D&D General No More Baldur's Gate From Larion: Team Is 'Elated'

Bad news for Baldur's Gate fans--It seems that Larion is out of the Baldur's Gate business. CEO Swen Vicke has announced that Baldur's Gate 3 is not getting any expansions, DLC, or a sequel. Patches and fixes will still continue, however, including cross-platform mod support.

"Because of all the success the obvious thing would have been to do a DLC, so we started on one. We started even thinking about BG4. But we hadn’t really had closure on BG3 yet and just to jump forward on something new felt wrong. We had also spent a whole bunch of time converting the system into a video game and we wanted to do new things. There are a lot of constraints on making D&D, and 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game. We had all these ideas of new combat we wanted to try out and they were not compatible."

-Swen Vicke​

Vicke confirmed this at a talk at the Game Developers Conference, and said that Larion Studios wanted to make its own new content rather than license IP from another company.

He also clarified that a Baldur's Gate 4 was still possible, but that if it happened it would not be made by Larion. Larion is already working on its next big release.

According to IGN, Larion has started work on some BG3 DLC, but it was cancelled.

"You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really coming from the heart, and we’re very much a studio from the heart. It’s what gotten us into misery and it’s also been the reasons for our success."

-Swen Vicke​

According to Vicke, when the BG3 team found out that they would not be making more Baldur's Gate content, they were 'elated'.

“I thought they were going to be angry at me because I just couldn’t muster the energy. I saw so many elated faces, which I didn’t expect, and I could tell they shared the same feelings, so we were all aligned with one another. And I’ve had so many developers come to me after and say, ‘Thank god.'"

-Swen Vicke​

​

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

being a Bhaal spawn has nothing to do with the over all plot aside from a Bhaal Spawn being just one of the main big bads.

The Dark Urge used to be the Chosen of Bhaal.

I’ve beaten it though not as a Durg. It has more to do with the

Spoiler

Dead 3 than just Bhaal

. But yeah I’m sure I missed some stuff.

I’m not going to spoil it, but you missed a ton. The Dark Urge is way more involved in the plot than you think it is.

 

[Zardnaar]

Did you check to see if it is a widespread issue?

Na don't care only happened once. Relative to the other bugs it's nothing.

 

[DarkCrisis]

The Dark Urge used to be the Chosen of Bhaal.

I’m not going to spoil it, but you missed a ton. The Dark Urge is way more involved in the plot than you think it is.

Sweet. Something to look forward to on a (evil)Durg run..... someday.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sweet. Something to look forward to on a (evil)Durg run..... someday.

Dark durge is harder than redeemed.

The ending is kinda funny.

 

[wicked cool]

For what? Not ruining it?

No. Larian approached WotC, made a detailed proposal to make a BG3, and WotC then sat on that, for I believe 2 years, seeing if they got a better offer, and IIRC, even approached other games companies to do a BG3, before "settling" for Larian - now I have no doubt Mearls was genuinely excited about it, but this not something creditable.

Soooo, the girl I used to date at sixteen who realized she was gay should thank me and give me credit for that? Because I'll be honest I don't think so. I mean, WotC didn't necessarily put Larian off licenced IP for life, and some things you just work out about yourself, rather than them being causal, but it certainly wasn't so great a relationship that Larian wanted to continue it.

So neither of those things seem creditable at first glance.

I think the best we can say about WotC is essentially what Swen's said:

1) WotC had (very much past tense) a good relationship with Larian once they finally decided to let them do BG3.

2) WotC didn't do like GW or the like did and tightly and annoyingly monitor their "lore" to the point of inconveniencing the company. This is an assumption, based on Larian not complaining even jokingly about this, and also a bunch of the lore in the game being kind of rubbish, if we're honest - a bunch is stellar, too - but it's just like one of us writing a campaign for a setting we "know" - there are bits of lore we know well, and bits we don't. Tight lore monitoring might have "fixed" that, but what's the real gain?

3) WotC didn't drive Larian away after the game was done, despite his comments being hard to read otherwise. Presumably Hasbro did, though.


Yeah Swen was like "Oh, this stuff isn't 'cut content'" but he never really explained why if it's not "cut content", there was an absolute ton of stuff found in the files which showed the Upper City was originally intended to be a place you could go, with encounters, adventures, and so on. It's always a bit difficult to address this because what actually is "cut content"? To hear game designers talk (even ones I respect), there's no such thing, nothing has ever been cut from any game ever, except if it was bad, always it was never intended for release, but inexplicably developed anyway. And I just put that down to feeling they have to be defensive in order to survive in the modern environment of soundbites and gotchas. It's pretty clear Larian cut and revised a ton of BG3, and quite late on, too. It's actually amazing that the later-game is as well put-together as it is.

