“Crimson Desert is fun to play, but it is such a cynical amalgamation of borrowed mechanics. It is Now That’s What I Call Gaming plucked off a gas station shelf, for better & worse. Expect a lot more of this in premium and free-to-play. There is less risk in it.”

However, he followed by asking, “Is it more cynical than any other big AAA open world game that borrows from its own past? Probably not. At least it’s adding spice to the stew, rather than removing it.” Douse also thought it would be “sick” if Crimson Desert had a similar moment as Dragon’s Dogma when it received the Dark Arisen expansion, since its “momentum points toward it.”

Granted, it’s easy to get offended by the word “cynical” or call out Larian for its ample number of inspirations over the years. However, when you look at upcoming titles like Ananta, which is a free-to-play action RPG that also crams so many elements from Marvel’s Spider-Man, Sleeping Dogs, and whatnot, there is some merit to what Douse is saying. And besides, as noted at the start, he is having fun with it.

Regardless of which side you’re on (I’m something of a Now That’s What I Call Music enjoyer myself), Crimson Desert is a success, and the response has only improved since its latest patch. Between the five new permanent mounts, removal of AI-generated assets, improved performance and much more. Check out all the major details here. You can also learn more about Alec Newman’s struggles with voicing Kliff and how the story changed significantly over the years.

According to Larian CEO Swen Vincke, “We would have loved to, but it wasn’t our decision to make.” No further explanation as to why, sadly.

However, insider NateTheHate shed further light on this on Twitter. “This is the unfortunate truth. While Larian would love to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to the Switch 2… their relationship with Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast is not healthy.” While he heard that a port wasn’t happening “late last year,” he needed more sources to verify the same (and you can’t get a much more reliable source than the studio’s CEO).

Exactly why the relationship between the two companies isn’t healthy remains unknown, especially since Baldur’s Gate 3 ended up a huge success for Hasbro. It earned $90 million for the latter just a few months after leaving early access and eventually selling over 20 million units. Perhaps it has to do with Larian initially working on another Dungeons and Dragons project, but ultimately abandoning it because the team’s heart wasn’t in it.

As for Divinity, it doesn’t have a release date, but it could opt for the early access route like the studio’s previous titles. At this point, the role-playing game is confirmed to be Larian’s biggest game ever, with turn-based combat and co-op support. For those who never played the previous games, Vincke previously confirmed that you can still enjoy the story, though long-time fans will obviously gain more from it.

“So first off – there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity,” Vincke said in a Reddit AMA. “I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI, but we understand it created confusion.

“So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development. That way, there can be no discussion about the origin of the art.”

The company will still try to continuously “improve the speed with which we can try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better, in general, the gameplay is.

“We think GenAI can help with this, and so we’re trying things out across departments. Our hope is that it can aid us to refine ideas faster, leading to a more focused development cycle, less waste, and ultimately, a higher-quality game.

“The important bit to note is that we will not generate ‘creative assets’ that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own.”

While certainly a “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” dilemma – Larian isn’t swearing off AI completely, after all – this should at least assuage concerns about Divinity’s development. But what about the writing? Writer Adam Smith weighed in, confirming that abstaining from GenAI “applies to writing as well. We don’t have any text generation touching our dialogues, journal entries or other writing in Divinity.”

Responding to a query about how AI-generated placeholder text would be better than stub text, Smith said that it’s not. “We had a limited group experimenting with tools to generate text, but the results hit a 3/10 at best, and those tools are for research purposes, not for use in Divinity. Even my worst first drafts – and there are a LOT of them – are at least a 4/10 (although Swen might disagree), and the amount of iteration required to get even individual lines to the quality we want is enormous.

“From the initial stub to the line we record and ship, there are a great many eyes and hands involved in getting a dialogue right.”

Divinity doesn’t have a release date or platforms, but Larian Studios is aiming for a quicker turnaround time than Baldur’s Gate 3. Early access is potentially on the cards once more, though plans have yet to be confirmed (and it’s unlikely to become available in 2026), and combat once again embraces a turn-based approach.

Despite the dense lore surrounding the series, the developer has ensured that new players can jump into Divinity without prior knowledge. As for the shocking reveal trailer, Larian’s Michael Douse said it was more about “treating the audience with a level of intellectual respect.”

Along with ARC Raiders, games like Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 were also among the top releases in the charts. Some older games could also be seen, with 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3, 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 also being represented, albeit with its Enhanced Edition release.

Valve has also seen continued success with the Steam Deck, with SteamDB ranking the handheld gaming PC as the second-best-selling Steam item, just under ARC Raiders. Check out the list below.

Embark Studios itself hasn’t revealed recent sales data for ARC Raiders, rumours from back in November indicated that it was close to hitting 7 million sales just a month after its release.

