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

DammitVictor said:

Or, in other words, the cackhanded submoronic parasites at Hasbro just cost Wizards of the Coast another easy hundred million dollars.

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Or, you know, Larian decided they would like to work on IP they own and has been super successful for them.

Reynard said:

Or, you know, Larian decided they would like to work on IP they own and has been super successful for them.

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Or, you know, you could have read the quote in the post you're quoting before rushing to correct it.

Of course, Larian wants to work on their own projects based on their own IP, and their temporary association with Wizards of the Coast (and their IP) has made that prospect more lucrative than ever. But if they make that announcement immediately following a harsh (but veiled) criticism of that associate's labor practices, it doesn't take a certified internet genius to add two and two together.

DammitVictor said:

Or, you know, you could have read the quote in the post you're quoting before rushing to correct it.

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The post I quoted was a conspiracy theory.

Lidgar said:

Very excited to see what they do next.

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Weirdly, despite loving BG3 and being incredibly impressed by the wild talent levels of the team who work at Larian, I'm not particularly excited, because I don't think Swen has the "taste level" to greenlight something actually great, based on his prior track record. I think he's too attracted to sophomoric edgelord stuff, and grimdark settings, with overwrought and counterintuitive mechanics. Even BG3 started that way at the beginning of Early Access, luckily the massive negative reaction in EA convinced Larian to completely dial back on both.

All that said, and my strong skepticism re: Swen's taste level aside, I don't think this is at all surprising for a few reasons:

1) DLC for games like BG3 needs to be planned out before the game launches, and work needs to start on it either then or shortly after launch, certainly if you're going to take less than 2-3 years to make it.

2) Swen stated immediately after BG3 release that Larian were working on multiple smaller games*, no big games, and seemed surprised by questions re: DLC/expansions for BG3, and sort of tried to waffle them off. Since then Swen has been dodging the question on this for some time, and clearly uncomfortable when asked asked about it.

3) DLC always makes less money than the main game. I mean, this might seem like a trite truism, but I don't think people necessarily realize how much less - absolute insane best case you might sell 50% as many copies of the DLC as the main game (usually only true for a niche indie with hardcore fans), but it's usually more like 10% (excluding packaged-in DLC). The way they stay profitable is that you can put a much smaller team on them, and reuse a ton of tools and assets you already created, and further, their existence helps extend the long-term sales of the base game, and to increase the value proposition it and especially later DLC-included packages present to future buyers.

4) Larian have never really done DLC in a serious way before. They've sold small add-ons and so on, but not really any expansion packs for recent games.

Further, I rather doubt any of Larian's upcoming games were planned to be D&D engine/setting games for a couple of reasons:

A) WotC would be incredibly desperate to say so, and would have convinced Larian to let them say Larian are working on another D&D game. Instead they seem to putting out "we hope to work with Larian again in future" vibes.

B) Swen doesn't seem to like D&D much, nor think much of the FR. This is my personal impression (though I have seen others share it), from multiple pre-release interviews re: BG3. Now this doesn't seem to be true of the Larian team as a whole, but Swen has expressed opinions which amount to both Rivellon being a much better setting than the FR, and DOS2 having much better mechanics than D&D**.

I agree with those who suggest WotC firing basically every single person who helped get BG3 made probably put the final nail in the coffin of that relationship, and whilst I am very sure WotC are trying absolutely everything to convince Larian to make more WotC-based games, I don't think they really have the cash or IPs to make that happen.

It's a pity because I think it's quite likely Larian themselves will disappoint people with whatever they come out with next, and I think that's near-guaranteed if they return to Rivellon and/or make a non-CRPG. Given Swen has indicated he wants to retire relatively soon, I think Larian probably only have 1-2 big games in them as an independent company, because the very second he leaves Larian is going to get sold to Sony or MS (not WotC, they won't have the money).


* = This conflicts with him now saying they are working on a big, boundary-pushing game, so I suspect after they made literally hundreds of millions of dollars, plans changed.

** = To be clear, I believe Swen is extremely wrong about both, but that's a separate discussion maybe.

Ruin Explorer said:

It's a pity because I think it's quite likely Larian themselves will disappoint people with whatever they come out with next, a

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That is a weird take. Do you think it was D&D and Mike Mearls that made BG3 a good game?

I guess if you did not like DOS 1 or 2 you might think this way, but I did like those games and I think if anything the experience with BG3 has probably elevated the studio's next DOS project.

CleverNickName said:

I'm not saying Larian isn't frustrated with WotC, but this seems like a stretch in my opinion. But that's opinions for ya, I guess.

All we know is what they have decided to do, they haven't yet told us why. That's all I'm trying to say.

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It's not that much of a stretch, more like subtext really.

I'm intrigued by this idea of just releasing a game as a game rather than a service to be upgraded and continually revisited for the next 5 years.

TwoSix said:

I'm intrigued by this idea of just releasing a game as a game rather than a service to be upgraded and continually revisited for the next 5 years.

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It'll never catch on.

Reynard said:

That is a weird take. Do you think it was D&D and Mike Mearls that made BG3 a good game?

I guess if you did not like DOS 1 or 2 you might think this way, but I did like those games and I think if anything the experience with BG3 has probably elevated the studio's next DOS project.

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I had a long response to this but when the thread got merged it got eaten. Let me make it as short as possible.

• Rivellon is a bad setting, that's generic, sophomoric (at best) grimdark and was holding Larian back.

• BG3's early EA showed this - it launched with unpleasant, edgelord-y companions like DOS2, a grimdark take on the FR, and situations full of lose/lose or black/grey as the only possible outcomes.

• BG3's early EA also had terrible DOS mechanics slathered all over it, to the point of overwhelming the D&D mechanics.

• These points only changed because of massive negative feedback from the EA, where people were expecting a D&D/BG/FR game, not DOS3. If there had been no EA, or the game was DOS3, the negative feedback wouldn't have been there, and we'd have got a drastically worse (and far less financially successful) game.

• Swen Vincke expressed the opinion in video interviews, shortly before BG3's release, that Rivellon was a better setting than the FR, and DOS2 had much better mechanics than BG3 - this actually attracted some controversy among the few people who watched the video interviews, indicating certainly he had learned absolutely nothing at that point. He actually seemed slightly peeved (in his charming way) that they hadn't made DOS3.

Re: bolded bit, I pray that's true but I really doubt it, given Swen's comments and general attitudes.

As for DOS1/2, both were simultaneously extremely impressive and disappointing:

DOS1 - Basically a Terry Pratchett fanfic written by a 14-year-old Dutch guy (not literally) with a poor sense of humour, a poor grasp on English and a significant misogynist streak. Rescued by fascinating mechanics and an Ultima-esque approach to the world which made it very fun to play at times - but entirely despite the story and characters.

DOS2 - Basically a Joe Abercrombie fanfic written by a 20-something Goth guy with a slightly better sense of humour and grasp on English but still not a good one*. Wildly overrated at release, to the point where I would say that a lot of reviewers are extremely lucky Larian kept patching hard and the Definitive Edition happened, because otherwise they'd be getting called liars for the rest of their careers. It was a buggy and totally incomplete mess at launch (Act 4 barely even functioned). The mechanics this time were far less fun, and only barrelmancy still working really saved it, that and multiplayer chaos. The Definitive Edition corrected much of this, but couldn't rescue it from being sophomoric grimdark.


* = Larian did at least kinda own up to this - With DOS2 they re-wrote huge parts of it for the Definitive Edition (like, most of the game), with primary English speakers and hired huge numbers of writers who went on to write BG3.