Larian Studios has made it clear that it will not be working on Baldur’s Gate 4, and that its work in the Forgotten Realms can be considered concluded with the third chapter, a masterpiece of the role-playing genre and winner of the latest edition of The Game Awards.
Yet, at one point Larian had already started work on Baldur’s Gate 4, with the Belgian studio even getting a semi-playable build of the new game. This was revealed directly by Swen Vincke, CEO of the company.
“If something is a huge success, obviously everyone asks, ‘When are you going to do the next one?’ And when you, as a developer, come out of this miserable little cave that you’ve been sitting in for many, many hours while you finish your project, you’re vulnerable,” Vincke began. In this highly impressionable state, Vincke was open to the idea of another Baldur’s Gate. “You tend to do the obvious thing, which was really just make an expansion, or a standalone expansion, or start working on a sequel, because that’s the easiest path to take.”
So Larian started working on a sequel. Initially, it was an expansion. “We have the engine, we have everything here, all we have to do is add extra levels or just create new stories: how hard can that be?” Progress was rapid because “the production machine was still hot,” and the studio quickly got a first playable build. But Vincke knew it wouldn’t be easy: “I mean, we probably would have had to redo it 10 times. And do we really want to do this for the next three years?” For an expansion, it didn’t seem worth it. But for a full sequel, Baldur’s Gate 4? Oh yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. Let’s do BG4. Everything we’ve done for this thing, we can just move it over there, people will love it.”
But then it would take even more years, “doing the same thing,” and that didn’t hold much appeal for Vincke or the other developers. “We should be trying to figure out how we can do things that excite us,” he added. So he spoke to his teams, proposing to move beyond Baldur’s Gate 3. And consensus within the team was quick to come. “It changed very quickly, and I don’t think we’ve ever felt better as developers than when we made that decision. Honestly, you can’t really explain or express how much it freed us up.”
Trust Gaming GXT 488 Forces Officially Licensed PS4 and PS5 Headset is one of the best-selling headphones today.
