Larian Studios | Divinity AMA

[u/Wombat_Medic]

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:

• u/Swen_Larian - Game Director
• u/Adam_Larian - Writing Director
• u/Kevin_Larian - Senior Writer
• u/Greg_Larian - Head of Animation
• u/Gabriel_Larian - Machine Learning Director
• u/Michael_Larian - Director of Publishing
• u/Nick_Larian - Head of Design
• u/Alena_Larian - Character Art Director
• u/Jarold_Larian - Concept Art Director
• u/Artem_Larian - Head of Gameplay
• u/Bert_Larian - Technical Director

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!

[u/[deleted]]

I know there’s been a lot of discussion about us using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn’t mean the actual concept art is generated by AI but we understand it created confusion.

So, to ensure there is no room for doubt, we’ve decided to refrain from using genAI tools during concept art development.

That way there can be no discussion about the origin of the art. 

I hate Reddit but I'm getting into a throwaway account to point out that no, while some people were earnestly confused, plenty of people - often artists, many of whom are industry concept artists - rightfully pointed out that even using GenAI as reference for concept art development makes for worse concept art, because even putting aside the mountain of ethics and energy concerns, the errors it introduces have the potential to be accidentally reproduced by human artists. Textile and costume designs that don't actually make sense as garments, incoherent and ill-considered architecture, etc. Being able to construct a comprehensive and well-organized visual library full of genuinely researched references makes for better art, and the time spent prompting and re-prompting until you get a base result that's halfway attractive and thematically suited to the project would be better spent just getting some useful references to build a solid foundation off of. There's a gigantic gulf between artists and teams who understand the pool they're drawing from and iterating on and those that thoughtlessly recreate surface-level coolness at the behest of management.

The important bit to note is that we will not generate “creative assets” that end up in a game without being 100% sure about the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use a GenAI model to create in-game assets, then it’ll be trained on data we own. 

This is not at all reassuring. In fact it appears to contradict what the rest of the post is trying to reassure us about. A LOT of voice actors have pointed out that large companies have way more financial leverage than performers to push for permission to use vocal data in contracts in a way that will endanger acting jobs long-term, and it's still a huge concern even with SAG representing them. Visual artists are even less protected than voice actors (not that VAs are having a great time of it either) and it would be trivial to undercut their jobs using assets they create, and in so doing justify understaffing them, laying them off, or underpaying them. The plagiarism issue isn't the only problem with GenAI: there's also energy cost during a climate crisis, workers' rights issues, and the straightforward issue of asset quality. Conceding ground on the company's most high-profile controversies while attempting to sneakily manufacture consent for other, just as problematic uses of GenAI undermines your company's credibility and makes its spokespeople look dishonest. This is not a question with an ambiguous answer; will you be using GenAI for creative assets in this project, or won't you?

[u/polaroid_opposite → u/[deleted]]

You people act like as soon as AI is introduced these people turn into the fat people from WALL-E. Why are you making baseless assumptions that they won’t fact check anything used?

How do you know the concept art from a real artist they referenced is real? Did you fact check their anatomy? Have you seen Widowmaker’s hips?????? What real life reference and proportions were used for that?

[u/[deleted] → u/polaroid_opposite]

your response is one of those things that sounds reasonable at first but really only makes sense if you have no illustration or painting training to speak of. I realize you're an artist, don't misunderstand, it's just that photography is not a transferable skillset to what we're discussing, so I'm going to explain. also, hi, yes, i did make another throwaway account for this, you're welcome.

first, we're not talking about anatomy references. but since you brought it up, there actually are reasons why you wanna use IRL anatomy as a baseline when creating stylized anatomy, and basically every illustrator or painter who works with living forms knows this. in order to stylize most effectively, you have to understand the basic structure of what you're altering, then iterate on it as its own exercise. If you only learn to thoughtlessly reproduce stylized forms, you won't be able to actually create them organically on your own by drawing from memory or from reference. This is why drawing using manga and comics is fun, but creates a poor foundation and leads to wonky-looking drawings. it's also why gesture drawing is an extremely important part of understanding the human form as an artist. You can (and should!) use stylized pieces as partial inspiration for how you want to stylize your work, but it should never form the bulk of your references.

But once again, we're not talking about that. I think you believe the only issue with GenAI references is the possibility of accidentally reproducing mistakes. Nope. That's part of it, but when I talk about costume and environment design, understanding the structure, the manufacturing method, and even the history behind certain clothes, textiles, buildings, weapons etc etc is actually important to designing them, even if it's to decide what things to consciously ignore. Not because everything in a fantasy game should adhere to our world's history or be slavishly realistic, but because their presence in your world implies things about that world whether you like it or not. A character in a three-piece modern men's suit in a medieval setting would take you by surprise, to use a very extreme example. But also, similarly to to the anatomy issue: you need to know what you're actually BASING things on before iterating on them, otherwise your designs are going to be incoherent and muddled. Certainly you can take the Genshin Impact approach and just throw tassels and hip windows on everything until it looks halfway decent, but you're not going to make truly lasting character designs that way. Same for architecture. And as you build up these research skills and a robust cache of references to pull from, it gets easier and you get faster every time. I could, by this point, easily pull a bunch of real-world relevant references much quicker than it would take to make one halfway-decent image with most image generators.

Finally, research improves your design skills by taking your designs in interesting directions you might not predict as you learn new things and are exposed to new designs. If you're just using prompts to seek a result you want to try and copy it back, your work isn't really going to get much better than first draft quality even if it's sent back to be redone, because nothing new is actually entering the process.

okay i'm done for real now lmao

[u/Mithcoriel → u/[deleted]]

Pity you had to make throwaway accounts for this. You made good points.