The Company Behind Baldur's Gate 3.. Larian Studios

one two check one two so who is the company behind the much anticipated upcoming rpg baldur's gate three it's bioware it's larian studios john already wrote the script larian studios is a game development company that was founded in 1996 by a man or should we say a stationary paladin named swen vinsky i'm just kidding the correct way to pronounce his name is sven vinca the history of larian studios is an inspirational story to be told and we're going to go through the timeline so you can see truly how far this company has come larian started off in a small office in ghent belgium but has since expanded and now has studios in st petersburg quebec dublin in their most recent studio edition in koala lampar which is in the beautiful country of malaysia these additional studio locations provide many great benefits such as now being able to add highly experienced game devs from other countries to the larian team and also allowing for workload transfer to keep the production line running longer for each day this in turn eliminates some of the crunch time that a single studio might have before we get into the epic history of larian studios let's get to know sven a little more and talk about his top five favorite games number five tetris growing up sven spent a lot of time playing arcade games at his family's restaurant and he put quite a lot of time into space invaders and tetris number four the earlier civilization games these games really satisfied sven's love for turn-based strategy games number three starcraft sven's love for starcraft came from his astonishment and how well the game was balanced and to this day he still greatly respects those game devs number 2 ultima 7 this was a game that inspired sven's entire career in making rpgs especially with divinity original sin one his love for this game came from the freedom of being able to interact with every single object being able to explore an entire world having npcs react to what you do all at the same time as having a nice story to go along with it ultima 6 was the first rpg that sven got completely immersed in but altima 7 was his favorite for it was much more polished and just overall a better game there's even rumors of sven annoying his game devs by saying things such as well that's not how they do it in ultima seven number one ultima underworld one this game also had a big impact on sven for it showed you what you could do with a first person game when you combine it with story puzzle elements and character development it was a revolutionary game for its time ultima underworld for sven is kind of like the elder scrolls morrowind for my generation with its vast world and insane rpg elements so we can thank ultima 7 and ultima underworld for making sven the game designer that he is today now let's talk about larian studios as a company and just how far they have come lyrion is most well known for their divinity series which includes six different games of multiple genres spanning from 2002 to 2017. most of you certainly know of divinity original sin 1 and 2 which were great successes for the company but we'll come back to them it certainly wasn't all easter eggs and flowers for the company it took them a long time to get to where they are today from when they first started up until 2010 larian relied heavily on external funding from publishers post 2010 larian took their fate into their own hands and started self-publishing their own games this change made a huge impact on the company and you'll understand why by the end of this video larian's history as a company was certainly rocky at times and they definitely took a lot of punches some of which almost eliminated them i think bobby it's time for all of us to go on a holiday i'll see you next year but eventually they found their path and evolved into the company that we see today i have to admit they're looking really damn good larian's first project ever was called the lady the mage in the night and it expanded into a collaborative project with another studio unfortunately various problems arose between the two companies and their publisher and the project was abandoned in 1999 what a way to start during this time though lyrian was also working on a futuristic real-time strategy game called the led wars which ended up releasing in 1997 and it came out for windows 95 i myself wasn't nearly intelligent enough to play a game like that for at the time i could be found eating cheetos scaring monkeys riding ostriches and trying to catch as many bugs as i could as a tubby warthog [Music] don't think i ever got past level 2 in that game 2002 was the start of the divinity series with the release of divine divinity an action rpg divine divinity was said to actually be based on their cancelled project the lady the mage and the knight and it was inspired by blizzard's diablo according to larian's wiki page the game was released unexpectedly by their publisher and sven was not happy for he believed the game required more work despite being released it still did well but unfortunately due to a publisher contract agreement larian did not earn much or any money for it was not commercially successful enough larian nearly closed their doors following the release of that game now i haven't verified this with larian themselves but reading things like this although unfortunate make for a good start for a great success story ultimately the team was reassembled and they worked on a sequel to divine divinity called beyond divinity beyond divinity released in 2004 on pc with an extended list of publishers it received mixed reviews but it did keep larian's head above water both divine divinity and beyond divinity were isometric action rpgs but now it was time for larian to try something new in 2009 larian released divinity 2 ego draconis which was a third person action rpg lyrian was committed to now entering into the console world along with pc with hopes of making an ambitious game for the popular xbox 360. bethesda game studios even licensed their engine to larian to make the game unfortunately this game turned out to be one of larian's worst nightmares of their existence and their lowest scoring game ever what was