ARC Raiders art director Robert Sammelin had recently spoken about Embark Studios’ plans to support the extraction shooter for “the longest time.” In an interview from last month, he noted that the studio has a 10-year plan and that as long as players continue to engage with the title, support will continue.

“Our ambition is to keep this game alive for the longest time. It is a live game,” said Sammelin. “It’s something that we want to keep alive for the longest time possible, as long as players engage with it and have fun and see that it is evolving in a good way.”

The art director also spoke about how the community of ARC Raiders plays a vital role in the game’s evolution, since a major reason for the extraction shooter’s success hinges on how players interact with each other.

“I think games like this will evolve depending on community behaviours, feedback, and how we pick out the things we see people engage really well with. But also throw things into the mix that sort of afford new challenges and opportunities within the game,” he explained.

“I think there’s a wide range of routes that we can take with this, and time will tell how we sort of dig into it. But we for sure have a pretty long-standing plan of where we want to take it.”

As part of the studio’s plans to support ARC Raiders, the Cold Snap update was released last month, bringing with it a new Winter-themed weather condition which also affects gameplay by prompting players to seek shelter (or die trying). It also affects visibility and movement, making some surfaces much more challenging to traverse.

ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also check out our guide on all ARC machines and how you can beat them in battle.

Top ten best-sellers on Steam from December 23 to December 30:

1. ARC Raiders
2. Steam Deck
3. Battlefield 6
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
5. Baldur’s Gate 3
6. EA Sports FC 26
7. Dispatch
8. Cyberpunk 2077
9. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
10. Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced

“Larian’s DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, and players,” he wrote. “A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possibly make.”

As for his discussions on the use of AI, Vincke noted that the studio not evaluating new technology and how it could be used would be irresponsible. Despite this, however, he also noted that Larian’s development processes “are always evolving”, and that the studio will make changes when its processes aren’t as efficient.

“In that context, it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies,” he explained. “However, our processes are always evolving, and where they are not efficient or fail to align with who we are, we will make changes.”

To offer further explanation about the development of Divinity, Vincke has said that Larian will host an AMA (ask me anything) where fans of the studio’s works can ask various developers just about any question they want about the development of Divinity. Through this, Vincke hopes to be more transparent about how the studio is making use of different technologies. This AMA is slated to take place after the Holiday break, which likely means that it will happen some time in January at the earliest.

“To give you more insight, we’ll do an AMA featuring our different departments after the holiday break, in which you’ll get the opportunity to ask us any questions you have about Divinity and our dev process directly,” he wrote. “We’ll announce the date in the new year. In the meantime, I wish you all happy holidays!”

Vincke had noted earlier this week that, while he had spoken positively about the potential use of generative AI for game development, Larian Studios was only using these tools to provide more options for its concept artists, and that the developer does not have any plans to reduce its talent pool of artists.

“We’ve been continuously increasing our pool of concept artists, writers and story-tellers, are actively putting together writer rooms, casting and recording performances from actors and hiring translators,” said Vincke in his statement. “Since concept art is being called out explicitly – we have 23 concept artists and have job openings for more. These artists are creating concept art day in day out for ideation and production use.”

Further in the same statement, Vincke also noted that Larian Studios is “neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI. While I understand it’s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it’s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone’s working day better, not worse.”

Divinity is currently in development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and currently has no release date.

“I’m no fan of AI generated art, but anyway, it’s time to face reality,” wrote Vávra. “AI is here to stay with us. As frightening as it may be, that’s the way it is. Personally, it scares me the most in the music because you can’t even recognise AI there anymore.”

Vávra went on to discuss the potential use cases of generative AI-based tools that could be used to take out some of the more tedious parts of game development, especially when it comes to creating content that doesn’t really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

“On the other hand, you know what I hate most about making games? The fact that it takes 7 years and 300 people and tens of millions of dollars to make. And the fact that Tom had to spend 500 hours in the studio recording completely generic heckling and generic bars,” he wrote.

“If AI can help me make an epic game in a year with a smaller team like in the old days, I’m all for it. That game will still have an art director, writers, programmers, graphic designers, but they won’t have to do the tiresome and boring tasks, they’ll have to focus on the essentials. I have ideas for lots of games, but I’m fifty years old and so far it’s taken me seven years on average to make one game. If AI helps me realize those ideas faster, I’m all for it.”

He also discussed how generative AI could be used for writing, especially for things that aren’t story-critical but still help with a game’s worldbuilding. While developers already have technology like 11labs that allows them to lay out scripts and knowledge bases for NPCs, he asks “wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask ANYONE ANYTHING in an RPG?”

