Vincke said.

Even with those caveats, reactions to Larian's admission of introducing AI technology and Bloomberg's characterization that the studio is “hard at pushing generative AI” have angered some of its fans. Following the Bloomberg report and the ensuing backlash, Polygon reached out to Larian for clarification on Vincke's claims about using generative AI. Vincke made the following statement:

We are constantly increasing the number of concept artists, writers and storytellers, actively setting up script rooms, conducting casting and recording of actors' performances, and also hiring translators.

Because concept art is clearly in demand – we have 23 concept artists and openings for more people. These artists create concept art day after day for ideas and use in production.

Everything we do is incremental and aimed at getting people to spend more time being creative.

Any ML tool used correctly is an addition to a creative team's or individual's workflow, not a replacement for skill or artistry.

We're exploring and understanding the cutting-edge capabilities of machine learning as a set of tools that creative people can use and seeing how it can make their daily lives easier, allowing us to create better games.

We are not releasing the game with any AI components and have no plans to cut teams to replace them with AI.

While I understand this topic brings up a lot of emotions, we constantly discuss it internally through the lens of making everyone's workday better, not worse.

On XVincke further clarified some aspects of Larian's approach, prefacing his statement with, “Damn it, guys, we're not 'push' and replace concept artists with artificial intelligence.”

“We use artificial intelligence tools to study references in the same way we use Google and art books,” Vincke wrote. “In the very early stages of ideation, we use it as a rough sketch of the composition, which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.” He added: “We hire creatives for their talent, not their ability to do what the machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.”

The position of Vincke and Larian is not new. Earlier this year, Vincke outlined Larian's approach to generative artificial intelligence and machine learning in an interview with the magazine GameSpot.

“Essentially, we use it for three purposes,” Vincke explained. “First, it’s automating tasks that no one wants to do. These are obvious things like cleaning up motion capture, voice editing, or—something very Larian-specific—retargeting. So basically, if you're playing with different species, you want to be able to reuse animations for different species, but they're different sizes, and then they do certain interactions with other ones…”

“There is a so-called white box,” Vincke continued. “This is an important point for us because it allows us to iterate faster. White boxing is essentially a stage before you actually start the actual implementation. [be] where do you try something […] that you say, “Okay, let's try these things.” It usually takes some time before you can play it. You can speed this up with machine learning. So it's good for that.

“And then the fun part is where you can use it for new gameplay. The truth is, we are not there yet. I don't think we're close to that. But you experiment with it, because as an RPG developer, what you really need is something that helps with reacting to actions—changes you didn't foresee, reactions to things the players have done in the world.”

Vincke further emphasized that the areas of creativity that generate anxiety around generative AI—visual effects, writing, music—are not ones that Larian is abandoning in favor of creating machines. He says Larian is recruiting in these areas and that machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques are focused on complexity and automation.

“There are things we call narrative verification,” he says. “Essentially, this is an attempt to find out I've made 300 choices here that led to this particular permutation, have I already written something wrong? We then try to automate the discovery of these things, which doesn't work very well yet, but that's what you want to do because these things take a long time to learn and aren't very creative. So you try to organize your processes, your pipeline, to automate it as much as possible and speed up iteration.”

Will Vincke's complete answer to questions about artificial intelligence and machine learning satisfy? Baldur's Gate 3 and fans of Divinity Original Sin, or convince players who object to generative AI to eventually play Divinityremains to be seen. But that seems to be the only “suck” present in the original version. Divinity will be seasoned with bile and devoured by in-game pigs. God, that shot in the trailer was so disgusting.