One of Larian Studios' next games has a codename—Excalibur, though 'if we're brutally honest, we're trying to figure out what the hell it is', says Swen Vincke
Larian Studios is moving onto not one, but two new RPGs after its uproarious success with Baldur's Gate 3—and one of said RPGs has a codename to get all excited about: Excalibur.
In this year's Digital Dragons conference, Larian co-founder and CEO Swen Vincke revealed the project's working title. I wish I could tell you more about it, dear reader, but as it turns out that's still something Swen Vincke and his team are still working on.
"If we're brutally honest, we're trying to figure out what the hell it is," Vincke tells Gamepressure's Hubert Sosnowski and Adam Zechenter in a recent interview. Adam Smith, Larian's writing director, chimes in with a: "This is a holiday."
"If anybody from Larian at this point tells you this is what the game is going to be," Vincke adds, "They're lying. They don't know because we're trying a whole bunch of things. We have ideas, but we're an iterative company. So we iterate. We're trying things. We're experimenting."
There are some tentative (and I really do mean tentative) hints earlier on in the interview, as Vincke discusses the aftershock sensation of creating, frankly, one of the best RPGs of the decade:
"It’s a weird thing because obviously, we've been looking at everything that's happening, thinking: 'What is our next thing?' We've been going through a roller coaster of emotions and decisions. I don't think you can ever predict what's going to happen. Our ambition certainly is to do better … There's so much stuff that can happen around you that can affect the outcome of your development. We'll see where it goes."
Most interestingly, Vincke is asked about the studio's iterative experimentation, to which he replies: "I love turn-based strategy, but I'm not shy of action." Again, that's confirmation of absolutely nothing at all—but the idea that Larian Studios is at least, creatively, showing curiosity about making something outside of its turn-based bailiwick is fascinating to me.
Still, Vincke notes: "You'll have to wait and see … we do try stuff out. You don't want to keep on making the same thing."
Personally, I've got mixed feelings about the (extremely hypothetical) prospect of an action RPG from Larian—I do think people who rally against turn-based games are a little silly, especially since I enjoy all of the mechanical details and tactical choices that go into wrestling an initiative order. Live-action-pause CRPGs have never really hit me in the same way.
On the other hand, Larian wouldn't be Larian without a dash of innovation. Part of what makes Baldur's Gate 3 so spectacular is that it feels like a genuine step-up in the CRPG genre—taking stories typically told in text boxes into fully-animated, motion-capped performances in Bioware-style conversations. Whatever they're doing next, I'm on board.
