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

In an interview with The Game Business, Wizards 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.

 

[wicked cool]

A loss in 2022 is not the same thing as "verge of bankruptcy in 2022."

It would be honest to walk that particular claim back, no?

I go by what I read. Most cases if you report 2 years of losses in a row you are in finial hardship (they reported 1) They had flirted with bankruptcy in the past and went all in on Bg3
Bg3 was the game that set them up for true success. They needed wotc to give them the chance to use a great ip

Reading a similar story about owlcat and how they have reported losses but couldn’t invest what Larian did

 

[wicked cool]

More information and somewhat speculation
Sven own 51% of the company but 30% is owned by a company called tencent which is a multinational company
My guess is they desperately needed the ip to get the investment needed to make Bg3 (basically owlcat says we don’t have that kind of investment) and the 3rd party owner helped (ign India backs my point that they tencent most likelysupplied the capital).
Am I exaggerating? I’m trying to give a guess based on public financial data

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Bg3 was the game that set them up for true success.

You can keep saying this but it's going to keep being either:

A) Wrong.

or

B) "No true Scotsman".

DOS2 was what "set them up". It made incredible amounts of money. It transformed them from a company who were doing pretty good (as they were with DOS1) to a company who were incredibly well-regarded and had many tens of millions to spend as they pleased.

They had flirted with bankruptcy in the past

In 2013, before DOS1 released.

Not at any time after that.

Most cases if you report 2 years of losses in a row you are in finial hardship (they reported 1)

They reported one whilst FIVE YEARS into developing a game. You keep trying to delete the context here. But they had been developing BG3 for FIVE YEARS at that point. That they were still making so much money from DOS1 and DOS2 in 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018 is absolutely incredible, given they'd grown from a less-than-100 person company to an over-300 person company, and thus had 3x the costs.

They committed to going "all in" on DOS1 and DOS2 as well, note. That's how independent companies trying to make bigger games have to work. It's not complicated.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

More information and somewhat speculation
Sven own 51% of the company but 30% is owned by a company called tencent which is a multinational company
My guess is they desperately needed the ip to get the investment needed to make Bg3 (basically owlcat says we don’t have that kind of investment) and the 3rd party owner helped (ign India backs my point that they tencent most likelysupplied the capital).
Am I exaggerating? I’m trying to give a guess based on public financial data

Why speculate lol? Why not stop, do some research, and find out facts?

There's some much unnecessary guessing and leaping to conclusions with your posts on this lol. What's going on? Is there some kind of time pressure?

Tencent have an MO - they cruise around looking for Western game studios to take a significant (usually minority) stake in, and yeah they tend to provide cash which allows companies to expand when they do this. But how much cash? We have no idea. My guess is, given they only got 30% and Larian's hiring strategies etc. changes several months before that, it wasn't a crazy amount. Like they also have 40% of Epic Games (Fortnite etc.), 100% of Riot Games (!!! League of Legends), 30% of Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile 1/2), and so on.

So you're right in that Larian undoubtedly used that money to help expand, but Tencent got a pretty small share.

Also it appears that Swen owns 62% of the company now (and his wife 8%), from the same document that showed Tencent owning 30%.

But you keep over and over and over claiming that Larian and/or Swen were "desperate" or "against the wall" or w/e, and that's just not supported by any of the facts and is proved wrong in several of the times you've claimed it. That's where you're exaggerating and just making up nonsense. If you had the same post and didn't put "desperate" and and so on, you'd make a better point.

Also lol @ "IGN India", IGN is bad at the best of time, IGN India is even worse. That's like quoting the Daily Star or something as a news source.

 

[wicked cool]

You can keep saying this but it's going to keep being either:

A) Wrong.

or

B) "No true Scotsman".

DOS2 was what "set them up". It made incredible amounts of money. It transformed them from a company who were doing pretty good (as they were with DOS1) to a company who were incredibly well-regarded and had many tens of millions to spend as they pleased.


In 2013, before DOS1 released.

Not at any time after that.


They reported one whilst FIVE YEARS into developing a game. You keep trying to delete the context here. But they had been developing BG3 for FIVE YEARS at that point. That they were still making so much money from DOS1 and DOS2 in 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018 is absolutely incredible, given they'd grown from a less-than-100 person company to an over-300 person company, and thus had 3x the costs.

They committed to going "all in" on DOS1 and DOS2 as well, note. That's how independent companies trying to make bigger games have to work. It's not complicated.

You keep saying that but why didn’t they go all in on d03 then. Do2 didn’t win any awards (maybe nominated for 1) and it wasn’t on the map
They tried 3 times for Bg3? They kickstarted dos2

Dos 2014 on the wiki almost bankrupt
Dos2 -this is when tencent comes in as a financial partner according g to the wiki. Why? It’s simple they needed the capital and most likely loans

If you read the wiki page you can insinuate that Sven was nervous as scores were not good in early access and they put a lot of work into it

My point here is just as valid as anyone else as nobody here knows anything about the inner workings of of Larian but
-there’s a big reason Sven gave up 30% of company
-there’s a big reason he went to wotc and not paizo or any other studio

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Do2 didn’t win any awards (maybe nominated for 1) and it wasn’t on the map

What the hell are you talking about:

Divinity: Original Sin II Reviews

Master deep, tactical combat. Join up to 3 other players - but know that only one of you will have the chance to become a God.

www.metacritic.com

Game of the Year 2017: Divinity: Original Sin 2

Larian's massive, liberating RPG is a gift to fans of the genre.

www.pcgamer.com

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has sold one million copies

Larian's RPG hit the big number in just over two months.

www.pcgamer.com

I could go on.

