After the enormous success of “Baldur’s Gate 3,” Larian is saying goodbye to “Dungeons & Dragons” for the time being. The Belgian studio almost developed another game in the universe.
Last March, Swen Vincke, founder and head of the Belgian Larian Studios, spoke about the great success of “Baldur’s Gate 3”. He also stated that his team did not want to work on an expansion or a sequel. The developers would rather concentrate on two new projects, one of which is codenamed “Excalibur”.
However, as Vincke recently revealed in the run-up to the first anniversary of “Baldur’s Gate 3”, the studio did not always think this way. Not only did work begin on an expansion for the popular role-playing game, but Larian also had tangible and playable material for a discarded “Baldur’s Gate 4”.
Players liked their “Baldur’s Gate 4,” says Vincke
“When something is very successful, of course everyone asks: When is the next one coming?” Swen Vincke said in a recent interview. “And when you, as a developer, come out of that small, miserable cave where you sat for many, many hours while you finished your thing, you are vulnerable.”
In this vulnerable state, the developers first thought about an expansion for “Baldur’s Gate 3” and then even another game. “You tend to do the obvious, which is to make an add-on or a standalone add-on or work on a sequel, because that’s the easiest way,” Vincke continues.
So the studio started working on an expansion first. Progress came quickly. After the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, however, the team knew that development would not go smoothly. Did they really want to do this for another three years? The work didn’t seem worth it for an expansion.
Studio already had playable material
However, things would be different with a completely new game. “Oh yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. Let’s make BG4,” said the Larian boss. “We can put everything we did for that thing into it, people will love it.”
However, this would have meant that the developers would have had to spend even longer “doing the same thing”. This was not particularly appealing to either Vincke or his developers.
“We had to think about how we could do something that we were excited about,” said Swen Vincke. Together with the team, it was decided to leave “Baldur’s Gate” and “Dungeons & Dragons” behind. “The tide turned very quickly and I don’t think we as developers have ever felt better since we made that decision. Honestly, you can’t explain or express how liberated we are.”
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