The Creators of Baldur's Gate 3 Clarifies Its Application of Generative AI for New Divinity Game

The studio behind acclaimed titles like Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin just teased its upcoming project, sparking significant excitement within the industry. However, subsequent remarks from the company's lead designer have brought a new dimension to the conversation, touching on the studio's philosophy toward AI tools.

Augmenting Workflows, Not Cutting Jobs

In a latest message, Larian's director explained that the developer is employing machine learning for specific preliminary functions. These involve developing presentation materials, generating rough visual ideas, and creating draft text.

Importantly, Vincke emphasized that the end material in the game will be crafted solely by human writers. "We are creating all the content manually," he stated.

We are continuously expanding our pool of storytellers and are actively forming dedicated writer rooms.

Given that this area is being particularly mentioned — we currently have over twenty concept artists and have job openings for more artists.

All our efforts we do is additive and focused on having people spend more time on making content.

Any ML tool applied correctly is supplementary to a developer's routine, not a substitute for their skill.

Addressing Concerns and Clarifying the Vision

The admission of using AI at first generated backlash among some the community. In response, Vincke issued more clarification on online platforms.

"At Larian, we employ AI tools to research ideas, in the same way we use the internet and physical media," he explained. "During the initial brainstorming phase we use it as a simple sketch for structure which we then swap out with original illustrations."

He added, "We've hired artists for their inherent skill, not for their willingness to execute what a algorithm proposes."

Three Pillars of Practical Application

Vincke had in the past detailed the studio's targeted strategy to this technology, defining its use into key areas:

• Automation of Tedious Tasks: Areas like motion capture cleaning, dialogue cleanup, and pipeline-specific tasks like adjusting assets for various species.
• Accelerated Iteration: Using technology to speedily create simple mock-ups of gameplay ideas to experiment with concepts ahead of expensive implementation.
• Long-Term Aspirations: Exploring how machine learning could one day facilitate new forms of player agency, especially in managing dynamic reactions in a vast role-playing world.

He explicitly noted that core creative disciplines — such as visual art — are are absolutely not areas where the team is reducing human input. On the contrary, Larian is recruiting more in these very roles.

"We are neither launching a game with any AI components, nor considering trimming down creatives to substitute them with AI," Vincke concluded.