D&D General WotC: 'Of Course We're Going To Do' Baldur's Gate 4

In an interview with The Game Business, Wizards of the Coast's president John Hight touched on the company's video games plans for Dungeons & Dragons.

Hight told interviewer Christopher Dring “Baldur’s Gate is an incredible game. And of course, we're going to do a successor."

Larian Studios, which made Baldur's Gate 3, has previously indicated that is not going to be involved in any potential sequels.

However, the previously announced game that game studio Giant Skull is currently working on is not Baldur's Gate 4. Hight says "This is not the successor to [Baldur's Gate 3]. We go to Stig and his team to tell an incredible story and bring D&D to a very broad audience. Ideally, the game will appeal to D&D players because it will help them realise their imagination. But it’s also going to hopefully appeal to people that love playing action games, that love the Jedi games, that love God of War games." Giant Skull's game will be a single-player action-adventure game.

Giant Skull's Stig Asmussen spoke a little about that--as yet untitled--game: "A lot of us have grown up on Dungeons & Dragons. And for me, with a new company, this is something that we’re good at. We're good at working with partners. We're good at capturing the spirit of those worlds. It wasn't something that we could just walk away from. It was actually a pretty easy [decision]... Dungeons & Dragons is the definition of a playground. When we had the meeting in Renton [Washington], my mind opened up to the possibilities of what we could do. There’s still a lot of things that we have to abide by. There’s the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. There are the worlds, player agency and choice, building a party, actions have consequences… those types of things."

Giant Skull was founded by Stig Asmussen in 2023. Asmussen previously was the game director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, as well as God of War 3.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why does the cycle last 5+ years now? What happened?

AAA ASSETS baby. In the broadest possible sense.

That's the main thing. Assets are just so much more work to make with more requirements for quality - not just like, 4K textures or higher, but like, detailed, complex, flexible animation systems. Reliable scripting systems which allow for actually-fun gameplay and don't break in the way that seemed kind of okay 15+ years ago. Better quality VA. More playtesting - it might not seem like it, but because these games are so much more complex, they need and usually get more playtesting/QA. It's still often nowhere near enough though, because publishers looooooooove to skimp on that.

People have tried all sorts of shortcuts but so far none of them have really worked, or they've simply become part of the process and expected so the bar just gets raised again!

 

[TheSword]

When? When in the last 15-20 years did an independent studio do that?

Because I can't think of a single example of an independent studio doing that.

And every example I can think of, the actual cause, contrary to your "it just happens man" implication, was directly traceable to the publisher who owned the NON-independent studio pushing them to make bad choices (either directly or indirectly).


No.

The world is not a random morass of dice rolls randomly causing events from a table. Things happen and there's a chain of causation behind them. You can look at a studio and see their situation, and have a pretty good idea of the general quality of certain genres of game they'd put out. There are exceptions, but they're vanishingly rare.


This isn't 2010. Predicting "5+ years" is predicting ONE game dev cycle out now for AAAs. One. That's the equivalent, literally, of predicting 2+ years in 2010. Games that took 2-3 years back then take 5+ now. So you can say "That's a big number" but it's not - it's one cycle. AAs are still closer to 2-3, but even some of them are stretching towards 5+.

Plus, I'm not actually "predicting" much, I'm talking about easy-to-prove and impossible-to-deny difference in the way an independent game dev works vs how a fully-owned studio which only has the money a publisher allows it to have work. There are companies who give the impression of being at a mid-point, but in reality 95% of those are fully-owned, and the moment it's more convenient for a corporate owner to do so than to keep them open, they'll immediately be liquidated. As easy recent proof, I point you to Microsoft's massive array of acquired games companies. Most of those were allowed to run as if they were independent studios for the most part, but then without warning, MS just shut a large fraction of them down, even when they were making a profit or 80%+ of the way through developing a game likely to be profitable, because more short-term gain for MS could be found by just shutting them down and taking their money/money earmarked for them.

