Divinity: Original Sin II nearly killed Baldur's Gate 3 in its infancy. Yes, Larian's breakthrough 2017 RPG proved the developer had the chops to take on a legendary series, and provided the foundations for an astonishingly open-ended Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Yet it almost robbed the studio of its opportunity to ascend to the mainstream.
By August of that year, company founder Swen Vincke had already landed a deal with Wizards Of The Coast to make Baldur's Gate 3, but when the time came to provide the publisher with a design document, his team had nothing left in the tank. Deep into the final phase of Divinity: Original Sin 2's development, all of their creative energies had been spent. Nonetheless, they knew they had to pull something out of the Bag Of Holding. "We need to write something, guys," Vincke said at the time. "Or we're going to lose this deal."
