Larian’s Next Big Adventure After Baldur’s Gate 3
Larian Studios has officially revealed its next game after Baldur’s Gate 3, and it is a return to the studio’s own fantasy universe. The new title is simply called Divinity, and it was unveiled at The Game Awards with a dark cinematic trailer and a few bold promises.
We still have no gameplay footage or release window, but host Geoff Keighley described the project as Larian’s biggest game ever and even larger than Baldur’s Gate 3. For anyone who watched Baldur’s Gate 3 explode in popularity, that is an ambitious statement.
The announcement follows months of speculation sparked by a strange desert statue and some trademark hints. Many fans expected a Baldur’s Gate 3 expansion or sequel, but Larian had already confirmed that it was moving on from the Dungeons and Dragons license to focus on its own worlds. Divinity is the result of that decision.
A Darker Divinity
The reveal trailer sets a very different tone from the playful chaos that many players associate with Divinity Original Sin 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3. This time Larian leans hard into horror and ritual imagery.
The cinematic opens with a tortured man being burned alive inside a huge wooden structure similar to the classic Wicker Man. Around him, peasants celebrate wildly, turning their festival into something closer to an unhinged ritual. Flagellants whip themselves and a masked cultist oversees the crowd under a dramatic celestial alignment.
This spectacle inevitably goes wrong. Their strange ritual appears to unleash an unholy force that tears into the revelers. After a cut to black, we see the aftermath. The crowd has been fused into a twisted mound of bodies shaped like the mysterious desert statue that had been teasing the game’s existence. The statue that many fans had tried to connect to everything from the end times to The Elder Scrolls 6 turns out to be part of Larian’s own nightmare vision.
The darker style does not mean Divinity will abandon what Larian is known for. The studio still promises player freedom, reactive storytelling and a deep role playing experience. But it is clear this time that the tone leans closer to cosmic horror and oppressive cults than to winking fantasy comedy.
How Divinity Fits Into Larian’s Universe
Before Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian’s main series was Divinity. That includes older titles like Divine Divinity and Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, and more recently the massively popular Divinity Original Sin and Divinity Original Sin 2.
The new game is not titled Divinity Original Sin 3. Instead it is just Divinity, which gives it strong reboot energy even if it is not a true hard reset. Larian has a history of playing loose with continuity in this universe. Divinity Original Sin took place thousands of years before earlier games and rewrote parts of the world and lore. Divinity Original Sin 2 landed between Divine Divinity and Divinity 2 on the timeline but still changed characters and events in ways that would make any lore purist sweat.
So what is Divinity exactly in that spaghetti timeline? Larian is not giving detailed answers yet, but a press release offers some clues. The studio describes Divinity as a brand new game that does not require players to have any experience with previous Larian titles. At the same time, it promises that fans of Original Sin and Original Sin 2 will notice deeper continuity and context.
That suggests a soft reboot approach. New players can jump in without reading wikis or replaying older entries, while returning fans will spot recurring themes, locations or even characters in changed forms. Expect some of the same playful disregard for rigid canon that made earlier Divinity games so fun to dissect.
There is also a strange technical first here. Despite Larian’s long history with the series, this will actually be the first game simply titled Divinity. The original game from 2002 was called Divine Divinity, a name the studio now jokingly calls a crime against marketing. By dropping the subtitles this time, Larian is signalling a fresh start while still building on everything it has learned.
The Most Ambitious Larian RPG Yet
Larian founder and CEO Swen Vincke has been unusually vocal about how much this project means to the studio. In the announcement materials he emphasized that Divinity is the game they have been building toward ever since they took their fate into their own hands and moved into self publishing.
According to Vincke, Divinity aims for more breadth, depth and intimacy than anything Larian has created before. That is a big statement considering how sprawling Baldur’s Gate 3 already is in terms of story branches, combat options and player choices. If Divinity pushes that formula further, players can probably expect an even more reactive world, more complex relationships and more systemic gameplay.
Vincke also admitted he was more nervous about this announcement than anything he has done before. On social media he called Divinity Larian’s biggest and most ambitious RPG yet and said the team cannot wait to show more.
For now, we do not know when Divinity will launch or even whether it will follow the early access model that helped shape Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. There is no release year, no platform list and no gameplay demo. All we have is a strikingly grim trailer, a studio at the peak of its reputation and a promise that this is the Divinity they always wanted to make.
For RPG fans and PC gamers, that is more than enough reason to keep an eye on what comes next.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/larian-reveals-its-divinity-its-biggest-game-ever-even-larger-than-baldurs-gate-3/