If Larian had been bought by a publisher, we'd be having a very different discussion, because then they'd be subject to the same vicissitudes as other companies.

Your comment re: "small studios or large ones" makes me think you're either misunderstanding or intentionally trying to reframe the issue though. This isn't about small vs. large. This is about independent vs. fully dependent on a publisher who actually owns them. As Larian show, an independent studio can be much larger than publisher-owned ones. CDPR also also own themselves and are huge.

Don't think it's any accident the best Western RPGs of the last 10 years or so came out of those two companies.

Actually changed my mind. I’ll bite. You're clearly invested in this topic, but you're coming at my post like it's some kind of naïve shrug at causality, which it absolutely wasn't.

When I said “it just happens,” I wasn’t suggesting the universe rolls dice and games magically fail. I was pointing out that even independent studios—yes, the ones supposedly free from publisher meddling—can still wreck their own franchises. Case in point: Dawn of War III. Relic was independent when they made DoW I and II, and by the time III came around, they were still operating with a ton of creative control. And yet they completely botched it. That wasn’t some evil publisher twisting arms—it was a studio misreading its audience and abandoning what made the series great. Sega only made the decision to pull the plug when it was clear the game was on its ass.

You’re acting like independence is some kind of golden ticket to quality. It’s not. It’s a structural advantage, sure, but it doesn’t stop bad design decisions, poor pacing, or tone-deaf creative direction. Independence doesn’t mean infallibility.

Also, your point about dev cycles being longer now? Yes you’re right. But that just means there’s more time for things to go sideways. Five years is a long time—teams change, visions drift, and priorities shift. Independence doesn’t protect against that either.

You’re trying to frame this like I’m ignoring causation, when really I’m saying causation is messy. It’s not just “publisher bad, indie good.” Sometimes studios screw up all on their own. Pretending otherwise is just wishful thinking

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You’re acting like independence is some kind of golden ticket to quality.

I said that wasn't the case so not sure where you're getting that from...

The difference is you make your own mistakes and thus don't randomly cancel games just so some upper-mid management exec can get a larger bonus. Which happens constantly now, and which longer dev cycles make a much bigger threat.

Also, your point about dev cycles being longer now? Yes you’re right. But that just means there’s more time for things to go sideways. Five years is a long time—teams change, visions drift, and priorities shift. Independence doesn’t protect against that either.

Your point was my predictions were too far out. They ain't.

Sometimes studios screw up all on their own. Pretending otherwise is just wishful thinking

Good thing I didn't lol! I said non-independent studios make worse decisions because they have to and get games cancelled or entire studios deleted at the capricious whims of execs.

When I said “it just happens,” I wasn’t suggesting the universe rolls dice and games magically fail. I was pointing out that even independent studios—yes, the ones supposedly free from publisher meddling—can still wreck their own franchises. Case in point: Dawn of War III. Relic was independent when they made DoW I and II, and by the time III came around, they were still operating with a ton of creative control. And yet they completely botched it. That wasn’t some evil publisher twisting arms—it was a studio misreading its audience and abandoning what made the series great. Sega only made the decision to pull the plug when it was clear the game was on its ass.

Not quite.

Relic Entertainment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Relic were never independent when they released a DoW game (they mostly developed DoW1 whilst independent). You may have been under the misapprehension that they were, but the fact is they weren't, sorry.

As for "they made their own mistakes with DoW III", maybe, but where's any kind of quote from them or even the publisher saying that? I'm not trying to be mean but you were literally wrong when you said they were independent.

 

[TheSword]

Yeah. Shouldn’t have bitten. Why don’t you learn Sword.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I’d be all over that. Just find it doubtful that is something that a WotC game studio would do well. One can hope.

Yeah, I don't expect anything like that, but I would enjoy it!

 

[Parmandur]

What could? BG3 was lighting in a bottle. WotC could do everything right and make one of the best games ever and still not match BG3.

