Larian Studios boss and the director of Baldur’s Gate 3, Swen Vincke, is one of the most enthusiastic video game makers I know. His excitement and passion for making games robbed off on Baldur’s Gate 3 which surprisingly became a monster hit, sweeping almost all top awards in 2023.
In an interview after the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, the Larian boss said he was already thinking about his next project. Well, it appears he already has the first act of his next project figured out. On Monday, January 8, 2024, he shared his excitement through a series of tweets.
“Been a great morning!” the Larian boss began. “After 4 months of rewriting and rewriting and abandoning ideas and then revisiting them, finally figured out what act 1 on this thing I’ve been working on needs to be. Quote me when it’s revealed to see how much of today’s draft survives. I suspect a lot.”
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The draft still needs to go through a team that will vet it for feasibility. According to Vincke, the team may think that his idea is bad, and he will “just kill this thread, go sit in a corner with my dog and pretend none of this happened,” and start all over again. Nevertheless, he was really optimistic about the new draft.
The Larian boss also cautioned that “it’s not what you think,” neither is it a teaser for an announcement. According to him, it may take a long time before they will talk about whatever he was excited about. In December after Baldur’s Gate 3 was nominated for eight awards, the Larian boss said, “I wish I could tell you about our next big game but this is really encouraging us to ensure it pushes many boundaries”.
Other takeaways from the Larian boss tweets
Sandwiched between the excited tweets about his completed Act 1 draft for the studio’s next big game was what read like an encouragement to all creatives out there. Vincke’s words resonated with me because I have been in situations where I had to fight off doubts and the feeling of being stuck or blowing the dust off the cover of abandoned manuscripts.
“One thing I learned over the years is that work done on abandoned drafts is never wasted, even if you think the drafts are sh**,” the Larian boss wrote in reference to the Act 1 he completed, which he presumably abandoned for some time. “More than often, you’ll find you can recycle your work once you find the right story for it.”
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He went further to say, “This type of work can be really frustrating when you’re stuck but the important bit is to never give up and remain self-critical, even if the situation looks hopeless 🙂 Creative work is the exploration of a vast search space and it can take time to find the right path.”
The Larian boss said it was just the excuse he used to console himself whenever he felt like a failure. Nevertheless, his words are true as day. I often start a story that I thought I had figured out from start to finish. However, during writing, the story will continue to morph until I can barely recognize it.
This goes ahead to also highlight how much narrative writers are often not celebrated enough. A great script is the foundation for a great story-driven game. So, next time you play a game that you think the story was superb, find out the narrative writer and send them a shoutout. Validation is like opium to writers. They often need the dopamine rush from validations to keep their creative juice flowing.
