Baldur's Gate Larian is moving away from D&D, no BG3 DLC or BG4

[Abu Antar]

Either do an isometric cyberpunk game, or isometric sci-fi rpg.

Alternatively, an Ego Draconis sequel.

 

[mondblut]

Releasing a complete game in one go? Not milking a successful product for DLCs until everybody is sick of hearing the name?

Are they even aware it's current year?

Anyway, it's time for him to go back to the roots and use the accumulated experience and resources to make that Schwarze Auge LMK game. Heck, he can probably just buy Schwarze Auge wholesale now and do whatever he wants with it.

 

[Space Satan]

You can go for Warhammer. Win-win as GW will give licences to hobos near you railroad station. And with WhFB you can shove all the wild stuff with no problem.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Win-win as GW will give licences to hobos near you railroad station.

GW might give the licence to a hobo, but will then post a dozen men with baseball bats near said hobo's fridge box to make sure his lollipop-sticks-and-used-condoms version of the setting adheres to GW's vision. Not sure Sven wants to deal with that.

Also, WotC went through a massive purge of older creative talent about two-ish years ago, so it doesn't surprise me the person who worked with Sven is gone.

 

[DemonKing]

A bit sad actually, as I enjoyed BG3 more than the Original Sin games...although obviously there are a lot of advantages to Larian going their own way with a non-licensed IP with regards to design and financial incentives.

BG4 will likely be a bit of a poisoned chalice for whoever inherits the IP after the massive success of BG3, although I can see Hasbro trying to license the engine from BG3 and farming it out to other developers similar to the Bioware IE engine back in the day.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

Even aside sven not wanting to rely on other company IP, this is unsuprising. Remember BG3 is BG3 and not BG4 because WotC wouldn't extend Bioware license despite massive success of BG1 and BG2 forcing them to downsize BG3 to Add on.

 

[luj1]

Unusually ballsy move from Sven and Larian here, since WOTC on their side has been extremely gracious and full of praises for Larian. This level of bridge burning seems unnecessary

So Swen refused that which Soyer would suck dicks in the subway for.

 

[Late Bloomer]

They should move away from gaming entirely.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

On the one hand, I admire Swen for what he said there and for sticking to his guns re. not exploiting the BG3 success in a predictable way. On the other hand, I prefer the FR as a setting to their own Divinity IP

I think ultimately, the 5e ruleset cramped Larian's style too much. It's kind of ironic, and a bit sad, that Larian won the big prize of doing a BG game, but the mechanics they were stuck with are unsuited to big, spectacular combat of the kind they prefer.

Even a Belgian-developed RPG campaign setting can't be as bad as Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms:

Welcome to Ed Greenwood's magical realm, where orgies are normal. 1d4chan has more examples.

 

[Stoned Ape]

If they do another Divinity game I hope they totally scrap their character system and combat mechanics. I'm sure if they really tried they could come up with something that isn't quite as painful and boring to play as DOS 2 was.

Their lolrandom setting could do with being chucked in the bin while they're at it, too.

 

[Cyberarmy]

OFC they'll move on, they murdered the Baldur's Gate (for us at least) IP and put it in the ground.

 

[Shrimp]

I don't really care about the Divinity universe. On the other hand I don't think Larian does either (Outside of Sven having a nostalgic attachment to it) since their writers will just conjure up some random new shit that at best contradicts previously established canon or story elements, or at worst outright contradicts them or retcons them. No matter what setting they use their games will most likely always have a light-hearted and generally goofy tone, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that's exclusive to the Divinity series. Considering BG3 was their attempt at making a grandiose and serious story I'd quite frankly prefer if they went back to doing something with a smaller scope.
I think making a DND game did them a favour by nudging them towards an existing game system which, at least to some extent, dampened their ability to go all-out with homemade character building nonsense like DOS2's secondary armour health bars and general stats exponentially increasing with every level up.

 

[Space Satan]

GW might give the licence to a hobo, but will then post a dozen men with baseball bats near said hobo's fridge box to make sure his lollipop-sticks-and-used-condoms version of the setting adheres to GW's vision. Not sure Sven wants to deal with that.

Owcat said that GW actually were not limiting them or telling how to make a game, just saying what is allowed within canon and what it not and advising how to fit\adapt their existing stories that were not fitting to make it into the game. And that is perfectly healthy approach, see no problem with that. ompare it to Bioware's "Design by committee" or sweet baby inc faggotry.

 

[Azdul]

Plz, no more divinity. Can't stand the lul so random world of divinty.

Sven said that their next game is not Divinity: Original Sin 3.

 

[Shrimp]

Plz, no more divinity. Can't stand the lul so random world of divinty.

Sven said that their next game is not Divinity: Original Sin 3.

The game not being D:OS3 does technically not exclude it from being a Divinity game. Aside from Dragon Commander there's also the separate Divinity series (not to be confused with Divinity: Original Sin) which they haven't touched in over 15 or so years at this point.

