Inspector Miqo

I really need to learn to weigh my words more carefully. I genuinely was trying to make a constructive argument but phrased it poorly. It's been bugging me so let me try again: My point wasn’t that I have an issue with criticism. My point was that it doesn’t need to be hurtful. Imho that creates alienation between people who have the same hobby and essentially all want the same thing: better games. Constructive criticism really has higher impact. I get that there's a lot of disappointment out there. Good games are being mutilated to turn them into money machines and that obviously causes a lot of frustration because it makes the games worse. I think I've been fairly vocal about my thoughts on that and will continue to rant against those responsible because they devalue something I care about deeply. But they were not the ones I was thinking of when writing my words. Instead I was thinking of those who truly care about their craft and want to continuously improve what they're making. I know many of them, and I’ve seen how hurtful packaging of criticism has affected them. Often, their reaction is to stop reading feedback altogether. Which is a pity because that means they stop engaging with their audience and lose all the good bits they could get from feedback. Not to say that their reaction isn't understandable. Continuing to engage after repeated written or verbal abuse requires growing a lot of callus on your soul. Some callus is fine. Too much, and you risk becoming desensitized. Personally, I got my first threats of violence in 2009, all because I was trying to make something fun and failed in that person's opinion. There’s been a long list of things thrown at me since. It kind of sucks, especially given that I got into making games because I enjoy seeing people have fun with what I worked on. It took me quite some time to learn how to deal with that. These days, I still read the hurtful comments, but I focus mainly on the constructive opinions. They're the ones that helped shape BG3's success. Speaking of opinions, I also wanted to mention that contrary to what's been written, I have a great deal of respect for game critics. Over the years, my job brought me in contact with many of them and I hope they felt that during the many chats we had. Respect doesn't mean agreement but I appreciate what they bring to the table. We have many ex-reviewers on our team. They are my first port of call whenever I work on something for too long and can't tell if it's good anymore. Often they will tell me that what I made was shit, but they'll phrase it such that it helps me understand why it was shit. That's invaluable. The same goes for some public reviews of our games. A few were genuinely formative and had a real impact because they pointed out things we were overlooking. I consider us lucky that those reviewers took the time to think through why something wasn't working because by listening to them, we avoided making the same mistake twice. So yes, I see great value in criticism and our development history should reflect that. It's the packaging I was trying to comment about. Didn't land as well as I'd intended so hopefully this helps.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the new Divinity had a companion that was not romancable at all and wasn't able to romance others if played as?

Every three months we gather up to discuss the state of the game. It takes us 4 long days just to go through the features and their status, and that's not even looking at the content. There everything is in the thousands or sometimes even hundreds of thousands. The reason of course is the permutations that come out of player choice, both story wise and systems wise. Every time I'm intimidated by how long the lists of tasks are that need to be done to support all that freedom. But the thing that struck me the most this time is the amount of support structure we had to build just to be able to do all of this and how important the people running it are. Many of them are fans of what we make and so they take great care to ensure everything is done really well. It gives you warm feelings to see how much effort they put in because they know that somehow at some point it'll all make a difference. They love the team fiercely and go above and beyond to take care of them. Every developer has other people behind them that let them do their jobs and they're very often forgotten. They're unsung heroes who deserve to be applauded because whenever you see a great piece of work, it's because there was a group of them that ensured the infrastructure was there to make that work in the first place. From the office manager walking in and causing a stampede by saying "ice-cream" or the legal team sitting down beyond their hours to assist a dev with his traffic tickets or the building logistics team fighting with a carpenter just to ensure something is done propely, there's a reason developers include all of their operations staff in the credits and this is it.

Alligator

@LarAtLarian Is this you Panel from Tartarus fit?

@Mehiglol @larianstudios iirc back when DOS2 was on kickstarter, Larian had a poll between summon, poly, musician and some other skill schools, which to add to the game. And bard sadly didn't make the cut. I am confident we may see a bard this time around.

@larianstudios All ima gonna say, Ive played both bg3 and divinity i know divinity isnt exaclty dnd but gosh im a bard addict i hope yall make something similar for the next divinity😭🫶🏽

Ask your questions about Divinity and our development process by joining our AMA, live tomorrow at 2pm CET and kindly hosted on the r/Games subreddit!

@Dude_Brahmin @larianstudios What kind of AMA were you looking for? They can pick and choose questions in any format on any platform.

@TNCarly_ RPG enthusiasts eat soooo good with what's to come. And 2025 was great already.

Most anticipated games for me so far

@richietto @AoiGaCrimson @BizuArt Even when reused it's not a given that it will be dyeable. See Paglthan sets...

@AoiGaCrimson @BizuArt As is the way for these dungeons unfortunately. Just gotta hope they reuse the gear in msg dungeons for the next expansion.

NEW DUNGEON GEAR FUCKS

@nuhre_ @larianstudios Planning a couple vacation days for Early Access release and when the full release dawns. :D

So… how many of us are playing the hell out of @larianstudios's Divinity when it drops?

@WombatMedic Bishop Alexander was slain by seagulls!

Keeping it together, Bree?

@sairaspooks 1. DOS2 is a great game and holds up to this day. 2. Harder than BG3 and requires a bit more tactical thinking. 3. Romance not as deep as BG3, still fun. 4. I hope you like environmental area effects. And fire.

okay i want to give the divinity series a whirl, is DOS2 a good place to start? what should i expect?

@nuhre_ Perhaps the person set on fire was a wizard who lived near the coast.

I still cannot believe that in an era of censorship and hand-holding, Larian looked the industry in the eye and said "no"—explicit sexual content, body horror, religious zealotry, all of it. RPGs are dark again. We are BACK.

We’ve been cooking!! TIME TO SERVE

@Borislav_Slavov With how brutal and raw the reveal seems, will we witness true Slavov Metal in the game? :D

We are back.🙂👨‍🍳#Divinity

@Colgrave1322 @WitchClockwork @larianstudios Well, yes. I never stated otherwise.

At least, that’s the plan.

@WitchClockwork @larianstudios I highly recommend to play Divinity: Original Sin 2, but I doubt this one will recquire prior knowledge. It's been 8 years since the last Divinity and they will want to capture all those who discovered Larian through BG3. I didn't feel I had to play Original Sin 1 to understand 2

@larianstudios Do you have to play the other Divinity games to understand this one?

@XCalibairsCrew @larianstudios Great opportunity to try something new.

@larianstudios never played this series // would have liked a BG3 expansion more.

@DoctorAbrichter Does that mean she has a mechanic where she jumps up and down?

Ah so she uses the soul of an Ahriman/Eye

@naniholo2 @mexican_sunbro I disagree, some pre-purge ARR quests were atrocious and DT up-moments were greater than some base HW MSQ moments for me. DT wasn't great but it was alright and had really fun parts on its own. But taste is subjective in the end.

@InspectorMiqo @mexican_sunbro Patch is great. Base was boring. And i played on the original ARR and post ARR. This was far less intersting than that.

I'm not a petty person, but I do hope with all my heart that 8.0's plot for FFXIV actually requires Dawntrail for every bit of bullshit that happens. Past expacs already do this, but with how not normal people have been they need to triple down on that.