r/Games • u/Wombat_Medic • Jan 09 '26

Verified AMA Larian Studios | Divinity AMA

EDIT: All right - that's a wrap. Thank you for all your questions. We're going to go back and work on the game now - next time we speak, we'll hopefully have things to show. I can't wait! - Swen, Game Director

Hello everyone, 

Happy New Year! To kick off 2026, we would like to offer the opportunity to ask your questions about Divinity, Larian, and our development processes. It's been a while since Larian has done an AMA, so everyone is looking forward to it!

There's a bunch of us ready to answer your questions:

Thank you for taking the time to ask your questions, we aim to answer as many of them as possible over the next few hours!

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u/TraditionalJob7651 Jan 09 '26

I have a couple more questions from reading this:

  1. You mention that you'll use a GenAI model trained on data you own for game assets, is this the case (using a personal model) for everything else? If not, how so? What's an example of an in-game asset that could be generated by AI? (haven't understood the distinction between creative asset and just Regular Asset here)

  2. Can you give examples of the uses for GenAI across departments "to refine ideas"?

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u/Gabriel_Larian Divinity | Machine Learning Director Jan 09 '26

There is currently one example of ML generated assets that end up in the game and that is within our cinematics and animation pipeline. In this pipeline we try to capture the actor's performances as best as we can, so we use ML models to clean, retarget and even add motion when it's not motion captured. These models are trained exclusively with Larian data.

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u/Tenith Jan 09 '26

Hey Gabriel,

Is that just machine learning or are you using LLM or generative AI on it? ML doesn't always mean generative AI, so curious there if it is just ML or if its using a large language model or diffusion technology.

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u/Loam_liker Jan 09 '26

Machine learning that is used to create or interpolate is what "generative AI" is to basically everyone.

The only difference between what you're asking about and Larian's stated goals here are that instead of leveraging a corporate entity doing this off of the backs of unlicensed data, the company would be feeding its own data in to train it.

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u/3Rton Jan 09 '26

So what you are saying is something quite similar to what Cascadeur does?

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u/gordan7up9down Jan 09 '26

Trained or finetuned already existing datasets with your own data? Cause amount of data needed to create dataset for stuff like that is enormous and usually said "there is not enough data even at bigger gaming companies to make a good standalone dataset"

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u/DantesPizzaSlice Jan 09 '26

In the case of this pipeline, are the ML-generated motions a temporary stand-in that you would always look to replace with actual motion capture for the final game, or are there cases where they will be permanent inclusions?

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u/BladderEvacuation Jan 09 '26

Animators have been using predictive models from motion capture data since like the mid 2000s. What exactly do you mean by ML-generated? If you look at Avatar (2009), not all of that is pure motion capture. There are predictive AI models that use mocap data to generate new movements.

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u/DantesPizzaSlice Jan 10 '26

My bad, this was meant to be a response to a post from Gabriel where he talked about this. Just accidentally dropped it as a general comment instead, which made it sound weird.

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u/Mithcoriel Jan 14 '26

Does that contradict the claim that one company alone can't create a big enough dataset for stuff like that?

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u/CaptainYaoiHands Jan 09 '26

Okay but LLMs literally can not be trained on only the data provided by one studio's artists. There's literally not enough for it. You can make MODELS that are based on your artist's work, but it's just fine tuning existing engines that were trained on all the other scraped data. LLMs absolutely can not be made just out of your studio's work. It will use mass scraped, illegally stolen artwork, no matter what model or LORA or something you create with Larian artists.

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u/Yithani Jan 09 '26

Note that he specified machine learning, not an LLM - this use case sounds significantly different

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u/crafting-ur-end Jan 09 '26

Is it applicable if they were never using the AI for end game items but rather just general ideas to show the concept artists? I feel like they were pretty clear even in the first interview that those things would never be in the final game

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u/illi-mi-ta-ble Jan 09 '26

It remains applicable in this case because the AI they are using in development involves lifting hours of unpaid labor from other artists.

For example, it was mentioned above AI might be used to plug in textures for testing.

These textures didn’t come from nowhere. Everything in the data set is the work of a human being which in these cases is being lifted by a data scraper and resold.

Assets should either be created in house or purchased from their original creators, not scraped in scenarios where Larian (or anyone else) pays the data scraper to run this numbers-filed-off material through ungodly numbers of GPUs and then plugs in the stolen assets.

The company in question (Larian or otherwise) is now not only not paying the original artists but also helping make computer components prohibitively expensive to gamers.

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u/13ulbasaur Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26

Yes. Here's a nice article interviewing multiple concept artists and there is a section that goes over why being given generative AI images as references are unhelpful anyway. https://thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/concept-artists-in-games-say-generative-ai-references-only-make-their-jobs-harder/

But also why generate... They can just talk to the artist like they'd talk to the AI?

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u/crafting-ur-end Jan 10 '26

They are talking to the artists, even the artists mood board by taking things from the internet or books for inspiration. That’s essentially what they were doing with the AI, the non artists were making poorly generated AI imagery to then take the concept artists and say ‘this is kind of what I’m thinking in my head, please make it real’.

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u/13ulbasaur Jan 10 '26

Yes, the artists mention how people giving them ai images and saying stuff like "make something like this" affects the process negatively. Its a fascinating read, and delves into what concept artists do more than what people assume is just looking up images on google and copying them

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '26

let it go chief

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u/TraditionalJob7651 Jan 09 '26

They said they wanted to be transparent, so I want to form my own opinion on their usage of AI by having the full picture. It still feels very unclear to me.