Baldur's Gate 3 almost left out a core piece of the D&D ruleset that was only saved thanks to the RPG's early access community. In D&D, Reactions are a tool that allows players to respond to certain triggers, even when it's not their turn. Perhaps the most famous is Counterspell (which is prompted when a creature casts a spell, and can automatically stop that spell from casting), but there are dozens of other Reactions for all sorts of different situations. If it had been up to Larian, however, they might not have been in the game at all. "We didn't want to have Reactions in Baldur's Gate 3," Vincke told Polygon. But mid-way through early access, the community "really, really wanted Reactions." Larian was worried that the tool would "slow down the gameplay too much," but it bowed to community pressure only to find "'well it's actually better. They have a point!' There was a lot of cursing, and we started plugging them into the entire game and it was a really good moment because it made the game better." Fallout co-creator Tim Cain's long list of "nitpicky" D&D questions for Wizards of the Coast in 2002 might help explain why Larian wanted to move on from the tabletop license after Baldur's Gate 3 Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor thinks putting "the player first over profit" is why the RPG is so successful, urges other devs to do the same: "You're probably gonna sell a s***-ton of copies" Just like Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian's other past RPGs, Divinity will likely launch into early access first That kind of feedback is exactly why Vincke says he hopes Divinity will release in early access. In our big Divinity interview, he explained that early access had become "the blueprint" that had helped shape the two Divinity: Original Sin games as well as Baldur's Gate 3. The games improved massively through early access. Players being invested in it increases the pressure and their participation in it, so you get something really cool out of that process – even if it's painful for the developer. It causes extra development effort, but it leads to a better game, which is ultimately the goal of the entire exercise." Speaking about Divinity in the wake of its announcement at The Game Awards, Vincke said that Larian was keen to move away from the rigid requirements of adapting a tabletop ruleset to a video game. Reactions weren't the only thing the studio was expecting to cut from those rules to keep the game running smoothly - Dispel Magic was removed from Baldur's Gate 3 completely because "it literally would have doubled the size of the game." According to Vincke, "the problem with BG3 was that we had to port an existing tabletop ruleset into a video game, which came with limitations." Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion actor Neil Newbon says generative AI "sounds crap," and any studio using it for dialogue should pay actors to re-record lines: "You've got the money now".