“For non-story stuff, this is an absolutely revolutionary development from a player’s point of view,” Vávra wrote. “And you can’t record it with an actor because it has INFINITE variations. But what you can record are cutscenes and story dialogue. You don’t need an Oscar level performance when ordering a sausage in a pub or when asking how to get to the castle.”

Vávra went on to compare resisting the proliferation of generative AI to resisting the use of sewing machines in the textile industry, or going back to riding horses well after cars and planes have become common. He closes out his lengthy post by noting that, while generative AI “may mean the demise of humanity, nobody knows now, but it may also mean that ANYONE, at a fraction of the cost, will be able to implement virtually any grand idea.”

This interview has since caused quite a stir among fans of the studio’s other recent works like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. While some noted that using generative AI tools for things like PowerPoint presentations might be fine, the fact that these tools are also being used to create concept art for the game acts as a bit of a red flag. As Reddit user Gnl_Winter notes, it “poses an ethical copyright issue, and it also hampers creativity, which is a serendipitous process in which the ideas developed as concept art are essential.”

This criticism has prompted Vincke to issue a statement as a follow-up to IGN, where he spoke about how machine learning tools provided to creative teams are working as “additive” to their own talents rather than being serving as replacements. He also noted that Larian currently has 23 concept artists, along with job openings to hire even more. Thanks to this, new concept art is being created on a daily basis for use in ideation as well as production. Check out the full statement below.

“We’ve been continuously increasing our pool of concept artists, writers and story-tellers, are actively putting together writer rooms, casting and recording performances from actors and hiring translators.. Since concept art is being called out explicitly – we have 23 concept artists and have job openings for more. These artists are creating concept art day in day out for ideation and production use.”

“Everything we do is incremental and aimed at having people spend more time creating. Any ML tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft. We are researching and understanding the cutting edge of ML as a toolset for creatives to use and see how it can make their day-to-day lives easier, which will let us make better games.”

“We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI. While I understand it’s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it’s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone’s working day better, not worse.”

Vincke also took to social media to issue yet another statement, where he said that Larian is not replacing its concept artists with generative AI tools. He also spoke about having a team of 72 artists in total, and how everything the team is creating is completely original. His statements about the use of generative AI, he noted, came from him simply being asked about the subject during the interview. Expanding further on the use of AI, he said that the tools were used to explore references in a way similar to how books and even Google are often used.

This was revealed by Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke in a talk with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. The studio has generally remained coy about revealing sales numbers – director of publishing Michael Douse said it sold “way over” ten million in February 2024. A report by the Irish Independent in November 2024 claimed over 15 million sales.

Regardless, it’s no secret that it’s been a big hit for both Larian and Hasbro, earning $90 million for the latter after leaving early access. It’s one reason that the studio can go even bigger with Divinity, though it will follow the same routine of launching first in early access and focusing on turn-based combat. It’s been in the works since last year, but the chances of launching in 2026 aren’t very high.

The company is once again looking at (yet not confirming) an early access launch, but the chances of releasing in 2026 are “unlikely.” Though further details, including the story, remain hush-hush, it’s clearly aiming higher than Baldur’s Gate 3.

“This is going to be us unleashed, I think. It’s a turn-based RPG featuring everything you’ve seen from us in the past, but it’s brought to the next level.”

The studio initially worked on a new project with Wizards of the Coast, but despite having “all of the ingredients for a really cool game” conceptually, the “hearts of the developers” weren’t in it. It moved to Divinity last year, and while Vincke considers Baldur’s Gate 3 to be “a good game and I’m proud of it, I think this one is going to be way better.”

One reason for this is that, unlike with Dungeons and Dragons, Larian doesn’t have to translate those systems into another format. “Here, we’re making a system that’s made for a video game. It’s much easier to understand.”

If all this wasn’t enough, Divinity is on a new engine, and while there have been growing pains, the goal is to cut down on development time. “I think three to four years is much healthier than six years,” he said. You can still expect the storytelling seen in Baldur’s Gate 3, which Larian is “doubling down” on, along with improvements to its streaming systems. Stay tuned for further updates in the meantime.

All you have to do is navigate to the storefront on your platform and download the Upgrade Pack, though in Japan, for Nintendo Switch and PS4 owners, it will cost ¥100. While Divinity: Original Sin 2 received extensive acclaim at launch, this is actually the Definitive Edition. It includes all of the post-launch updates, including new quests and gear sets, a revamped final act, and much more.

There’s no extensive mod support like Baldur’s Gate 3, but Larian implemented several community mods like faster movement speed, regenerating Source Points, and more to enable from the outset. While fundamentally different in its turn-based combat, Divinity: Original Sin 2 carries much of the same charm and writing quality. For more details, check out our review of the base game here.