Larian Studios - Updating D:OS & New RPGs

According to a new blog post, Larian Studios has ambitious plans for 2015. While they are celebrating Divinity: Original Sin's critical and financial success, they are not resting on their laurels:

Progress can only be made if you’re aware of your faults and intend to do something about it, so explaining our plans starts with explaining what I think sucked about D:OS and more importantly, why those sucky things made it to the final game….

Anyway, can you guess what is keeping us busy for the moment?

Yep, we’re fixing parts of the story, improving the UIs, revisiting the encounters, rebalancing the loot, rewriting certain dialogs, adding extra feedback, looking at what we can do to fix character progression, improving the companions etc…

Of course, this is only the beginning, as Larian is expanding their team size and even starting a new office in Quebec City. Why all of this expansion?

Fixing things is not all we’re doing however, far from it. We’re not hiring all those people just to transform D:OS in a better experience, no, obviously we’re also working on our new RPGs.

Notice the ‘s’. It’s intentional and while I’d love to tell you more about them, I need to refrain for fear of losing whatever press momentum we’ll be able to muster when we’ll announce them. But there’s one I thing I can already tell you, and it fits well with the second big thing we’re doing to improve the quality of our future offerings – both RPGs are being built on top of the D:OS engine.

So new RPGs are incoming from Larian! Sadly, more information will have to wait.

More information.

As much as I enjoyed D:OS, I really have no interest in going back to replay it… really ever. It's kind of heartbreaking when you consider how much better they are making it, even now.

At some point I'm going to learn to wait a damn year before playing anything.

Hoping there's a D:OS-style space opera… but there probably won't.

I played until I got to the first city.
I stopped soon thereafter when I realised they were still adding things into the game.

Sven is the most awesome game company owner at the moment. I wish him lots of good health and money so he can make good games for us for years to come.

It's great to hear that they are going to use D:OS engine for their new RPGs. Perfect engine for old school RPGs in the market I think. I hope other dev companies will license it for their games. I also hope this expansion bring them new achievements in the future.

Originally Posted by killias2
Larian is expanding their team size and even starting a new office in Quebec City.

Peh.

They should have opened it in Montreal. I don't think disappointed in their CEOs Ubi/Eidos/Bioware RPG and not crapware devs will switch the job and move to Quebec Cite.

It's so encouraging to see this type of engagement and introspection on the day that the game won this award. Not resting on those laurels even a little bit : onwards and upwards.

Originally Posted by joxer
Peh.

They should have opened it in Montreal. I don't think disappointed in their CEOs Ubi/Eidos/Bioware RPG and not crapware devs will switch the job and move to Quebec Cite.

Ubisoft, Activision and a few others have studios in Québec city. They are not all in Montréal.

Erm… Can't say I remember any RPG from activision… Then again I'm old and my memory is failing…

Hopefully their new office well research new atmosphere, humor and art style for their games.

Larian is truly a special company and developer. Haven't felt this sort of fondness for any developer since Origin System's early days. There is no other developer in my mind that is more deserving of critical and commercial success.

I hope they continue to find a market for their isometric RPGs. The gaming community can be a bit fickle.

Great news that they're still working on OS and not just on superficial stuff to boot. It had gotten a bit quiet recently so I was semi-worried that they would announce an end to patch support to focus on their new game(s) but it's good to hear that OS is still being worked on this heavily.
Looking forward to finally getting to play it some time next year .

Originally Posted by Pladio
I played until I got to the first city.
I stopped soon thereafter when I realised they were still adding things into the game.

Me too.
Although I tend to quit every game after the first city as i "oh Shiney" myself into the next game.

"Talent", yeah right. Just admit that it's because of the ridiculous tax breaks. One of the executives of Behavior Interactive in Montreal said on the contrary that "talent" is not any better here than anywhere else, and that studios are already complaining to him that certain areas like Texas or England have even more pathetic tax breaks.

I like them coming here. I go to Quebec City for my job every week. I've not seen in the local media where their new studio will be based, but I presume like the others that it will be in the Vieux Québec downtown, which is an absolutely lovely place.



But I'm not enamored with developers only opening studios here to suck up tax dollars from the most overtaxed people in North America when this money should go to better funding for universities of the crumbling public health care system, rather than to manchildren who make videogames. I already pay more than 60% of my income in various taxes, that's enough. I've always been against this, if they make profits then they should not be subsidized ad vitam eternam. This program has existed for nearly 20 years and should have been discontinued long ago.

D:OS is high on my list of must buy games. I like the idea that they are continuing with the overhead turn based style for future games.

All their games have been kinda good. With the exception of Beyond Divinity which was kinda bad. As such, I kinda wish them the best of luck and am kinda looking forward to their next RPGs.

I guess I will wait a little bit longer b4 playing.

Originally Posted by Trasher
I hope they continue to find a market for their isometric RPGs.

Considering success of WL2 and D:OS and very possible success of PoE and Torment, I think we can expect small renaissance of isometric RPGs in the future. Some indies may join already established and well known teams. Also media seems to be more positive towards them than few years back.

Originally Posted by joxer
Can't say I remember any RPG from activision… Then again I'm old and my memory is failing.

You should be more creative, joxer. You know that nowadays almost everything is called RPG…

Originally Posted by Humanity has risen!
I like them coming here. I go to Quebec City for my job every week. I've not seen in the local media where their new studio will be based, but I presume like the others that it will be in the Vieux Québec downtown, which is an absolutely lovely place.

Ah, so you have opportunity to pay them a visit, right? If you try to find them in the future could you please tell them hello for all fans here? You could be an "official ambassador of RPGWatch in Quebec".