They could and I could see WoTC having no issue with this, but I am not sure about Hasbro.
D&D (2024) Wizards of the Coast promises to release more “CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3” without Larian
- Thread starter Henadic Theologian
- Start date
mamba
Legend
much riskier than just licensing it. Well, they already own several studios from my understanding, so let’s see if it is more than a waste of money
Bae'zel
Hero
I dunno, to each their own, but the “redeemed dark urge” storyline was pretty damn amazing to me. Far better and satisfying, dramatically speaking, than the standard “Tav” protagonist.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
I suspect in the end the brand will be seen as "family-friendly" for adults but "for mature audiences" for teenages. Dark Sun like Ravenloft doesn't need to show too much but to know how to insinuate.
Let's remember today to produce a AAA videogame that doesn't belong to a popular franchise is a very risky bet. I doubt seriously videogame developers wanted to much the licence of a no-videogame franchise owned by other company.
Ravenloft is perfect for a survival horror style "Haunting Ground" or "The Rule of the Rose".
My idea for a Dark Sun survival videogame. A "fugitive" (ex-slave) who escapes travel to the region of Kalidnay (in Athas, not in Ravenloft domaing) where nobody else dares to go. There are mutant monsters and some undeads, but also a little surprise, plant monsters who hunt undeads. How is possible? The secret faction from the black spine module found "traces" of "voidharrow", a dangerous sustance (from the novel "Under the Crimson Sun"). Like cliche dumbs they started to experiment and when they lost the control they evacuated as soon as possible leaving the plant-monsters in the zone. The good new is Athasian genasies were in the zone and they left intentionally some "biopunk gadgets" to be used against defilers, undead and other tainted or unholy menaces.
A strategy D&D game is possible and Dragonlance and Birthright should be good options but we need a diversity of factions. The plane of Archeron is perfect if you want a space of endless war. Ysgard is other place where you could be fighting forever like it was a game.
Now I doubt seriously a future videogame focused into Drizzt because the studio "Atomic Arcade" is working in a project about Snake-Eyes (G.I.Joe).
Skeleton Key studio was working in a horror game but this was cancelled.
Let's remember today to produce a AAA videogame that doesn't belong to a popular franchise is a very risky bet. I doubt seriously videogame developers wanted to much the licence of a no-videogame franchise owned by other company.
Ravenloft is perfect for a survival horror style "Haunting Ground" or "The Rule of the Rose".
My idea for a Dark Sun survival videogame. A "fugitive" (ex-slave) who escapes travel to the region of Kalidnay (in Athas, not in Ravenloft domaing) where nobody else dares to go. There are mutant monsters and some undeads, but also a little surprise, plant monsters who hunt undeads. How is possible? The secret faction from the black spine module found "traces" of "voidharrow", a dangerous sustance (from the novel "Under the Crimson Sun"). Like cliche dumbs they started to experiment and when they lost the control they evacuated as soon as possible leaving the plant-monsters in the zone. The good new is Athasian genasies were in the zone and they left intentionally some "biopunk gadgets" to be used against defilers, undead and other tainted or unholy menaces.
A strategy D&D game is possible and Dragonlance and Birthright should be good options but we need a diversity of factions. The plane of Archeron is perfect if you want a space of endless war. Ysgard is other place where you could be fighting forever like it was a game.
Now I doubt seriously a future videogame focused into Drizzt because the studio "Atomic Arcade" is working in a project about Snake-Eyes (G.I.Joe).
Skeleton Key studio was working in a horror game but this was cancelled.
I will take your word for it. I have never delved into the financing of games but I suspect that has elements in common with movies and the like. In that, they fire money at the wall and sees what sticks. Hoping that the successes pay for the failures.
A winning team can have a number of successes if not pushed too hard and broken.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
That's an issue with Larian's games generally, and comes directly from it being Swen Vincke's attitude, essentially, but I feel like you're overstating it as an issue with BG3.
BG3 supports playing good very well. It is true that Durge was originally the only way to have a "custom" PC (but this changed before the game even hit Early Access!), but let's be real, not only were there also six origin characters who you could also play as, approximately half of whom are "Good" if played according to their personalities (Karlach, Wyll, Gale), but playing Durge as good (i.e. "redeemed Durge") is probably the best way to play BG3, and frankly, is not at all dissimilar to the plot of BG1 and BG2, where you are Bhaalspawn.
The idea that playing good is "boring" and "hollow" is pretty silly imho and certainly is pure opinion of the most "everyone's got one" kind. There's no lack of "good" content, there's no lack of "good" endings (indeed, it was the "evil" endings that they had to patch in later). So this strikes me as projection of opinion more than fact of game design.
