The LARIAN Thread

[Hyborian]

You hear that jaded chud? Swen wants you to feel something, anything at all. How can you hate the guy?

[pol_345polex]

One thing I was very happy to hear is that they're rebooting the Divinity universe and taking the worldbuilding seriously this time. Maybe we'll finally get to see what Rivellon looks like.

This proves more and more that they are clowns.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Holy **** guys we’re not "pushing hard" for or replacing concept artists with AI.

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do.

I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.

I talked about how we use ML here if you would like to know more:
https://gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-g ... 0-6531123/

We've hired creatives for their talent, not for their ability to do what a machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.

I hope trannys will cancel larian over this. That would be so great.

[maidenhaver]

******** about to find out.

[Hyborian]

One thing I was very happy to hear is that they're rebooting the Divinity universe and taking the worldbuilding seriously this time. Maybe we'll finally get to see what Rivellon looks like.

This proves more and more that they are clowns.

Elaborate.

[Acrux]

Ha ha, get wrecked, Astarion VA.

[rusty_shackleford]

apparently bluesky ******** are dogpiling larian/swen for expecting them to do work + AI
not going digging into it

[rusty_shackleford]

Ha ha, get wrecked, Astarion VA.

this is a guy who gets paid hundreds of dollars to do a 60 second long video while high on drugs by people like @Oyster Sauce

[Oyster Sauce]

Ha ha, get wrecked, Astarion VA.

this is a guy who gets paid hundreds of dollars to do a 60 second long video while high on drugs by people like @Oyster Sauce

he's worth it

[Roguey]

apparently bluesky ******** are dogpiling larian/swen for expecting them to do work + AI
not going digging into it

Yeah Blowy Zoe claims they tried to "recruit" her

https://bsky.app/profile/unburntwitch.c ... 4p47aqts22

I know this because they tried to recruit me and I strongly considered it but they’re also a “do an unpaid writing test where you have to also make it playable” company so that’s not something I vibe with

https://bsky.app/profile/brunodias.bsky ... 4qheh7gk22

Larian's horrible hirring process is an open secret in the industry – insane amounts of unpaid work in "writing tests", excessive numbers of interviews, months and months of back and forth, etc. Everyone in games narrative circles has heard the stories at this point, probably from multiple people.

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

https://bsky.app/profile/hayfeverray.bs ... 6fakyg4c26

For anyone reading this and wondering, yes Swen was always a jackass like this. He would take writers' keyboards and rewrite their dialog for them, ofc he's a dumbass who thinks AI could be useful

Swen is literally Nick Burns the Computer Guy. "MOVE!"

https://bsky.app/profile/hayfeverray.bs ... 6iz5dq7k26

Feels like a good time to talk about when Larian employed an outright fascist and refused to fire him.

Over covid one of our engineers was radicalised. Next time we saw him he was watching Tim Pool videos in office and telling us about "cultural marxism" at work drinks, the whole nine yards

After a while he had a little cohort of freaks that shared some of his sentiments.

Everyone was uncomfortable with this guy. Folks went to Swen and said "Hey, this guy is a weirdo fascist. He's making everyone uncomfortable. He's at odds with the team's values"

Swen's response? "He's invaluable to the team, it's too hard to replace him this close to release"

Naturally the vibes got worse. Hanging out at lunch now sucks because these guys might bring their bigotry, like complaining that Aragorn is black in the new MTG crossover set.

And there's a lot of minorities on the team. Yet, bigots abound in the studio. Swen is happy to profit off the cachet of making a "woke" game while letting bigots endanger minorities in his studio

My worst experience, as a ***** woman, was shortly after coming out in work.

One of the other office weirdos, and sexual harassment afficionado Felix Pedulla (current CDPR employee) walked past me in the office one day.

He makes a weird remark about my tits, and then to "confirm" something grabs my crotch in the middle of the office. No fear, no shame.

But why not report it? Well, the ship had sailed. We had unchecked fascists in the office, people taking the **** out of BG3's gender options, multiple cases of sexual harassment, and more.

More importantly, we were told that if someone is important enough they will not be dealt with.

Hope all these people **** off. Larian is Swen's Kingdom.

