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

In an interview with The Game Business, Wizard 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.

 

[BMaC]

It made money so obviously the answer is to make another one...nevermind that the reason BG3 was so successful is solely down to the work of Larian and arguably occured despite the involvement of WotC. Given the huge success of BG3, we can expect the Hasbro suits will be much more hands-on with any BG4 studio. It will, therefore, suck.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

More like "Of course we're going to attempt to make BG4, waste an insane amount of money on it, and either cancel it 3+ years into production, or release a game that isn't even a shadow of BG3".

I don't even mean that like, meanly. I think that's the only plausible outcome here if they develop with one of their in-house studios. If they hand it off to a truly excellent development studio outside the WotC family, maybe that could work, but who would even be interested? And they seem to be indicating here that they wouldn't hand it off. That said, a lot can change.

My personal expectation is that WotC dilly-dallies on this until we're literally in a new edition of D&D, and that we won't see a BG4 for 10+ years from now. In the intervening 4-6 years before production actually starts WotC could very easily drastically change their digital strategy for better or even for worse.

 

[Jadeite]

the reason BG3 was so successful is solely down to the work of Larian and arguably occured despite the involvement of WotC

Didn't Larian staff mention working with many people from WotC and that those no longer work at the company? That sounds like there were people at WotC that attributed to the games success.

 

[mamba]

Of course there will be a BG4, BG3 made enough money to ensure that. Chances are BG3 will also result in quite a few BG4 sales, no matter its actual quality

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Of course there will be a BG4, BG3 made enough money to ensure that. Chances are BG3 will also result in quite a few BG4 sales, no matter its actual quality

Agreed but I think that it is unlikely that a BG 4 will match the expectations created by BG3.

 

[Cergorach]

BG4: Who would make it? Give it to a new unproven studio like Giant Skull and the audience will have zero confidence in it. But which of the established game studios would want to make it without being 'booed' out of the room by fans? But blind fans will probably preorder it anyway, so it's up to WotC to make an extremely budget version of BG4, so they can actually make a profit...

As for Giant Skull, the founder did God of War for Sony and the Jedi games for EA. Working for EA I wouldn't exactly call that a badge of honour, but it does show they have a high constitution/death save against corporate shenanigans... But those three games are NOTHING like BG3 or most D&D games for that matter, that have you running a party instead of just the main protagonist with possibly a sidekick.

Looking at past performance of new game studios making D&D games as their first title is not promising!

 

[darjr]

Agreed but I think that it is unlikely that a BG 4 will match the expectations created by BG3.

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.

 

[sevenbastard]

Occasionally these things work out. If you get enough talented fans of the third one working on the fourth one then maybe they refuse to let it fail. I thinks its healthy to be skeptical, but its also not impossible for someone else to recreate the formula.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What could?

A Larian BG4 almost certainly could.

DOS2 was better than DOS1. BG3 was better than DOS2. There's no reason to believe BG4 by Larian wouldn't have been at least as good as, if not better than BG3, because Larian have been on a straight track of making better and better decisions re: CRPGs for quite a long time now.

But maybe their "good decisions" include ditching BG/WotC to make whatever game it is they're making now? We'll see.

WotC could do everything right and make one of the best games ever and still not match BG3.

Nah.

If it was even 80% as good as BG3 people would love it and be incredibly impressed, and a lot of people would act like it was better than BG3, just because it was newer, had better graphics, used D&D 6E or w/e, and so on. Hell, if it was even 50% as good as BG3, it would enter a top ten of CRPGs ever, and people would be very positive about it.

But unfortunately it's more likely we'd be looking at something much worse than that, because of this issue:

BG4: Who would make it?

Who indeed?

I can think of only two realistic candidates given Larian is out.

1) Obsidian. Obsidian have a long track record of making pretty great RPGs and CRPGs and seem to be on track to be getting better and better at it. Unfortunately they're owned by Microsoft, who seem to be in a bit of a death spiral games-wise at the moment, but on the flipside, most WotC leadership is ex-Microsoft, so maybe it'd be easier to get them for it? I think they could make a BG4 both good and different enough that it'd be accepted as a good game so long as it was a good game, comparisons notwithstanding.

2) Owlcat. Owlcat are also on an upward curve quality-of-CRPG-wise, and are moving into the AAA space (from the AA space), and are specialists in making RPGs/CRPGs based on other people's IPs. Do they have writers as good as Larian? No, but they have ones a lot better than Larian had for DOS2, and could make them better still. They're independent, too.

Using an in-house studio though as WotC seems to want is as Blade put it "ice-skating uphill", and yes, as Blade said, some MFers, WotC in this case, do want to do that. But it'd be a terrible idea.

Also because we're looking at 4+ years from now before they even start on this, most likely, there's the possibility Larian absolutely own themselves with their next game or two, and that they don't sell anywhere near as much as expected (unlikely, I think, but not impossible if Swen leads them into a blind alley), and maybe Larian will be able to say "Well, WotC has changed, so let's make BG4!".