They made this deal. Takes 2 . Larian chief has basically said as of today it wasn’t . If you watch his interview he never wanted to really do dlc. I think I’ve seen multiple interviews

Wotc might have waivered as they don’t seem the gambling type.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Swen Vincke says your Baldur's Gate 3 crushes 'now belong to Wizards of the Coast' as the studio leaves D&D behind, prompting a collective nervous gulp

Things will be alright… won't they?

www.pcgamer.com

Even PC Gamer is dunking on WotC over this.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I'm not sure why people seem to think that Hasbro needed to do something to offend Larian. I think it's much simpler than that. It's not that Hasbo pissed off Larian, or that Larian doesn't want to work with Hasbro.

It's that Larian doesn't need D&D anymore.

Larian have been making killer games for years, but they kept going largely unnoticed outside their niche. The Divinity series was made with much the same quality and attention to detail that BG3 was made with. Except they were never breakout hits. They were hits in the top-down, isometric CRPG subgenre. They got nominated for "best roleplaying game."

Baldur's Gate 3 changed that. BG3 is a breakout hit. It didn't just win best RPG. It won Game of the Year. The D&D license brought in players that are now new fans of Larian. Now they don't need the D&D license anymore. They don't have to split the pot between themselves and Hasbro. They also don't have to make stuff that fits into whatever Hasbro is happy with. They can go off and make anything they want and if they can make a good game it's likely to do very well because people are watching Larian now.

That's why people are asking, "What's next for Larian?" and not, "What's next for Baldur's Gate?"

 

[Guest 7031328]

Sweet. Something to look forward to on a (evil)Durg run..... someday.

A Dark Urge run where you're trying your best to be good and honorable fighting your urges is I think the most satisfying way to play through BG3.

 

[Zardnaar]

A Dark Urge run where you're trying your best to be good and honorable fighting your urges is I think the most satisfying way to play through BG3.

Well tgat and origin characters get the most content.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yup that content is also very brief.

Karlachs story is also a but wobbly by act 3.

It's 9.5/ high scores really only apply to Act I
Imho. Act3 has some issues nothing fatal just not as good imho.

Think wife beat the game honor mode in 47 hours and she wasn't exactly rushing things. Act2 is really short.

Calling Act 2 "really short" is a bit misleading - it's extremely quick once you know what you're doing, but when you play through it the first time? And you're being cautious, and reading everything, and talking to all the NPCs and getting involved in things, and having to come up with plans, it's longer a lot of entire other games - including some RPGs!

But certainly on HM I'm most of the way through act 2 now, and it is interesting how, when you know where everything is, how it works, and so, you can really blaze through it. It is smaller than act 1 or act 3.

Most cut content is cut for a reason.

Sure but as @Zardnaar correctly says, at least 6 times in 10, cut content that's still partially in the game was cut because they ran out of time. The other 4/10 is usually most a not time-related, but down to some kind serious change in the plot.

BG3 has both in spades - there was a ton of stuff that was obviously cut when the plot changes re: Daisy and the tadpoles were made, or when Wyll was redone - but there's also a lot of stuff that was pretty clearly being worked on, then got abandoned, and seems in-line with the main plot. It's not unusual at all, but I am skeptical of claims that all cut content was cut because it wasn't working story-wise or the like, or even that a significant amount was. Most cut content that "wasn't working", in my experience, was more literally not working - i.e. unfinished.

It's also often not working the way they want it to. Sometimes mods that bring back cut content turn out okay. most of the time you can tell why the content was cut. Source: Skyrim.

Yeah Skyrim also has both, and it has content that, when re-added, suddenly makes the game make a huge amount more sense, but you can tell they cut it - not because it was just "bad" or something - it's not - but rather because they couldn't get it to work reliably, in an already hugely, insanely buggy game (people forget just how bad Skyrim was at release, especially not on PC).

The Civil War questline is the main one - it definitely got cut for time rather than for being "bad" or something - but it was flatly unfinished - they'd got like, maybe 70% of the way through getting it working. Even the mod, which has been worked on for a very long time, isn't like, reliable. So there was a legit reason to cut it, but they certainly didn't manage to replace it with anything that made the same kind of sense.

Skyrim is also kind of funny because it seems like there are several quests which were cut, for like, no apparent reason - they work, they don't interfere with any of the rest of the game, they're just minor quests, and it's hard to say whether they were intentionally cut at all, or in the hideous mess that is Skyrim, were they just disabled and no-one re-enabled them?