[rusty_shackleford]

Holy **** guys we’re not "pushing hard" for or replacing concept artists with AI.

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do.

I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.

I talked about how we use ML here if you would like to know more:
https://gamespot.com/articles/baldurs-g ... 0-6531123/

We've hired creatives for their talent, not for their ability to do what a machine suggests, but they can experiment with these tools to make their lives easier.

everyone except programmers are completely terrified of admitting they regularly use AI because they think it will replace them instead of being a productivity booster

Take the Henry Ford pledge with me!

Automation does not displace workers!
Demand always rises to meet output!
Automation is my friend, not my enemy!
When the powerful Jew is at last traced and his hand revealed, then comes the ready cry of persecution!

every concept artist uses AI, just like how they all traced to keep up with the workload

[rusty_shackleford]

apparently bluesky ******** are dogpiling larian/swen for expecting them to do work + AI
not going digging into it

Yeah Blowy Zoe claims they tried to "recruit" her

https://bsky.app/profile/unburntwitch.c ... 4p47aqts22

I know this because they tried to recruit me and I strongly considered it but they’re also a “do an unpaid writing test where you have to also make it playable” company so that’s not something I vibe with

https://bsky.app/profile/brunodias.bsky ... 4qheh7gk22

Larian's horrible hirring process is an open secret in the industry – insane amounts of unpaid work in "writing tests", excessive numbers of interviews, months and months of back and forth, etc. Everyone in games narrative circles has heard the stories at this point, probably from multiple people.

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

https://bsky.app/profile/hayfeverray.bs ... 6fakyg4c26

For anyone reading this and wondering, yes Swen was always a jackass like this. He would take writers' keyboards and rewrite their dialog for them, ofc he's a dumbass who thinks AI could be useful

Swen is literally Nick Burns the Computer Guy. "MOVE!"

https://bsky.app/profile/hayfeverray.bs ... 6iz5dq7k26

Feels like a good time to talk about when Larian employed an outright fascist and refused to fire him.

Over covid one of our engineers was radicalised. Next time we saw him he was watching Tim Pool videos in office and telling us about "cultural marxism" at work drinks, the whole nine yards

After a while he had a little cohort of freaks that shared some of his sentiments.

Everyone was uncomfortable with this guy. Folks went to Swen and said "Hey, this guy is a weirdo fascist. He's making everyone uncomfortable. He's at odds with the team's values"

Swen's response? "He's invaluable to the team, it's too hard to replace him this close to release"

Naturally the vibes got worse. Hanging out at lunch now sucks because these guys might bring their bigotry, like complaining that Aragorn is black in the new MTG crossover set.

And there's a lot of minorities on the team. Yet, bigots abound in the studio. Swen is happy to profit off the cachet of making a "woke" game while letting bigots endanger minorities in his studio

My worst experience, as a ***** woman, was shortly after coming out in work.

One of the other office weirdos, and sexual harassment afficionado Felix Pedulla (current CDPR employee) walked past me in the office one day.

He makes a weird remark about my tits, and then to "confirm" something grabs my crotch in the middle of the office. No fear, no shame.

But why not report it? Well, the ship had sailed. We had unchecked fascists in the office, people taking the **** out of BG3's gender options, multiple cases of sexual harassment, and more.

More importantly, we were told that if someone is important enough they will not be dealt with.

Hope all these people **** off. Larian is Swen's Kingdom.

chudbros… were we too quick in judging Swen?

[Marcus]

Yeah Blowy Zoe claims they tried to "recruit" her

https://bsky.app/profile/brunodias.bsky ... 4qheh7gk22

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

Untitled.jpg

[maidenhaver]

Games narrative circles. Which level of hell is that?

[rusty_shackleford]

Games narrative circles. Which level of hell is that?

a group they use to blacklist anyone that doesn't have the right ideology and use it to enforce who gets hired

[Hyborian]

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

This is obvious ********, because they hired two nobodies with NO writing credit to their name, and made them lead writer and co-lead on BG3, their 100 million all or nothing project. Larian has NO standards whatsoever. They hire just about anyone who applies.

[rusty_shackleford]

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

This is obvious ********, because they hired two nobodies with NO writing credit to their name, and made them lead writer and co-lead on BG3, their 100 million all or nothing project. Larian has NO standards whatsoever. They hire just about anyone who applies.