 

[Raghar]

DnD 5E is quite bad, so I'd glad Larian is moving away from that.

 

[Infinitron]

A bit sad actually, as I enjoyed BG3 more than the Original Sin games...although obviously there are a lot of advantages to Larian going their own way with a non-licensed IP with regards to design and financial incentives.

BG4 will likely be a bit of a poisoned chalice for whoever inherits the IP after the massive success of BG3, although I can see Hasbro trying to license the engine from BG3 and farming it out to other developers similar to the Bioware IE engine back in the day.

I'm fairly certain that WOTC don't have any rights to use Larian's technology.

 

[just]

so knowers
is it because wotc got too greedy

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Sad. I would rather see them make Waterdeep RPG, than make another Divinity. Can't stand Divinity setting.
But this decision mostly due to genius management of Hasbro.

We learned last year, during Hasbro's big layoffs, that they fired basically everyone who worked with Larian.

And working with that mumbo-jumbos angered Swen

"Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started," Vincke said, while collecting the GDCA Best Narrative award for Baldur's Gate 3. "I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over.

"It's always the quarterly profits," he continued, "the only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say 'shit I'm out of developers' and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it's just broken...

"You don't have to," Vincke went on. "You can make reserves. Just slow down a bit. Slow down on the greed. Be resilient, take care of the people, don't lose the institutional knowledge that's been built up in the people you lose every single time, so you have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off."

A common problem in the IT/Dev world, sadly.
Hire crew, toss crew away at first opportunity, have to hire people again because you tossed the guys who knew how to work your code away, now you have a bunch of newbs having to start from zero on legacy code, wash, rinse and repeat.

Or alternatively,

Hire crew, don't give them any advancement, better perks or real pay raises, do nothing as inflation eats their income, crew eventually saves up, finds a better job and quit. Surprised pikachu at the fact your dudes left because you stagnated their wages for years, hire new guys, have them start from zero, wash, rinse and repeat.

I saw a guy in my last job do the latter. Funniest part is that the bosses actually had plans for him, but they never told him until it was too late, so he just got another job lined up and quit.

There's a reason that the common sense in the Brazilian dev world is that if you want higher pay, you get another job. These companies could be growing with their functionaries, but instead they prefer to treat them like disposable paws. Then wonder why everything is shit when they keep getting rid of the people who literally have their entire code inside their heads. Well duh, your code sucks because you pay Mid-level wage to seniors and junior wage to mid-levels, and in the end everyone gets fed up and decides to instead go work for foreigners in exchange for gringo money.

My brother works for the same company since the early 2000s, but they pay him like x10 what I make and give him some pretty cool perks. He would be genuinely rich if he wasn't a spendthrift who lives in one of the most expensive cities in the country and doesn't know how to invest.

 

[Shrimp]

so knowers
is it because wotc got too greedy

I don't keep up with whatever goes on at WOTC, but based on everything I do know about them I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
I assume there's something very specific that triggered the rant mentioned in this article
https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-boss-blasts-publisher-greed-behind-layoffs

 

[Fedora Master]

Good riddance. Let them go back to their own settings and back into obscurity.

 

[Grunker]

No DLC is whatever, but for a company lead that talks so much about being in it for the games and the community (which I actually believe he believes), it's kind of weird he doesn't mention mod tools at all. If BG3 is to live on as more than the sensation of 2023, that's what it really needs.

 

[Shrimp]

No DLC is whatever, but for a company lead that talks so much about being in it for the games and the community (which I actually believe he believes), it's kind of weird he doesn't mention mod tools at all. If BG3 is to live on as more than the sensation of 2023, that's what it really needs.

Does it really not have mod tools yet? I remember them talking about it when the game launched, so I figured they would've released them by now.

 

[Grunker]

They said they *might* do it just after release, then never mentioned it again. And they said it when they said they might do DLC as well. So likely dead. I asked Swen on the twits, prolly not gonna reply tho.

 

[Azdul]

A bit sad actually, as I enjoyed BG3 more than the Original Sin games...although obviously there are a lot of advantages to Larian going their own way with a non-licensed IP with regards to design and financial incentives.

BG4 will likely be a bit of a poisoned chalice for whoever inherits the IP after the massive success of BG3, although I can see Hasbro trying to license the engine from BG3 and farming it out to other developers similar to the Bioware IE engine back in the day.

I'm fairly certain that WOTC don't have any rights to use Larian's technology.

I think someone will license the engine from Larian to make another D&D game with WOTC. The same way Gold Box and Infinity Engine were used to churn out D&D titles for next 4 years.

Even if the engine was not designed for licensing - it's an easy way for Larian to earn few bucks - and for 3rd party to save a year of development.

I suspect that a smaller D&D title with a lot of white textures is already in development - and will be announced in 2025.