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Confirmed Gameplay and Features
August 7, 2026 at 09:39 AM
Added machine learning in the animation pipeline, failure-as-content design goal, surfaces and encounter pacing, and an accessibility status note
This page tracks only what Larian Studios has formally confirmed about how Divinity plays. Because the game is early in development, much of its design is still unannounced. Anything not listed here as confirmed should be treated as unknown.
Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
Combat | Turn-based, confirmed by director Swen Vincke |
Genre | Role playing game |
Modes | Single player and cooperative multiplayer |
Setting | Rivellon, confirmed by Larian |
Co-op style | Cooperative play in the same vein as the studio's earlier role playing games |
Ruleset | A new custom system built for the game, not licensed tabletop rules |
Scale | The studio's largest and most ambitious game to date |
Release model | A paid early access phase is planned; not expected to begin in 2026 |
Engine | The fifth iteration of Larian's own Divinity Engine, altered for this game rather than written from scratch |
Movement controls | No native WASD or keyboard movement on PC at launch |
Camera | A hybrid of top down and third person, similar to the studio's recent RPGs |
Loot | Larian has spoken favourably about handcrafted magic items over randomization, but has not stated the final system |
Generative AI | No generative AI art in the shipped game |
Music | Composed by Borislav Slavov, who also scored the studio's recent RPGs |
Production status | In full production as of January 2026 |
Act structure | Old engine size limits on individual acts removed; no cap on how big an act can be |
Character creator | Confirmed, and described by Larian as offering more colours, more options and more control than its last game's |
Companions | A focus on companion characters with deeper relationships, including ties between companions, not just with the player |
Character progression | A new progression system, built alongside the new action economy |
Magic armour | The magic armour system from the studio's earlier role playing game does not return |
Spell slots | None to refill between fights |
Voice work | Over 100,000 voice lines scheduled, recorded by hundreds of actors |
Performance capture | Four new voice and performance capture volumes built, with more in progress |
Mod tools | Planned; whether they arrive at launch has not been decided |
Machine learning | Animation cleanup, retargeting and some added motion in the cinematics pipeline are machine learning assisted and do ship; those models are trained only on Larian's own data |
Failure outcomes | A stated ambition to make failed checks more interesting, with some situations already built where failing produces the fullest outcome |
The class list and the detail of the character progression system. A character creator is confirmed, and Larian has said it offers more colours, more options and more control than its last game's, but the actual options have not been shown.
The magic, skill, and combat systems in detail.
The story and characters.
The structure and size of the world.
The number of players supported in cooperative play.
Controller support and any platforms beyond PC.
Release timing, pricing, editions, and system requirements.
The post launch support roadmap, and whether mod tools will be ready at launch.
Accessibility support. Nothing has been announced, and the studio has not committed to any specific features.
Larian's recent role playing games are known for party based adventures, heavy environmental interaction, and reactive storytelling. The studio has stressed, however, that Divinity is built on a new ruleset and is more ambitious than its past work, so earlier systems should not be assumed to carry over unchanged. This page will be updated as Larian confirms more details.
Larian has confirmed that Divinity supports both single player and cooperative multiplayer, in the same broad style as the studio's earlier role playing games. The exact maximum player count has not been announced. Beyond confirming that co-op exists, Larian has not said whether sessions will use shared progression, drop in and out joining, split screen, or any other specific mode.
Larian has said that companions are a central focus for Divinity, and that the studio wants to push how far it can take the diversity of the cast. A stated goal is to expand the interaction between party members compared to the studio's recent role playing game, so that companions build relationships not only with the player but with each other. The studio has framed this as wanting intra-party dynamics to feel more natural and complex, with banter that goes beyond simply talking.
Romance and friendship are confirmed to return, and Larian has said it wants relationship building to develop more subtly this time rather than escalating quickly. The companions themselves are still being developed: the studio has noted that it takes a long time to build characters to the standard of its recent games, and that the voice actors contribute a great deal to who each companion eventually becomes, so early concepts shift during production. Specific companion names, backgrounds, and the size of the roster have not been revealed.
Director Swen Vincke confirmed that the game runs on a new custom ruleset built specifically for it, rather than a licensed tabletop system. That is a deliberate change from Baldur's Gate 3, which adapted a third party tabletop ruleset. No details have been shared yet about attributes, classes, action economy, or how the system handles environmental interaction, all of which are areas Larian's earlier games leaned on heavily.
The design lead has since described the shape of that work. The team revisited its original ideas for the earlier role playing games, looked at how those ideas worked out in practice, took lessons from its last game's early access and post release period, and built a new action economy together with a new character progression system. The stated aim is a system that players coming from either of the studio's two recent games find intuitive but deep.
One concrete consequence is confirmed: there are no spell slots to refill, so the resource model is not carried over from the licensed tabletop rules the studio's last game was built on. Attributes, class structure, and the detail of the progression system are still unannounced.
Director Swen Vincke and the technical team have confirmed that Divinity runs on Larian's own engine rather than a new third party one. It is the proprietary engine the studio has used and refined across its recent role playing games, carried forward with significant changes tailored to what this game is trying to do. Because of those changes, the team has cautioned that it will not necessarily play exactly like the studio's last release. The studio's technical team has described the Divinity Engine as upgraded for this game, and noted that Larian deliberately keeps its visuals a little behind the cutting edge so the scope stays manageable for the team's size, a tradeoff that owning the engine lets the studio make freely.
The technical team has since put a number on it. Divinity runs on the fifth iteration of Larian's engine, and because the studio owns the engine outright it altered the existing one for this game rather than writing a new one from scratch. Increasing the size and density of the world was a stated goal of that iteration, alongside substantially better visual quality, with particular attention paid to materials, lighting, and character rendering.
