Larian's Next Game?

[Nilbog]

I thought BG3 got it spot on in terms of how open world it was, while playing it I never felt that I was constrained into a particular path or that I was ever wandering aimlessly.
I do think open world narrative games can work, I really enjoyed the Witcher 3, but the key is to always be nudging you into the narrative and not let you forget it as many often do

 

[CapnZapp]

They have indicated there are two games they'd like to make next, and that they would differ in tone and style than their past games:

Larian's next game will have different "tone, style, way of doing it" to Baldur's Gate 3, but won't "dwarf" it

You literally posted a link claiming their next game would be different from BG3. Not any other of their past games.

I read Larian's decision to mean they're fed up by the 5th Edition mechanics. They want a much more unrestrained feel. I wouldn't be surprised if they went back to make DOS3, where they can have as much environment damage and power combo moves as they like.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You literally posted a link claiming their next game would be different from BG3. Not any other of their past games.

I read Larian's decision to mean they're fed up by the 5th Edition mechanics. They want a much more unrestrained feel. I wouldn't be surprised if they went back to make DOS3, where they can have as much environment damage and power combo moves as they like.

I don’t think anyone has said Larian won’t make DOS3. Only that they hope they don’t. And the reason for that hope has nothing to do with mechanics, and everything to do with DOS being a rubbish setting.

 

[Lidgar]

You literally posted a link claiming their next game would be different from BG3. Not any other of their past games.

I read Larian's decision to mean they're fed up by the 5th Edition mechanics. They want a much more unrestrained feel. I wouldn't be surprised if they went back to make DOS3, where they can have as much environment damage and power combo moves as they like.

Yes I literally did. And I was asking what folks on these boards would like to see them make next, which is obviously something other than the BG franchise.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One of the reasons we can be fairly certain that the Nintendo team was influenced by Skyrom and Dark Souls is that they published those two games for the Switch, fir the stated reason that the Zelda team was influenced by them.

If they stated that then that is definitely interesting - I didn't find it when I was looking up actual Nintendo comments on the influences - Google is so crap these days though!

Red Dead 1 remains one of the most underrated games in history I swear.

The joy of execution is a big part of the reason I play video games at all, so there is that.

It absolutely can be, but there was something about this that wasn't sparking joy for me, sadly. I mean, I blew £300 to find that out lol so no-one can say I wasn't committed! Got decent use out of the Switch generally though, and you may be pleased to know eventually passed it + BotW on to my younger sister, who hasn't ever really played videogames much, and she loved BotW and I think basically 100%'d it!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And the reason for that hope has nothing to do with mechanics, and everything to do with DOS being a rubbish setting.

I mean, for me it's absolutely both.

But let me really specific about the crap mechanics, it boils down to three fixable things:

1) The weird-ass Armour/Magic system of DOS2 was, frankly, one of the worst and most counterintuitive combat designs I've ever seen in a turn-based game or a CRPG (balanced parties being an actively bad idea because of it). I believe that, if it had appeared in a different game, critics would have trashed it. DOS2 got away with it, rather than being good because of it, because shenanigans allowed you to work around it.

2) DOS2 (again specifically - DOS1 had this a bit but not as bad) made you upgrade/replace items constantly, to the point where, if you found a cool item, the odds were good it was either unusable, because it was slightly lower level than you, or rapidly became so. This was a very bizarre design choice, where there was a sort of 45 degree linear power slope on item power - so a sword from L3 would be basically a liability by L5. That kind of works in Diablo where loot constantly drops, but DOS2 didn't do that, so this focused the game on item upgrades/replacements, which wasn't good design, nor congruent with the setting/story.

3) Surfaces excessively dominated gameplay to the point where fights became exceptionally boring and repetitive unless you engaged in shenanigans outside the fight and "difficult" fights were reliant on hidden "gotcha" mechanics to change things up rather than actually engaging with their own mechanics. Again DOS2 had this much worse than DOS1.

All of that could be fixed - and fairly easily. But will it be?

I will also say, I think, at this point, significant numbers of action points that can be used very flexibly are a design cop-out/failure of design. Me from 20 years ago would be astonished to hear me make such a comment, but I've played a lot of turn-based tactical games now, and the design restrictions imposed by having more specific limitations on actions - which most modern games do, to be fair - produce tighter and vastly more tactical and interesting gameplay.

I do worry a bit about Larian's gameplay design capabilities. Writing-wise, if they actually choose to do a new IP, they're golden. There's no question they more than have the talent to create a fascinating story with memorable characters. But Larian have actually never made a game with good gameplay design. The closest they've come is Honour Mode rules in BG3 - but that's just BG3 actually doing close-to-5E rules! If we look back, DOS1 and DOS2 are completely unbalanced messes which show no particular aptitude for game design, and all their games before that had notably crap gameplay, like, not even good by Eurojank standards (and I do love Eurojank games).

