The days of doubt are past us. Larian Studios is officially that girl, the debutante with a stacked dance card who nary an RPG-liker would commit the social gaffe of insulting in public. With all that adoration comes the freedom to do as you please, and for Larian that's returning from the megabucks success of Baldur's Gate 3 to play around in its very own fantasy setting.
The next RPG from your new favorite developer is called, simply, Divinity. It's the studio's "biggest most ambitious RPG yet," set in Rivellon of Divinity: Original Sin fame, where big red lizardmen are princes and elves gnaw on severed forearms.
Is there a Divinity release date?
There is no release date or even release year for Divinity, so don't let the AI lie to you when you ask.
All we know that even hints at a release date is that Larian founder Swen Vincke told us in an interview after The Game Awards 2025 that Divinity is in full production, with Larian already recording performances and dialogue with actors. This doesn't mean Divinity's release is imminent, however, as Vincke said that Larian will be recording "nonstop" throughout development.
So, can we speculate about the timeline at all? Surely we can narrow it down to something more specific than sometime in the next decade.
Back in April 2025, about eight months before revealing Divinity, Larian boss Swen Vincke said the studio was "deep in the trenches" with its next project. Vincke also answered a question about the studio's five year plan saying that "I hope that definitely five years from now I can tell you about it and say 'yeah this is working out, this is what we're doing.'"
Here's the timeline for Baldur's Gate 3's release, to help illustrate what pace Larian might be operating at:
- Summer 2017 - Larian submits a BG3 design document to Wizards of the Coast the month before Divinity: Original Sin 2 launches
- June 2019 - Larian reveals the first trailer for Baldur's Gate 3
- October 2020 - Baldur's Gate 3 early access launch
- August 2023 - Baldur's Gate 3's full launch
I'm not going to put words in Swen's mouth, but the time from first trailer to first public release for BG3 was only 16 months. Divinity is the studio's biggest project yet though, so it may not be able to match that speed.
What will the story of Divinity be?
We're already familiar with Rivellon as Larian's high fantasy setting from the Divinity games, but there's no telling quite what the story will be this time. The reveal trailer included a man being burned to death in a giant wicker man contraption during a busy summer festival outside the walls of a large, medieval-y city, attended by all sorts of folks from Rivellon's handful of races—humans, elves, dwarves, lizards, and orcs are definitely shown. The gluttony, lust, and ritual sacrifice of it all somehow summons a giant corpse portal that Larian's publishing director explained is called the Hellstone. You know, heroic sword and sorcery stuff!
One of our BG3 freaks, Harvey Randall, suggested that Divinity may not wind up being as dark as that first trailer suggests, and Larian writing director Adam Smith pretty much confirmed this in our interview after The Game Awards 2025:
"We're not in the grimdarkness where there's only war. There is light and hope. We don't want to make something that is all that tone. We want to confront you with horror and then say, 'What are you going to do with it? And about it?'"
In a Divinity Reddit AMA, Smith also said that "We want to give players the opportunity to be the light in that darkness—an inspiration, a hero, a champion. We'll also let them leave the world even worse than they found it. We're pushing as far as we can on player agency."
Larian founder Swen Vincke also added that Divinity: Original Sin 2 was already pretty dark, but the game's more limited graphics and pulled-back camera meant you "didn't see them cinematically."
"Now you can see it cinematically, and it makes everything more intimate and direct," he said. "It makes for a much more engaging experience. When you see the darkness you're going to understand that this is a game about contrast, where you can really be the beacon, the last hope of everyone, or the one that really fucks everything up."
Out of what we know for sure and speculation cap firmly on now, the studio has always played pretty fast and loose with timelines, continuity, and even geography, so nothing story-wise is set in stone here. Divinity could be a reboot. It could also just be a strong, splashy way to reintroduce the setting of its earlier games to all its new BG3 fans.
To tide us all over until Larian reveals more, here's some very small teasers (seriously, they're microscopic) that we know about the story of Divinity so far:
- Divinity "ends with a lot of fire."
- Want a single word Divinity spoiler that's not really a spoiler? Here you go: alligator. Let's all have a swell old time theorizing over that for the next few years.
Do you need to know the other Divinity games?