Larian had to rapidly replace their second most important studio mid-development of their biggest project yet, going to guess hiring standards were a bit low at the time

[Hyborian]

They made me do 12 interviews. Then they rejected me based on my resume.

This is obvious ********, because they hired two nobodies with NO writing credit to their name, and made them lead writer and co-lead on BG3, their 100 million all or nothing project. Larian has NO standards whatsoever. They hire just about anyone who applies.

Larian had to rapidly replace their second most important studio mid-development of their biggest project yet, going to guess hiring standards were a bit low at the time

Sure, but it's not like the previous leads left anywhere. They still kept working on BG3, but no longer made any public appearances in interviews or marketing events. They were completely supplanted by that ghoul Adam and the **** with stripper's name. They got hired and almost immediately got promoted to leads. How ridiculous is that? My guess is that they were the only writers with experience and knowledge of D&D and Forgotten Realms. Otherwise I can't make any sense of it. Still don't get why they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for these nobodies. There are dozens of experienced game designers and writers who have worked on D&D and Pathfinder books that they could have approached and who would have done a much better job, no doubt.

[rusty_shackleford]

but it's not like the previous leads left anywhere

They did so I'm not continuing to read

[sheet]

After a while he had a little cohort of freaks that shared some of his sentiments.

Everyone was uncomfortable with this guy.

So which is it, fruitcake?

[Hyborian]

but it's not like the previous leads left anywhere

They did so I'm not continuing to read

I saw them at some award ceremony. TGA or BAFTA. Don't remember which one, but definitely saw them attend it. Jan Van Dosselaer is Gale's writer and Sarah Baylus was the original lead writer on BG3. They got credited as principal writers on BG3. Where is your source that they left?

[rusty_shackleford]

but it's not like the previous leads left anywhere

They did so I'm not continuing to read

I saw them at some award ceremony. TGA or BAFTA. Don't remember which one, but definitely saw them attend it. Jan Van Dosselaer is Gale's writer and Sarah Baylus was the original lead writer on BG3. They got credited as principal writers on BG3. Where is your source that they left?

Most important writer was baudelaire welch, who is long gone. She was responsible for completely rewriting the main story(which is why it feels so disjointed) + many companion storylines.

[Roguey]

but it's not like the previous leads left anywhere

They did so I'm not continuing to read

But they didn't, Jan and Sarah were still working on BG3 as principal writers. It seems to me that in this case "lead writer" doesn't mean person in charge of writing, just person (persons in this case) in charge of corralling the dozen or more people they hired to actually do the writing.

[Hyborian]

They did so I'm not continuing to read

I saw them at some award ceremony. TGA or BAFTA. Don't remember which one, but definitely saw them attend it. Jan Van Dosselaer is Gale's writer and Sarah Baylus was the original lead writer on BG3. They got credited as principal writers on BG3. Where is your source that they left?

Most important writer was baudelaire welch, who is long gone. She was responsible for completely rewriting the main story(which is why it feels so disjointed) + many companion storylines.

Jan Van Dosselaer was their lead on Divinity 2, Dragon Commander and DOS, and writing director on DOS2. Sarah joined to help Jan with DOS and got promoted to lead on DOS2. Then got the job as the lead on BG3 as well and Jan was still the writing director. These are Larian's two most senior writers and were credited as such in the game's credits. Wench is a literal fan fiction author they hired to write romance for BG3. She's a complete nobody.

[rusty_shackleford]

I saw them at some award ceremony. TGA or BAFTA. Don't remember which one, but definitely saw them attend it. Jan Van Dosselaer is Gale's writer and Sarah Baylus was the original lead writer on BG3. They got credited as principal writers on BG3. Where is your source that they left?

Most important writer was baudelaire welch, who is long gone. She was responsible for completely rewriting the main story(which is why it feels so disjointed) + many companion storylines.

Jan Van Dosselaer was their lead on Divinity 2, Dragon Commander and DOS, and writing director on DOS2. Sarah joined to help Jan with DOS and got promoted to lead on DOS2. Then got the job as the lead on BG3 as well and Jan was still the writing director. These are Larian's two most senior writers and were credited as such in the game's credits. Wench is a literal fan fiction author they hired to write romance for BG3. She's a complete nobody.