I'd worry less if it wasn't for Swen's leadership and Bethesda's example. Bethesda have, in Todd Howard, a Swen-like figure. Todd Howard thinks BGS' games have good, modern gameplay. He is uncomplicatedly and objectively incorrect. Even at the time Skyrim came out, its gameplay was wildly lacking compared to similar contemporary games (Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma), and only one game since Morrowind (so in 20 years) has seen any improvement - Fallout 4 - and it was a very minor improvement strictly to shooting gameplay. Starfield doesn't play any better than Fallout 4, despite 7+ years of development - in fact in many ways it's worse. And Swen has said he thought DOS2 had much better gameplay than BG3. He is, like Todd Howard, objectively incorrect. But given he was the director on all three games, and likely will be on future games, it tells us what he's going to see as "good gameplay".

Now, if Larian had highly experienced gameplay and systems designers, who could easily push back on Swen, that might be okay - but they don't. Most of the people designing gameplay and systems for Larian have literally no experience in the games industry prior to DOS2 or BG3. You can see that here:

Baldur's Gate III credits (Windows, 2020) - MobyGames

The official game credits for Baldur's Gate III released on Windows in 2020. The credits include 2,943 people.

www.mobygames.com

This is a highly unusual situation. Hopefully it all turns out well, but I'd be surprised.

 

[Parmandur]

If they stated that then that is definitely interesting - I didn't find it when I was looking up actual Nintendo comments on the influences - Google is so crap these days though!

Red Dead 1 remains one of the most underrated games in history I swear.

Ye, hard to find 7 year old fluff articles about Nintwndo releases. However, they did go out of their way to publish Dark Souls, Skyrim, and Red Dead 1 themselves.

It absolutely can be, but there was something about this that wasn't sparking joy for me, sadly. I mean, I blew £300 to find that out lol so no-one can say I wasn't committed! Got decent use out of the Switch generally though, and you may be pleased to know eventually passed it + BotW on to my younger sister, who hasn't ever really played videogames much, and she loved BotW and I think basically 100%'d it!

Not everything will hit for everyone, bit alls well that ends well.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don’t think anyone has said Larian won’t make DOS3.

The OP stated "They have indicated there are two games they'd like to make next, and that they would differ in tone and style than their past games" which would suggest neither of the two new games are in the same style and tone as Divinity: Original Sin.

Since the linked article only refers to BG3 and not other Larian games, thus not excluding more DOS games, I pointed this out.

 

[Lidgar]

The OP stated "They have indicated there are two games they'd like to make next, and that they would differ in tone and style than their past games" which would suggest neither of the two new games are in the same style and tone as Divinity: Original Sin.

Since the linked article only refers to BG3 and not other Larian games, thus not excluding more DOS games, I pointed this out.

I said that because it is what Swen said. Here is a quote from the article.

The next thing will be "New in the sense that it is different from the things that we've done before."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The OP stated "They have indicated there are two games they'd like to make next, and that they would differ in tone and style than their past games" which would suggest neither of the two new games are in the same style and tone as Divinity: Original Sin.

The actual full quote is:

The next thing will be "New in the sense that it is different from the things that we've done before."

It will be "Still familiar enough, but different," he said, while the "tone, style, way of doing it, are for us certainly new - and I think very appealing. I would love to talk about it already - because I'm very excited about it - but I can't say more. But it's new in that sense."

That tends to rule out a straight-up DOS3 or the like. But it doesn't, for example, rule out a project that Swen previous cancelled, then said they were bringing back, which is a DOS-based Tactics RPG. You could have the very worst aspects of DOS - the dire setting and the awful combat gameplay - but recontextualized with a completely different approach to storytelling, because it's a Tactics RPG rather than a CRPG, and a potentially a different tone, art style, and so on.

Or you could have something very genuinely different, interesting and exciting, where maybe the only "familiar" element is that's a CRPG.

My suspicion though is that they won't make a CRPG and will instead make a pretty mediocre game in another genre, and that's set in Rivellon. And it'll get reviewed incredibly generously but probably underperform sales-wise, because fundamentally, DOS2 and BG3 did well because they're enormous single-player CRPGs, more than anything else.

EDIT - Also and this may be controversial or not, but let me be real and say combat gameplay matters less to the success of CRPGs than any other genre except Visual Novels. That's not to say it doesn't matter at all, just significantly less than other genres involving copious combat. This has protected Larian significantly.

This is really easy to see when you look at the success of CRPGs over the last 20+ years. I gotta go now but might expand on this in another post later.