Larian says nope, referring to Divinity as "a brand-new game that doesn't require experience with previous Larian titles." Larian boss Swen Vincke even warned newcomers that they probably shouldn't play the early games in the Divinity series. However, the studio did add that "Those who've played Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin 2 will be able to enjoy greater understanding and continuity."
That is how these things tend to go. You're rarely going to get a game developer suggesting that you shouldn't just hop on into its latest and greatest game. I'd bet on this being a bit like the jump Obsidian made from Pillars of Eternity to Avowed—a familiar setting to those who know it with lots of easter eggs but no required reading.
Will Divinity come out in early access?
Yes, Larian is planning to launch Divinity in early access. Despite initially playing coy elsewhere, Larian founder Swen Vincke told Bloomberg that Divinity will launch into early access, as the developer has with previous games, but that it’s unlikely to be out in 2026.
What do we know about the gameplay in Divinity?
We know that Divinity is an RPG, and we know it's bigger—in project scope or actual game area or maybe both—than Baldur's Gate 3. We also know it will have turn-based combat (sorry to those who thought otherwise), with Larian founder Swen Vincke telling us that "It's a new rule set, a rule set built on everything that we learned from all the previous games that we've done."
In the same interview, Vincke also stated that Divinity has 'deeper sequences of consequence' based on your choices than Baldur's Gate 3, intended to give players even more control over how their adventure plays out:
"The level of agency that we're going to give you is very, very high—much higher than what happened in BG3. At least that's our ambition. And this is agency at pretty much all levels, so it's at the narrative as well as systems level. That makes it our most ambitious. It's the biggest game that we've ever made."
Adam Smith, Larian's writing director also revealed that the team's main focus for improvements in Divinity is companions, and other characters, to feel like a more natural part of the world than they did in BG3, and previous Divinity games. Smith also specifically raises focus on wanting to deepen character relationships. Smith claims they're aiming "to ramp up player friendship and romance more subtly, so relationship building feels natural" this time around.
The last thing we know for sure is that Larian updated its game engine for Divinity. While this may not sound as sexy as other reveals, Vincke says that "There are a lot of things we can do now that we couldn't do before that's going to be really cool. In gameplay—I think that's going to be the bit that excites most people, other than the visual fidelity that's obviously come up."
What else does Divinity have?
We'll add more of the small stuff here as we find it, but for now, here's everything we know about what Divinity is adding, or changing, this time:
- Divinity will not keep the magic armor system from DOS2.
- Larian is sticking to its guns on not including WASD movement.
- Loot will be fixed liked in Baldur's Gate 3, not randomized like in previous Divinity games.
- There's a new action economy and character progression system, but there's no specifics on what this will look like just yet.
- Alena Dubrovina, Divinity's Character Art Director said that Larian is aiming to have an even better character creator system than Baldur's Gate 3, with "More colors, more options, more control."
What else COULD Divinity have?
Aside from what Vincke and Co have told us, everything else is just conjecture at this point. Here are some things that Larian did in both Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 that might tell us what to expect from Divinity:
- Sandbox-y rules and a love of players discovering exploits
- Four-player co-op support
- An adventuring party with personal quests and optional romances
- Talking animals—so many talking animals
So... is Divinity using generative AI or not?
Uh, it's complicated. Divinity is not implementing generative AI concept art tools, but it is trying generative AI "things" across other departments.
The AI chat surrounding Divinity started when the studio's boss Swen Vincke revealed to Bloomberg that Larian had used generative AI and that devs "often use AI tools to explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text." As you might imagine, that did not go down well, so Vincke started a Reddit AMA by swearing off using AI tools in concept art development.
"First off—there is not going to be any gen AI art in Divinity," wrote Vincke. "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 gen AI tools during concept art development."
But...
"We continuously try to improve the speed with which we can try things out," Vincke continued. "The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think gen AI can help with this and so we’re trying things out across departments."
Nothing kills a studio's golden child image these days like doubling down on gen AI, so here's hoping those gen AI "things" aren't as robustly implemented as it seems they might be right now.
Okay but how, like, adult is Divinity going to be?
On a scale from 'totally wholesome' to 'sex with a druid in bear form', the cinematic trailer for Divinity lands at: summer festival public lizard orgy. Do with that what you will.
