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​

​

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I suspect there's language in the contract that gives WotC a limited time license to use it in just these sorts of cases.

I very much doubt that. I've never, ever, in my entire time following gaming, seen any kind of licence of that type. Have you?

It would be unprecedented and bizarre.

Further, you can't just "use" someone's custom engine - you need literally dozens to hundreds of hours of training - most of it one-on-one, to be able to use it properly, and a time-limited licence would make no sense, because without the company supporting it for you, you'll need to fork that engine and develop your own version of it, because otherwise you have an unsupported engine and there is no possibility you are making it to release with that!

If they were using Unreal 5 and just had some custom modules and assets, I could see them perhaps being willing to sell those, though I doubt they'd come cheap and no way they'd be in the contract, but this is a completely custom in-house engine, and as @fluffybunbunkittens points out, it's seemingly kind of a mess, too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Though they'll likely be AI-voiced on the fly by then...

Click on the "read this story to me" button on any online news site and you will be shocked at how good AI voices already are, even on sites where they're clearly not licensing anything expensive.

If I were a broadcaster or a voice actor, I would be extremely worried. (And probably work on creating my own popular actual play that I could monetize with RPGs and board games of my own.)

 

[Scribe]

Click on the "read this story to me" button on any online news site and you will be shocked at how good AI voices already are, even on sites where they're clearly not licensing anything expensive.

If I were a broadcaster or a voice actor, I would be extremely worried. (And probably work on creating my own popular actual play that I could monetize with RPGs and board games of my own.)

I bought the BG1 expansion that was created recently (lol probably 10 years ago? I dont know) and the voice actors from BG1 were rehired but much older. It was so different I dont think I made it out of the first room lol.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I very much doubt that. I've never, ever, in my entire time following gaming, seen any kind of licence of that type. Have you?

I've seen wildly overreaching licensing agreements and it would be in keeping for Hasbro to put in language asking for everything that's not nailed down. But I defer to your experience that this particular thing isn't likely to be part of such agreements.

Further, you can't just "use" someone's custom engine - you need literally dozens to hundreds of hours of training - most of it one-on-one, to be able to use it properly, and a time-limited licence would make no sense, because without the company supporting it for you, you'll need to fork that engine and develop your own version of it, because otherwise you have an unsupported engine and there is no possibility you are making it to release with that!

Oh, for sure. It takes a complete staff to make this kind of content, in part because they're all using tools developed at different points in time to create different pieces of content, and not all of them are equally as good or user-friendly. And those in-person teams rely heavily on having more experienced folks in the next cubicle (real or virtual) who can explain the eccentricities of the system.

Heck, look at how user-unfriendly most VTT tools are on the DM side, and this is vastly more complicated.

 

[Reynard]

How is BG3 for modding? I know there are some out there, but I haven't used any because I want to finish it vanilla before I mod it. If it isn't too hard, it seems like a prime example of a game that will spend years and years being supported by mods.

 

[Lidgar]

FWIW, the internal file structure of BG3 is a mess, so I don't think Larian's tools are on the level of 'here, you can license our engine/tools for a DnD project', even if they wanted to go in that direction to maintain an income flow while they work on other projects. It also has weird omissions, like magical items are not base item + magic properties stacked onto it, but instead they are all unique items (which makes random loot much more difficult to create).

I think the best we can hope for, BG-wise, is that Hasbro lets it sleep for another decade, and then someone with heart creates a BG4, and some of the characters from this can get cameos there. Though they'll likely be AI-voiced on the fly by then...

Not surprised it's a hot mess under the hood given it was built on DOS 2, which was built on DOS.

At this point, that code must be like the Winchester Mystery House.

 

[Lidgar]

How is BG3 for modding? I know there are some out there, but I haven't used any because I want to finish it vanilla before I mod it. If it isn't too hard, it seems like a prime example of a game that will spend years and years being supported by mods.

Its OK actually (on PC and Mac), especially if you use a mod manager. Having more formal support would be great though. I assume it would make adding mods pretty seamless. Would like to be able to add them through the Steam Workshop.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Its OK actually (on PC and Mac), especially if you use a mod manager. Having more formal support would be great though. I assume it would make adding mods pretty seamless. Would like to be able to add them through the Steam Workshop.

I'd say it's pretty bad, relative to other games, it's just the mod manager most people use is extremely competent, once you understand how it works.

A lot of mods that in any other game would be "free-standing" require several other mods as a dependency, indeed using mods at all requires another mod, some mods which should be trivial simply don't work without editing .json files manually (those which don't work with the mod manager).

Compared to say, normal mod-friendly games, like Skyrim SE, Total War Warhammer 3, any Paradox grand strategy game, for example, BG3 modding is horrible. Compared to say games with no official mod support, it's still worse than most.

Hopefully this changes when the official mod support comes in.

 

[Lidgar]

I'd say it's pretty bad, relative to other games, it's just the mod manager most people use is extremely competent, once you understand how it works.

A lot of mods that in any other game would be "free-standing" require several other mods as a dependency, indeed using mods at all requires another mod, some mods which should be trivial simply don't work without editing .json files manually (those which don't work with the mod manager).

Compared to say, normal mod-friendly games, like Skyrim SE, Total War Warhammer 3, any Paradox grand strategy game, for example, BG3 modding is horrible. Compared to say games with no official mod support, it's still worse than most.

Hopefully this changes when the official mod support comes in.

You're right. I think I've spent so much time tinkering with them that I convinced myself its not too bad. But compared to others, it's not user-friendly.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd say it's pretty bad, relative to other games, it's just the mod manager most people use is extremely competent, once you understand how it works.

A lot of mods that in any other game would be "free-standing" require several other mods as a dependency, indeed using mods at all requires another mod, some mods which should be trivial simply don't work without editing .json files manually (those which don't work with the mod manager).

Compared to say, normal mod-friendly games, like Skyrim SE, Total War Warhammer 3, any Paradox grand strategy game, for example, BG3 modding is horrible. Compared to say games with no official mod support, it's still worse than most.

Hopefully this changes when the official mod support comes in.

I hope that Larian does what Blizzard does and, before they sunset support on BG3 (which maybe they never will, since having it work for years to come means a nice continuing revenue stream for them), they just add some of the most popular options from the mod community into the core game.

I shouldn't need a mod to let me have all the companions with me, for instance. That's just a matter of removing an in-game restriction.