Credit: Larian Studios
Larian Technical Director Bert van Zemmerteer revealed one of the key features of the new engine being developed specifically for Divinity. He stated that the team completely eliminated one of the technical limitations that indirectly impacted the structure of Baldur’s Gate 3.
A long-standing limitation of the Divinity Engine was that cooperative multiplayer players couldn’t advance from one act to another independently. This impacted how Larian constructed the game’s world and story structure.
“In the next iteration of our engine, this limitation has been completely removed. There is no longer any limit to how long any given act can be,” van Semmertje assured.
According to the statistics portal How Long to Beat, completing Baldur’s Gate 3 can take between 50 and 500 hours. It’s daunting to imagine how much larger the new Divinity will become, removing the technical limitations of previous games.
At the same time, the studio isn’t abandoning the multi-act structure per se: according to the studio, storylines spanning all chapters will remain. The difference is that this will now be a conscious narrative choice, rather than a consequence of the engine’s technical limitations.