And yet, she was the singular most important writer on the entire game and wrote the main story.

[Hyborian]

Most important writer was baudelaire welch, who is long gone. She was responsible for completely rewriting the main story(which is why it feels so disjointed) + many companion storylines.

Jan Van Dosselaer was their lead on Divinity 2, Dragon Commander and DOS, and writing director on DOS2. Sarah joined to help Jan with DOS and got promoted to lead on DOS2. Then got the job as the lead on BG3 as well and Jan was still the writing director. These are Larian's two most senior writers and were credited as such in the game's credits. Wench is a literal fan fiction author they hired to write romance for BG3. She's a complete nobody.

And yet, she was the singular most important writer on the entire game and wrote the main story.

I'm sure it's true in your mind. Shame on me for taking you seriously for a second.

[rusty_shackleford]

Jan Van Dosselaer was their lead on Divinity 2, Dragon Commander and DOS, and writing director on DOS2. Sarah joined to help Jan with DOS and got promoted to lead on DOS2. Then got the job as the lead on BG3 as well and Jan was still the writing director. These are Larian's two most senior writers and were credited as such in the game's credits. Wench is a literal fan fiction author they hired to write romance for BG3. She's a complete nobody.

And yet, she was the singular most important writer on the entire game and wrote the main story.

I'm sure it's true in your mind. Shame on me for taking you seriously for a second.

She was a senior narrative designer of BG3.
https://www.developconference.com/speak ... aire-welch

I am currently working full time at Larian Studios as a Senior Narrative Designer. There I am the feature lead for companion characters and romances. I am the screenwriter for the Dark Urge Origin and work in an associate capacity screenwriting for the other origin characters.

Post-EA main story(dark urge) + other companions are Welch

It's why the game feels like it has two incomplete main stories competing for attention, and you can completely miss out on one by playing as a custom character.

[Lhynn]

Suitably dark, now let me smite the degens down.

[Mortadela_Viva]

And yet, she was the singular most important writer on the entire game and wrote the main story.

I'm sure it's true in your mind. Shame on me for taking you seriously for a second.

She was a senior narrative designer of BG3.
https://www.developconference.com/speak ... aire-welch

I am currently working full time at Larian Studios as a Senior Narrative Designer. There I am the feature lead for companion characters and romances. I am the screenwriter for the Dark Urge Origin and work in an associate capacity screenwriting for the other origin characters.

Post-EA main story(dark urge) + other companions are Welch

It's why the game feels like it has two incomplete main stories competing for attention, and you can completely miss out on one by playing as a custom character.

I just want to know who made Balduran a gay squid and burn them in a pyre

[Hyborian]

And yet, she was the singular most important writer on the entire game and wrote the main story.

I'm sure it's true in your mind. Shame on me for taking you seriously for a second.

She was a senior narrative designer of BG3.
https://www.developconference.com/speak ... aire-welch

I am currently working full time at Larian Studios as a Senior Narrative Designer. There I am the feature lead for companion characters and romances. I am the screenwriter for the Dark Urge Origin and work in an associate capacity screenwriting for the other origin characters.

Post-EA main story(dark urge) + other companions are Welch

It's why the game feels like it has two incomplete main stories competing for attention, and you can completely miss out on one by playing as a custom character.

Her main job on BG3 was romance, not narrative design. Lawrence Schick is the principal narrative designer. None of the companions were written by her. Shadowheart and Halsin were written by John Corcoran. Astarion was written by Stephen Rooney. Lae'zel and Wyll by Kevin Vanord. Gale was written by Jan Van Dosselaer. Karlach by Sarah Baylus. Minthara by Adam Smith. You're an actual moron if you think a single goofy fanfic writer rewrote the entire story and all the companions while the rest of the 20 man writing team sat there and jerked off doing nothing for two years. Furthermore, none of this is even relevant to my original point. Which was that the two previous leads and most senior writers at Larian, Jan and Sarah, did not leave Larian, but were awkwardly pushed aside in favor of two new hires, and total nobodies at that.