Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke says that all the awards actually started to obstruct development: ‘It is surprisingly draining on the soul’
Baldur’s Gate 3 swept pretty much all the game award shows of 2023 and even managed to carry its success over into 2024 after claiming best game along with four other categories at the 2024 BAFTA Awards. But apparently, winning almost every accolade imaginable isn’t what it’s cut out to be.
In an interview with Edge (via GamesRadar), Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke discussed how the overwhelming success, particularly in the award ceremonies, actually became quite obstructive to the developers’ work. “It affects development—there’s a lot of them,” Vincke says. “This has been a real problem.” So, to help remedy the situation, Larian started to send “rotating teams” to the various ceremonies to try to even out the time commitment.
Even with all the hassle of sending team after team to countless ceremonies, Larian never wanted to shrug any off. “It’s great that you have a moment of celebration… we still have award shows that we’re going to,” Vincke continues. “Because they’re important, and we really appreciate it.”
2023 was an incredibly strong year for videogames, with Alan Wake 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and the Resident Evil 4 remake releasing, among many others. This makes it even more impressive that Baldur’s Gate 3 won so many awards.
But while these accolades may be a big honour, Vincke still thinks that the award season could be organised slightly better: “[It] would be cool if everybody could agree to do it all at the same time. It is surprisingly draining on the soul.” The development team has even found things more difficult because Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps popping back into the discourse: “We’ve all been more emotional because we can’t get closure. And you want to have closure at the end of a project.” Hopefully, with most of the big award ceremonies for 2023 over, the developers at Larian will start to have more peace and quiet as new games win all the awards.
As part of that closure, Vincke has also expressed an interest in talking about other things rather than constantly harping on about Baldur’s Gate 3. Previously, Vincke has discussed what other RPG series he was interested in and what’s in store for the future of Larian Studios. Right now, one of the team’s next projects has a codename, Excalibur, but Vincke is still “trying to figure out what the hell it is.”
