After the exciting reveal of Divinity at the 2025 Game Awards, Larian quickly found itself caught in the middle of the ongoing internet debate over the use of generative AI in game development. The studio’s CEO scheduled a Reddit AMA to give the community a chance to talk with the team behind the upcoming game and tons of new details about the RPG emerged throughout the chat.
Divinity Will Have No Gen AI Art, but the company isn’t swearing off machine learning entirely
Obviously the topic of AI did come up during the AMA and the team at Larian Studios took the opportunity to reassure players that no GenAI art will appear in Divinity. Beyond that, the team went a step further and explained that they have decided to refrain from using GenAI tools during concept art development.
Larian CEO Swen Vincke announced the change in strategy, “So first off – there is not going to be any GenAI art in Divinity. 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.”
This isn’t the end of machine learning at Larian Studios though. Vincke went on to clarify some of the areas where the team believes that machine learning can still help them make improvements to the development cycle.
“Having said that, we continuously try to 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.”
Fans of the studio who are hesitant about the adoption of AI are likely happy to hear that there will be no AI art assets in the game, but time will tell if the other uses of AI will continue to cause a negative discourse in the community.
Divinity will not support WASD keyboard movement Controls at launch
During the rapid fire AMA, one user called out the popularity of the WASD movement mod and asked, “The WASD movement mod was one of the most downloaded and beloved mods for Baldur’s Gate 3. Will the new Divinity game include native keyboard movement controls (like WASD) right out of the box?”
The answer from Larian’s Head of Gameplay was a simple, “No.”
Some fans are likely disappointed with this answer, but hopefully the modding community will come through again and support this additional keyboard movement option.
Larian would like divinity to have Steam Deck support, but it’s not officially confirmed yet
The Steam Deck platform came up in a question from a Reddit user and Divinity’s Technical Director took the opportunity to share their enthusiasm about the device.
“We all love the Steamdeck! Since BG3 was one of the most played games on the platform, we will do our best to again release on the platform.”
This is great news for Steam Deck owners. There is no confirmation that the game will be officially Steam Deck Verified at launch, but it sounds like making the game run well on that platform will be a priority at some point.
Divinity Will Have Co-op at Launch
Larian Studios games work incredibly well as solo experiences, but they are also very popular choices for co-op gaming sessions. The studio is well aware of that demand and is ready to confirm that Divinity will support co-op at launch.
Technical Director Bert van Semmertier confirmed that this key feature will be available at launch:
“Yes, coop will be available for release! The amount of players playing together will be depending on the final party size. But since modding is planned for this project as well, player will be essentially free to extend this. There is no hard limit to the amount of coop players.”
Divinity will have a brand new combat system, not use baldur gate 3’s system
Although it’s often the romance, world-building, and characters that bring players to a Larian Studios game, obviously the combat system has to be thrilling and engaging, as well. This time around, Larian is taking a fresh look at their options and working on a brand new combat system for Divinity.
Divinity’s Head of design Nick Pechenin talked a bit about the approach to developing the game’s combat system:
“We went through our original ideas for DOS1 and DOS2, looked again at how they worked out in practice, picked up some inspirations from our BG3 EA and post-release journey, consulted the star charts to see what we need to do to stay competitive – and cooked a new action economy and character progression system… “Feedback from BG3 players trying DOS2 for the first time has been especially interesting to us, seeing the two worlds colliding. We hope that both fans of BG3 and fans of DOS2 will find the new system intuitive but deep.”
There’s no denying that, given the popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3, the next Divinity game is going to have a ton of new players to the franchise. It is going to be a very unique challenge to find a way to make the Baldur’s Gate 3 players feel at home behind these controls, while still respecting the legacy of the DOS franchise and keeping the veteran fans pleased.
Companions will interact with each other more, not just with the player
Romance and companion friendships are definitely one of the special ingredients of a Larian Studios game. That said, the systems aren’t without the occasion complaints from players. One recurring area for improvement has been that players would like to see companions have real relationships with each other, not just with the players.
The team behind Divinity is aware of this area of improvement and they are working on some changes for this time up at bat. “Yeah, the goal is to have more interactions between party members, and it won’t always just be talking.”
Divinity senior writer Kevin VanOrd continued talking about the companion relationships in more depth:
“… Firstly, to have more interaction between companions – not just with more and better banter, but to have them develop deeper relationships with each other, just as they do with players. Secondly, to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural.”
Given all of the new and exciting information, it will be very interesting to see if Larian Studios is able to put the AI discourse behind them and continue to build hype for the upcoming project. Ultimately, that will be left up to the gaming community. As time goes by, we’ll see which parts of the lengthy AMA continue to catch the attention of the developer’s fans and what sort of sentiment the conversations have towards the game.
Divinity does not currently have a confirmed release window.
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