Baldur’s Gate 3 devs reveal the gruelling development of Divinity Original Sin’s awesome board game  

Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest RPGs ever made, but it owes its existence to the developer’s past series — Divinity: Original Sin. Alongside the development of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian’s Divinity series was also making its return, albeit in board game form. 

As a studio renowned for bringing the beauty of tabletop to video game form, Larian now had to do the opposite. But how did the studio repackage the freedom of video games back into the cardboard toy box? 

At an event in London, we sat down with Larian Studios publishing coordinator Keiron Kelly to discuss the board game’s years of development. An era that spans kickstarting, COVID and the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, the tale of Divinity: Original Sin — The Board Game is a treacherous one. 

From Divinity to Divinity 

Officially announced in 2019, Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game went through countless iterations over its five year development. Starting off as a more simple adaptation of Divinity: Original Sin 2, Larian felt an urge to go further and recreate its signature style of video game freedom back into the tabletop format. 

“The existing team [for the original version] had to move on because we wanted to put more work into the game,” publishing coordinator Keiron Kelly told us. “We had to rebuild a team, and I essentially ended up leading that team because we needed someone from the internal side to see it through.” 

Originally, Larian had planned to work with an outside group to create its board game, similar to games like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter. While this original version was a game that was playable and could’ve been released way back in 2021, Larian felt it didn’t match what it wanted for the series that served as the bedrock of the company. 

“We launched the Kickstarter in 2019, in 2021 we announced a massive delay,” we were told. “Essentially, there was a game here but it’s not ready. We can print this as it is but we won’t be happy with it and you won’t be happy with it. So we took it back to the drawing board. We only did that because it’s an IP we really care about, and we don’t want to be putting out games we’re not proud of.” 

The aim of adaptation 

As a new way to play Divinity: Original Sin 2’s story, Larian did try to adapt everything possible into board game form. However, as we were told, a direct adaptation doesn’t lead to a fun experience. 

“There’s a fantasy of what you want your game to be, and there’s a reality of how you make that an experience you can live with at the table,” Kelly told us. “If you make DOS2: The Video Game as a board game, you’re running spreadsheets to try and process what’s going on. As much as we were fine with the original interpretation, that’s where it was. There was too much headspace in making the game run.” 

The original incarnation of Divinity’s board game adaptation was a “fiddly” game. While it was very direct, the feel of Divinity wasn’t there. Instead, Larian needed to cut things down to a point where Divinity’s spirit lived on, and the flow of the game was properly represented. 

“To a certain degree, I protected the IP or the feel of the game. That was very much my core desire. But it was about making sure the experience could be enjoyed from moment to moment. Unfortunately, [adaptation] is a nuance that has some very heavy ramifications for design.”

“The start is what is the core of the game,” he continued. “For us, it was the freedom of the class system, the combat flow, exploration, the narrative has to be important, your decisions need to matter. The core of Divinity is that narrative consequence, choices that matter, elemental interactions. There’s so much of Divinity we managed to capture without bringing in that complexity of the video game.”

At one point, Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game did stray too far. There were plans to strip the game’s elemental magic system away and water down the current game’s massive branching story. However, these cutdowns caused the game not to feel like the IP that Larian held dear. 

“If you strip back this system, you wouldn’t recognise it as DOS2’s magic system. That was a line. While we were willing to redesign everything, there were core tenants of Divinity we had to preserve.” 

A Baldur’s Gate amount of bugs  

While board games may not seem as complex as the fully interactive worlds of video games, Larian’s penchant for interaction is fully matched in the Divinity board game. Just like Baldur’s Gate 3 and the original Divinity games, players can interact with countless objects in numerous different ways. 

While bugs like glowing genitals and other graphical issues can’t showing their face in a board game, Larian did spend years finding and patching exploits within the Divinity Board Game. 

“Every single board game out there has an errata because inevitable print errors or design errors happen, and we’re no different,” Kelly said. “I’m delighted to say that the actual rules and errors for a game that size is less than 10. So, our errata is actually quite thin for how big the game is, but that’s a testament to the testers.” 

Over the game’s five year development, Larian worked with a large number of testers to pin down issues within its quest structures and combat system. Testers would play through new builds for two months, noting issues and suggesting improvements for the studio to improve, but even that wasn’t enough. 

“They would take six to eight weeks to play through the game because it was so large, but that was just one path,” Kelly told us. “That wasn’t conducive to really good testing. We did get some support from our QA team but the focus there has to be on Baldur’s Gate 3.” 

In the end, Larian hired full-time testers for six months to break apart every possible route in the game. With countless narrative routes, Larian’s designers were sifting through flowcharts to keep the game’s story in line, and testers had to make sure every permutation worked. 

“There were a lot of permutations and angles and flow charts to keep an eye on,” Kelly told us. “It was a lot of work but it was really exciting. We have the mechanics to make these choices five hours ago still matter. There were plenty of times that we had to look at actions that were superfluous. We had to rewrite stories two, three, four times to make sure everything mattered. The biggest concern is if there’s a gap you can’t patch, a narrative hole someone can fall down.”

One of the biggest issues in testing Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game was one not unique to Larian. As a company already used to remote working, the COVID-19 pandemic changed little for the development and testing of Baldur’s Gate 3, but the worldwide lockdown and supply chain shortages caused havoc for Divinity. 

“The good news is remote working didn’t affect it too badly,” we were told. “However, what really made us struggle was physically testing the game. We ended up using families because they were all in their own bubbles, but that was the thing that really slowed us down. COVID definitely scuppered testing. We were making a game designed for people to sit in a room together, and they can’t sit together.”

In the end, Larian finally brought Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game to market, and launched one of the most feature rich tabletop games around. After years of development and countless hours of testing, Larian’s publishing coordinator Keiron Kelly is deservedly proud of the project. 

“It kinda fell on me, so there’s a little bit of: ‘I can’t believe we made this’, Kelly told us. “To a certain degree, I wasn’t meant to be the one to running the team. We were having these outside people doing it, we had to take it internal. I’m incredibly proud of the team, what we managed to do, and I’m still in awe of how long it took. We had a responsibility to backers, we really delayed this game to a point beyond most Kickstarters, and it felt like we owed them something great. As long as the stories keep coming back that they’re enjoying it, I’m happy.”

Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game is available right now on the Larian Store.