Larian's Next Game?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's basically exactly FTL by the sound of it, which is heavily Traveller inspired.

I thought FTL was basically a rogue-like where your ship was being chased by another ship that was inevitably going to destroy you and you just had to keep fending off boarders and repairing your ship as long as you could. Or am I thinking of something else?

Sundog can be pretty grim at times -- you will find yourself scrimping on needed supplies in order to get your ship in decent enough shape to sell one planet's crap to the next crappy planet -- but it's definitely survivable.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I thought FTL was basically a rogue-like where your ship was being chased by another ship that was inevitably going to destroy you and you just had to keep fending off boarders and repairing your ship as long as you could. Or am I thinking of something else?

Sundog can be pretty grim at times -- you will find yourself scrimping on needed supplies in order to get your ship in decent enough shape to sell one planet's crap to the next crappy planet -- but it's definitely survivable.

It's a roguelike but none of the pursuit stuff is true, not sure what game that element is from - FTL you usually lose eventually in some dreadful incident, but my brother finished it (more through luck than judgement) on like his third or fourth go.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's a roguelike but none of the pursuit stuff is true, not sure what game that element is from - FTL you usually lose eventually in some dreadful incident, but my brother finished it (more through luck than judgement) on like his third or fourth go.

Oh, nice. I'm conflating it with some other game, then.

 

[RangerWickett]

It apparently cost 100 million to make BG3. So if I win the lotto, I will bribe their hiring manager to let me write for whatever their next game is.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh, nice. I'm conflating it with some other game, then.

It sounds really familiar, the inescapable pursuit thing, but I can't quite place it. Maybe there's another space roguelike like that. Hmmmmm.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It apparently cost 100 million to make BG3. So if I win the lotto, I will bribe their hiring manager to let me write for whatever their next game is.

I would rather employ someone better than myself to write it!

 

[MarkB]

I thought FTL was basically a rogue-like where your ship was being chased by another ship that was inevitably going to destroy you and you just had to keep fending off boarders and repairing your ship as long as you could. Or am I thinking of something else?

You are being constantly pursued by the Rebel fleet, but it's not open-ended in the default play mode. You have a specific goal and destination, and if you upgrade your ship enough you can prevail in the final boss fight and win the game.

 

[Kaodi]

I think that was perhaps a little harsher summation of OS I & II than was necessary but I can definitely agree that those games have issues, even though I put in close to 300 hours so far on both of them.

I would certainly be interested to see what they would accomplish doing a different genre though. But not Warhammer. I do not think we really need another studio working a Warhammer license at this point.

 

[Zardnaar]

It apparently cost 100 million to make BG3. So if I win the lotto, I will bribe their hiring manager to let me write for whatever their next game is.

Damn that's cheap these days.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Damn that's cheap these days.

It is remarkably cheap, yeah, to the point where I wonder if it's entirely true given the sheer number of employees Larian has (400) and that they're based in Europe, and don't seem to have offshored stuff or extensively used contractors. Especially as non-contractor employees cost a company significantly more than they're actually paid. They're based out of Ireland which makes things a little cheaper generally but only so much.

I would guess the true figure is likely closer to $150m or even $200m, given six years of work, unless they had much more like 200 employees for most of that time. It would also help explain why they sold 30% of the private shares in the company to Tencent in 2019/2020. It's unknown how much Tencent paid for these (again, this was a private transaction, Larian is not publicly traded), but I imagine it was significant. Fortunately, so far Tencent, despite buying into a lot of Western game companies quite significantly, has remained essentially "dormant" so far (also, with Larian, Swen owns 62% of the shares, and Valerie Coessens, who is seemingly in charge of the practical management - as a business - of Larian owns the other 8% so there's not a lot Tencent could do apart from sell their shares).