I honestly don't know if Larian could capture the same lightning if they tried, probavly a big part of their wanting to do something else and new.

 

[Lidgar]

Yeah, I don't expect anything like that, but I would enjoy it!

Me too. I think you described a perfect mashup for DS.

 

[wicked cool]

Nobody actually knows. There’s a chance bg4 could be better than larians next game

But why/how

I’m sorry but it’s 5e d&d
I’m invested in solasta 2 mainly because it’s d&d rules and I’m not interested in the crunch of pathfinder .
If they bring back some of the characters I’m invested

Cd project I was invested in Witcher 3 but not in cyberpunk especially as cyberpunk was a buggy mess for a long time

I tried larians other games and they weren’t great and the studio was on the ropes. Literally their pitch for Bg3 was so bad they begged fans r a second chance (heard it from a Sven interview)

 

[belsonic]

What I don’t share is the general sense of pessimism.
Great games can come from small studios or large ones.
I’ve seen a great franchise be wrecked by the same studio that made the first two installments. Larrian keeping it is no guarantee of success either.

Game franchises come and go, some installments are better than others. It’s just how things roll.
It feels like you’re making a lot of generalizations with a heck of a lot of certainty for someone predicting something that’s what 5+ years out?

I don't really know how you look at the current state of video game development without a sense of pessimism, and I don't think Wizards of the Coast really knows what it's getting into by throwing their own hat in. If recent history is any indication, they throw their hat into video game development, staff up, realize how risky of an investment it is, get cold feet and bail out, and a bunch of great and talented devs are thrown to the wind yet again. Maybe you've seen franchises get wrecked by studios but in my experience, the failings of those studios are birthed from the C-suite.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nobody actually knows. There’s a chance bg4 could be better than larians next game

In the sense "there's a chance" a random billionaire could have written you into his will without you knowing, sure.

I tried larians other games and they weren’t great and the studio was on the ropes. Literally their pitch for Bg3 was so bad they begged fans r a second chance (heard it from a Sven interview)

This is not true, and you certainly did not hear the first part from an interview with Swen.

The studio was absolutely not "on the ropes". That's literally the opposite of what was happening. DOS2 made a very large amount of money because it sold a staggering 7.5m copies, most of them at full price, millions in year one. It was the bestselling new game on Steam in 2017, even!. In fact they made so much money that they opened new sub-studios in new locations, and hired all the writers that they ultimately used for BG3, and even got them to fully re-write DOS2. This is well-recorded fact, to be clear, it's not up for debate.

Re: the second part, you mean Swen asked WotC for a second chance to pitch? Because that is true. However it's not particularly exotic or bizarre or a "hail mary". He didn't get told "no" the first time, he just didn't get told "yes", because to get a yes, he needed to a number of things before WotC would allow him to pitch to the people who could give him a yes. He kind of got given a quest by WotC lol. The Wikipedia page actually details the saga:

Baldur's Gate 3 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But again, to be clear, no, Larian were not "on the ropes", that's provably wrong and Swen has never said that. On the contrary, Larian were riding high. That's why they were able to hire up so they had 300+ staff (from like 100-ish) and fund tens of millions of dollars of development themselves! WotC did not contribute financially to BG3's development (probably a good thing, it's likely why their cut of the revenue seems to have been like 8-12% rather than much, much larger).

Also claiming DOS2 was "not great" is pretty funny: Divinity: Original Sin II Reviews

93% Metacritic

It's one of the best-reviewed games in history... Original Sin 1 got 87%, which is bloody impressive.

Now I think reviewers were a bit too kind to both (especially 2), but calling it "not great" and implying Larian were in trouble despite it selling 7.5m copies is just silly business I would suggest. It was excellent if self-audience-limiting game.

It is genuinely amazing to me how much mythology that's just trivial to disprove people make up about games. Thankfully search engines still function and this is recent enough that articles are still up and so on.