What would you like to see in Baldur's Gate 4?

[Lidgar]

Personally I'd like BG 4 to start in Baldur's Gate perhaps 10-20 years following BG 3. Some of the NPC's from BG 3 are there - Shart, for example (and can be recruited similar to Jaheira and Minsc), but are not the main NPC's, who are all new.

From there I'd like it go Spelljamming or planer, perhaps to Avernus for a confrontation with Zariel. Something to get the story away from the Realms proper.

For game mechanics, I'd like something closer to Solastra, which does a pretty faithful intepretation of the 5e ruleset. The Larian mechanics, while fun a fun take on some of the 5e mechanics, also went a little to far afield for me at times (barrelmancey for example).

 

[Zardnaar]

Depends if it's a direct sequel to BG3.
I can live without the engine for example.

 

[MNblockhead]

The full city of Balder's Gate.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have a question

When dragon age came out they did a connected sequel called dragon age awakening
How hard would it be for a studio to basically do the same thing? Not sure if anyone played the game but awakening had your character with their ending gear and transported them into a new region. Wotc could basically use a new area like waterdeep with just some or all characters returning ?

I suspect most people know this, but the answer is, without the original team, virtually impossible within the 25 year time limit.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Mechanics/engine

I think if a BG4 is going to succeed, they will basically need to "impersonate" Larian's engine. Larian's engine is proprietary, but most of the aspects could be replicated pretty well - you really want to include stuff like throwing enemies and exploding barrels and so on. If you don't have that, the response from the "average player" will be very negative, frankly.

Like, I know some D&D fans like Solasta, but even if you stuck an actually good story/graphics/animation/sound/music on it, the clunky-as-hell, if very "technically correct" implementation of 5E's rules would rapidly drive away about 70% of the potential audience. Doing that as an AAA would financial suicide.

And I don't really want to see something which ignores 5E, because at that point, just make up your own setting and so, you can do better than the Forgotten Realms!

Story

I will be angry as a goose, a really angry one, if they try to continue the stories of the current BG3 characters as playable characters, let alone try and build a game around them, and so will an awful lot of other people. No matter how good they think they are, they're going to mess it up, and badly. Now that's different to featuring a couple of the characters as NPCs or even less involved party members, but even then I'd suggest extreme care was needed. You'd be much better off using the less popular characters, particularly Wyll. Using, say, Astarion as anything but a guy who pops in and makes a mean joke and leaves you'd probably make more people mad than happy.

The mains story should acknowledge the BG3 story, and treat the safest, most boring "good" ending as the ending (or whichever one WotC feels should be "canon"), but it should just be a backdrop. Doing anything more than making it a backdrop is going to end in tears.

Setting

I think this time it should start out in BG3, and you should immediately leave, and not come back until the very end or something, if even then. BG is not a particularly interesting or complex city. I'd like to see them go to some really cool places across the FR, to be honest. It's fine to do this - BG2 isn't set in BG.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think if a BG4 is going to succeed, they will basically need to "impersonate" Larian's engine

I don’t think so, because of the timescale involved. If BG4 isn’t going to be garbage shovelware it’s going to take a good 5 years or so. By which time we will have seen plenty of post-bg3 crpgs that have already started in development, not to mention potentially another Larian game. To succeed, it needs to successfully predict what is going to be popular in 5 years

Probably the fastest way to do BG4 would be to take a game that is already in production, and give it a BG makeover..

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Heresy time: Although I understand the value of the brand name, I'd rather they show us something new/new in the 21st century. Have BG4 be a sequel to Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights or something.

Visit multiple cities along the Sword Coast. Visit the Dalelands. Those are still pretty vanilla -- which is probably the safest way to go, commercially -- but would incorporate a wider variety of flavors and textures.

Alternately, if they want to get a little bolder, give us a (better) Underdark-driven campaign. Intrigue amongst the drow, where the consequences for a bad social roll can be very serious would be appealing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have a question

When dragon age came out they did a connected sequel called dragon age awakening
How hard would it be for a studio to basically do the same thing? Not sure if anyone played the game but awakening had your character with their ending gear and transported them into a new region. Wotc could basically use a new area like waterdeep with just some or all characters returning ?

That was a DLC prepared by the same team (more or less) who had full access to the same engine. Since Larian owns the BG3 engine, and anyone else would either have to license it (and I'm not sure Larian would be interested in doing so) or starting from scratch, it'd be hard.

 

[Zardnaar]

That was a DLC prepared by the same team (more or less) who had full access to the same engine. Since Larian owns the BG3 engine, and anyone else would either have to license it (and I'm not sure Larian would be interested in doing so) or starting from scratch, it'd be hard.

Even if they licensed it out you would have an inexperienced team using larians engine. Which was quite buggy tbh and struggles with elevation.

Not as smooth as say Mass Effect, Assassins Creed Origins/Odyssey, or even Fallout 4 (more stable than that one tbf).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To succeed, it needs to successfully predict what is going to be popular in 5 years

That's impossible to do, it's a fool's errand. CRPGs don't need to chase the "latest and greatest" either. BG3 is proof of that - it's basically Dragon Age but with turn-based combat and D&D rules, so following a template laid down in 2010.

By which time we will have seen plenty of post-bg3 crpgs that have already started in development, not to mention potentially another Larian game.

Indeed - Larians's next game may well be out, because it seems like it will be much smaller in scope. I don't know how many "post-BG3 CRPGs" we'll actually see though. It would take a serious appetite for risk to provide the budget necessary to make a CRPG on a similar scale to BG3, and I'm not sure any major publisher will actually have the desire to do that, and other companies just don't have the resources.

There are major RPGs in development that will release before then, but none seem to be CRPGs. Witcher 4 is sounds like "Witcher but with chargen" so a single-character 3rd-person action-oriented RPG. The Elder Scrolls 6 might be out (if we're lucky), and we all know it'll be Skyrim II: This time in a desert. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will 3rd-person action-oriented though seemingly with a party. There may well be some kind of Elden Ring II (3rd person Soulslike). The Outer Worlds 2 (first-person Scrollslike). Owlcat will no doubt drop a couple of turn-based tabletop adaptions with none of the production values of BG3. WotC's own Exodus will be out (3rd-person Masseffectlike, seemingly).

I could go on, but I don't really see any AAA companies queuing up to make CRPGs, and even if they did, most of the teams who could do it will still be working on their current games for 2-4 years (or more!).

Probably the fastest way to do BG4 would be to take a game that is already in production, and give it a BG makeover..

Definitely the fastest, probably the worst too. This has been done a few times in gaming history, and it pretty much universally ends in tears.