To be clear, I was majorly concerned about this precise issue, based on DOS1/2. I worried that that BG3 would be another crapsack world deal with deeply hateable characters, and at the very start of Early Access (I didn't buy BG3 EA because of this, I got gifted it, note), it actually was kind of like that - the companions were generally pretty annoying (especially Shadowheart), and there a number of situations which only had negative/grimdark resolutions.
Swen defended this by saying they were only having the more "evil" companions in at first, but in retrospect that clearly wasn't true given Wyll and Gale were there, and Minthara wasn't.
There was immediate backlash on the BG3 forums, subreddit and Discord though, and Larian started backpedalling pretty rapidly. The main complaint was "This is the Forgotten Realms, and this is D&D, we should be allowed to be good guys/heroes". And to Larian's credit, they did actually change things a lot. They toned down how jerky all the companions were (Shadowheart was the last to be fixed), and they added solution to situations weren't lose/lose-type grimdark deals, and indeed with one situation, they ended up removing it entirely, because it was just too tonally weird too early on. What we got in the end is a very far cry from DOS2, it's not at all the same deal.
Now, it is worth noting Swen has some... opinions... which may influence future games:
1) As noted, he's fascinated by "evil" or "dark background" characters. But he's not in charge of the writing or story of future games. So how relevant this is, I'm not sure.
2) At the release date of BG3, Swen thought DOS2 had "better" combat gameplay. I think this is an astonishing position, given that DOS2's combat is hugely criticised as being weird, counterintuitive, and all about slathering the entire battlefield in various effects rather than doing anything tactical/interesting, but again, Swen doesn't do the gameplay design, merely approves it, and it seems like he listens to people.
3) At the release date of BG3, Swen thought DOS2's setting, Rivellon, was a "better" setting than the Forgotten Realms. Obviously that's a matter of taste - both are painfully generic fantasy settings - the FR is actually slightly less generic. Rivellon is a crapsack world (as per the trope), which somehow makes it even more generic. Fortunately, Swen confirmed that DOS3 is not one of the games they were considering/working on post-BG3 and "Excalibur" the game they seem to be working on now is apparently an original IP (or so he implied)
So I think it's quite likely any future is going be somewhat dark - but an awful lot of good CRPGs are fairly dark, so I don't think it's a big concern. I strongly suspect they've learned from BG3 that people don't want horrible characters and deeply depressing settings, even if they want somewhat messy ones.
Sure, they wanted to do something else. That's fine. But you keep up the relationship and maybe down the road Larian decides to revisit the franchise. Or maybe they'd be interested in a different D&D setting and story. There are lots of possibilities.
And meanwhile, nothing stops you from making deals with other studios for other licenses. That's the great thing about licensing deals. You aren't single-tracked, you can cast as wide a net as you have money and time to manage.
Making video games is not easy. It is, in fact, extremely hard.
I'm not privy to WotC's balance sheet, but I doubt Dark Alliance was profitable at all, and I'm quite sure Sigil was the equivalent of setting a large pile of money on fire.
Successful games are profitable, but unsuccessful games can incur enormous losses, and it isn't a matter of throwing money at the problem. To make a profit cranking out games, you need a capable team, and the only way to know if a team is capable is to see them produce a successful game. WotC has produced one disaster after another going back decades.
1) Agreed.
2) I thought DOS2 combat was great, and really enjoyed its continuation from DOS1. The various effects "slathered" on the field could be extreme, but at their basic level, they did enhance tactics.
3) As far as generic fantasy setting go, its their history that make it for me. Rivellon's genericness* was offset by the somewhat fascinating history for me, it was stuff that I hadn't heard before. (Granted the FR 3.0 campaign setting is the best example of a detailed generic setting ever.)
*Genericness can be a strength, in that it allows for room for your imagination to fill in the blanks, the original GH setting was strong for this. Naturally, that effects more in a TTRPG than it does in a CRPG, where things are set in stone. But it still holds some value, i.e. keeping you from being overwhelmed in useless trivia.
Its a balance.
It is still one of the few directions they can go if they want to squeeze more money out of the IP. And the hits make up for the losses. The biggest issue with WoTCs efforts is that they keep taking the big swing instead of starting out small and building up a team and experience. WotC has had successful licencing deals over the years but it always seems to be an afterthought. They have a successful licence like BG 1 &2 or Neverwinter but then nothing for years.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
But nothing like so much fun.
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