Two further goals have been named without detail. The team wants to increase how much impact players can have on the world around them, and has said to expect substantial changes to its physics simulation in future games. It has also stressed that it is not trying to build a general purpose engine, which is what lets it make deliberate performance and technology tradeoffs for the kind of game it wants to make.
Divinity is scheduled to contain over 100,000 voice lines recorded by hundreds of actors, and Larian has said hundreds of thousands more lines will be recorded that never reach the shipped game. Casting began before the reveal but is nowhere near finished, and the studio expects to keep writing and adding new voices well into production.
To carry that volume the studio built four new voice and performance capture volumes, with more in the works. Asked whether conversations with non player characters would again be performance captured the way they were in the studio's last game, the head of animation pointed at that expansion rather than giving a direct answer.
The technical team has confirmed that Divinity removes a structural limit that shaped the studio's last release. In that earlier game, multiplayer parties could not cross between acts individually; everyone had to move to the next act together, which constrained how large each act could be, how the world was built, and how the story was structured. The team has said the new engine iteration removes that limit entirely, with no cap on how big an act can be.
In practical terms, the studio has framed this as letting acts and locations grow much larger than before. Larian has presented it as one of the reasons the game can be more ambitious in scale than its past work, though specific act counts, region sizes, and how independent co-op progression will work in play have not been detailed.
On PC, the game will not ship with native WASD or keyboard movement out of the box, a request the team addressed directly and declined. The camera is described as a hybrid of a top down view and a third person view, in line with the studio's recent role playing games. Both of these are early confirmations rather than a full controls breakdown, which has not been shown.
Larian has said it is conscious of what hardware costs players and treats scalability as important, with performance tracked constantly through production. The technical team has declined to give any specific numbers while the game and the engine are still in heavy development, and no system requirements have been published.
Rising component prices have already changed the plan. Director Swen Vincke has said the cost of RAM and solid state storage reached a level the studio had never seen before, that it ruins the hardware projections a long development normally relies on, and that the team most likely needs to do a lot of optimisation work during early access that it did not want to do at that point in time. That is a statement about development effort, not a hint at requirements.
Larian has confirmed that the shipped game will contain no generative AI art. The studio also said it has stopped using generative AI tools during concept art development, after earlier comments on the subject caused confusion. Larian still experiments with these tools internally across departments to speed up iteration, but has stated that it will not put generated creative assets into the game unless it is certain about the origin and consent of the training data, and that any such model would be trained only on data the studio owns.
A few further details have been confirmed at a high level. Larian has spoken favourably about handcrafted loot over randomization. The magic armor system from the studio's earlier role playing game will not return. Mod support is planned, though it may not be ready at launch. The soundtrack is being composed by Borislav Slavov, who scored the studio's recent releases. The team has also said the game is more grounded in tone than its past work while still leaving room for humor, and that an evil playthrough can leave the world worse than you found it. As of the start of 2026 the project was in full production. Larian has also said the game features a character creator that improves on the one in its recent role playing game, though the available options have not yet been shown.
Two of those details have fuller answers than a one line summary suggests. On armour, the design lead confirmed the magic armour system will not return: characters can still be protected from harm, but players will not have to wait before using their skills on enemies, and the replacement is still being designed and will not be tied to damage. Its stated purpose is to make solo bosses harder to lock down with low level skills.
On loot, the same lead said the approach of handcrafting every magic item worked well last time and was something the team had always wanted to do, and that fully random loot proved confusing in practice. Rules and premade patterns kept being added to make it feel intentional, to the point that randomization saved little time. He stopped short of stating what the final system will be, so treat the direction as stated preference rather than a confirmed design.
Larian's position on artificial intelligence has a second half that is easy to miss. The studio's machine learning director has confirmed that there is currently one example of machine learning generated assets reaching the finished game, and it sits in the cinematics and animation pipeline. The team captures actor performances as faithfully as it can, then uses machine learning models to clean those captures, retarget them, and in places add motion that was never captured at all. Those models are trained exclusively on data Larian already owns.
The studio has also described what its machine learning team is for. The purpose is twofold: solving concrete production problems through automation, and preparing the studio for a future in which machine learning helps drive reactivity to player agency. Neither of those is the same thing as generated art or generated prose, both of which Larian has ruled out of the shipped game.
One design goal has been stated for skill checks and dialogue rolls. The writing director has said the team's ambition is to make failure more interesting, and that there are already a couple of situations in the game where the most exciting and most extensive outcome comes from failing rather than succeeding. Treat that as an ambition and a description of work in progress: the check and roll mechanics themselves have not been shown, and no numbers have been published.
The head of design has talked about elemental surfaces and the length of fights, though as reflection rather than confirmation. Alternative versions of elemental surfaces that change how players have to move around them are worth having, in his view, but the studio probably went too far in its earlier role playing game by giving every surface both a cursed and a blessed variant, to the point where few players immediately worked out what some of them did. Encounter length is also on the team's mind, and the studio says it tries to avoid enemies crawling slowly across the field. Whether surfaces return in Divinity at all, and in what form, has not been confirmed.
Accessibility has been raised with the team but not answered with any commitment. Asked during the January 2026 developer session by a player with no sight whether the game could be played without sighted assistance, director Swen Vincke said he was interested and asked which games handle it well. No accessibility features have been announced for Divinity, and that exchange should be read as interest rather than a promise.
This page will be updated as Larian confirms more details directly. Until then, any system, class, character, or mechanic attributed to Divinity that is not listed under Confirmed above should be treated as unconfirmed. See the Frequently Asked Questions page for short answers to the most common questions.