supposed to be their breakthrough title that put them on the top of the rpg charts did just the opposite the game was released late and prematurely all of larian's savings were used up for it and larian found themselves further in debt the 2009 financial crisis probably didn't help out much with that either this became a very serious time of introspection for the company and many doubts for the future of the company started to arise however larian decided to give it a go one last time by first acknowledging and confronting all of their problems and working to fix them they spent one more year creating an updated polished version of the same game called divinity 2 dragon knight saga and this was released in 2010 this re-released polished version of the game did much better and player appreciation was now very high larian was able to start repaying many of their debts this turned out to be a major turning point for the company they learned a lot from their mistakes and fixing them and now understood what it truly takes to make a successful game from here on out larian would say polished fun games are rewarding let's never compromise again basically they were saying goodbye to publishers we're going solo motherfu so if you're wondering why it's so hard to get an official release date from larian studios these days well it's probably because they have a bit of ptsd from the past and working with publishers but now they refuse to release a game until it's truly ready now on to the games that most of you guys are familiar with divinity original sin one and two larian was free from the shackles of a publisher now and it was now time to make a 3d isometric turn-based role-playing game but there were not a lot of these games on the market at the time larian felt it was a void that needed to be filled and they started the production of divinity original sin 1 with a team of 35 at the time lyrion was also working on finishing up another game called dragon commander and their resources were starting to feel a little too spread out it was an exciting but stressful time for the company dragon commander released in 2013 which then allowed for the company to focus down on divinity original sin one still feeling like the game wasn't where they wanted it to be instead of releasing it half finished they decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter to help gain some additional budget to make dos one the game that they truly wanted to make larian set the kickstarter goal to four hundred thousand but ended up raising nine hundred and forty four thousand two hundred and eighty two dollars what a successful campaign and i'm sure it was very inspiring for the team with this money larian now had some cushion to focus on what would become the start of the two games that would in many ways propel them into the gaming hall of fame divinity original sin 1 was released on pc in 2014 it won several awards including game spots game of the year and most importantly it was loved by fans all over the world larian then decided to create an enhanced edition that would allow console players to join in on the fun and that came out in october of 2015 wasting no time and keeping their momentum going larian got to work right away on the beloved sequel divinity original sin 2 dos 2 was going to be the big one their most ambitious game to date this is when larian decided to expand to several different countries hiring highly experienced game devs and being able to minimize crunch time by passing the workload onto a studio in a different time location their team size increased to around 130 employees larian decided to crowdfund this game as well and on kickstarter they raised over 2 million dollars this time that just shows you how much faith people truly had in this company and how well received divinity original sin one was this was obviously a type of game that people really wanted to see more of in 2017 divinity original sin 2 was released and it received critical acclaim upon release it is widely regarded as one of the best rpgs of all time it would also later come out for consoles with an enhanced edition in 2018 larian has now solidified themselves as a reliable trustworthy company that sure as hell knows how to create an rpg although dos 2 did come with its own set of problems for it was a very big project larian was not scared to move on to bigger and better things and the massive project that they're currently working on is baldur's gate 3. the development for baldur's gate 3 started in 2017 shortly after larian studios finished dos 2. due to the company's overall success they decided to not do a crowdfunding campaign this time around in order to be allowed to work on a game like this which is based on dungeons and dragons larian would have to acquire a license from wizards of the coast and it certainly wasn't an easy task i know for a fact that other companies tried to acquire this license as well but sven and the larian crew managed to pull it off after being politely denied more than once to be honest though i couldn't be happier for them larian's team is now composed of more than 250 people and their studio has expanded to malaysia baldur's gate 3 is a massive massive project and by the time it officially comes out it will likely have been four plus years of development with such a large experienced team with both scars and gold medals from the past i don't think i stand alone and thinking that this will be one of the best rpgs of our time so there were many other projects that larian studios worked on throughout the company's history but those were the most notable ones if you guys ended up enjoying this video please like comment and subscribe in fact i want you to smash that like button hope to see some of you guys on a future video until next time you

Channel: WolfheartFPS

Views: 24,551

Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios, bg3, baldurs, gate, larian, studios, balder's gate 3, baulder's gate 3, classes, races, early access, larian studios history, sven vincke, divinity original sin, divine divinity, beyond divinity, gameplay, community update larian, news, wolfheartfps

Id: QNBkulMjxDI

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020