My point here is just as valid as anyone else

Sorry, but when you're making up nonsense like like the quote below, no it isn't.

Do2 didn’t win any awards (maybe nominated for 1) and it wasn’t on the map

So the game that

A) Sold 1m copies in 2 months
B) Made more money on Steam than any other new game in 2017
C) Got a 93% Metacritic score, making it the 11th highest-scoring PC game OF ALL TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME
D) Got a BAFTA and PC Gamer's Game of the Year award among other awards

Both "didn't win any awards" (LOL) and "wasn't on the map". Yeah a lot of games that sold 1m copies in 2 months and were the best-selling new game on Steam were "not on the map".

Like, having an opinion is fine, man, but making up nonsense that's obviously not true and takes 30 seconds to find isn't true? Why do that?

 

[JConstantine]

I think the D&D IP was a very small reason for the success of BG3. In other words, whatever Larian makes next is probably going to be an absolute masterpiece and we know it won’t be D&D.

I think Larian's next one is a bit more of a dice-roll than "probably a masterpiece"

Yeah. If one liked D:OS1/2 and BG3, I expect they'll be satisfied with whatever Larian's next offering is, but those who were introduced to Larian with BG3 are probably in for bit of a shock. The degree to which BG3 early access players had to tell Larian to dial back the immature humour because Forgotten Realms isn't Rivellon is...discouraging. It's good that they took it on board rather than arrogantly double down, of course, but they probably shouldn't have needed to be told in the first place.

Rivellon would be a good example. Rivellon is an ultra-grimdark "crapsack world" setting.

Rivellon strikes me as more of a gilded world.

Unfortunately, Swen loves grimdark and sneers at all non-grimdark settings.

Swen reminds me somewhat of Robert Schwalb in that they both seem to have a preference for puerile edginess but without irony.

DOS2 would be an example. DOS2 has a bizarre, deeply counter-intuitive combat system that requires you to understand the mechanics really well and basically cover the entire screen with flaming surfaces or similar, which constantly making small upgrades to your equipment in a very annoying way that isn't actually well-supported by the game!

D:OS2's system was a great example of overdesign. Wanting to tackle the magic superiority of the first game, but does so by double dipping in requiring twice as many points invested into Intelligence for the same output, but also adding Memory as a requirement to unlock additional skill slots which affects casters far more than martials. On top of that, the physical and magical armour, which seems like a nice tactical addition on the surface that forces you to curate your damage, but in reality just means it's more efficient to invest everyone into one form of damage over the other - except you don't even need to bother with that because barrelmancy.

Again unfortunately Swen is a madman here, literally on the eve of BG3's release he was saying on camera that DOS2 had a much better game system than BG3 (!!!), and he was not joking, he clearly believed it.

Do you have a link? I can fully believe him saying this but it's genuinely crazy talk.

 

[wicked cool]

What the hell are you talking about:

View attachment 414400

Divinity: Original Sin II Reviews

Master deep, tactical combat. Join up to 3 other players - but know that only one of you will have the chance to become a God.

www.metacritic.com

Game of the Year 2017: Divinity: Original Sin 2

Larian's massive, liberating RPG is a gift to fans of the genre.

www.pcgamer.com

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has sold one million copies

Larian's RPG hit the big number in just over two months.

www.pcgamer.com

I could go on.


Sorry, but when you're making up nonsense like like the quote below, no it isn't.



So the game that

A) Sold 1m copies in 2 months
B) Made more money on Steam than any other new game in 2017
C) Got a 93% Metacritic score, making it the 11th highest-scoring PC game OF ALL TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME
D) Got a BAFTA and PC Gamer's Game of the Year award among other awards

Both "didn't win any awards" (LOL) and "wasn't on the map". Yeah a lot of games that sold 1m copies in 2 months and were the best-selling new game on Steam were "not on the map".

Like, having an opinion is fine, man, but making up nonsense that's obviously not true and takes 30 seconds to find isn't true? Why do that?

My mistake

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah. If one liked D:OS1/2 and BG3, I expect they'll be satisfied with whatever Larian's next offering is, but those who were introduced to Larian with BG3 are probably in for bit of a shock. The degree to which BG3 early access players had to tell Larian to dial back the immature humour because Forgotten Realms isn't Rivellon is...discouraging. It's good that they took it on board rather than arrogantly double down, of course, but they probably shouldn't have needed to be told in the first place.


Rivellon strikes me as more of a gilded world.


Swen reminds me somewhat of Robert Schwalb in that they both seem to have a preference for puerile edginess but without irony.


D:OS2's system was a great example of overdesign. Wanting to tackle the magic superiority of the first game, but does so by double dipping in requiring twice as many points invested into Intelligence for the same output, but also adding Memory as a requirement to unlock additional skill slots which affects casters far more than martials. On top of that, the physical and magical armour, which seems like a nice tactical addition on the surface that forces you to curate your damage, but in reality just means it's more efficient to invest everyone into one form of damage over the other - except you don't even need to bother with that because barrelmancy.


Do you have a link? I can fully believe him saying this but it's genuinely crazy talk.

Yeah, I've been reluctant to play BG3 because of the puerille edge lord garbage it seems to be filled with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The degree to which BG3 early access players had to tell Larian to dial back the immature humour because Forgotten Realms isn't Rivellon is...discouraging. It's good that they took it on board rather than arrogantly double down, of course, but they probably shouldn't have needed to be told in the first place.

Oh yeah I remember it verrrrry well.

I didn't buy BG3 in EA because I was bitter about how... er... bitter-flavoured DOS2 was, but my brother bought it for me, and I what was I going to do, be an ungrateful churl and not play it?

And like a couple of hours later I was on the Larian forums (or subreddit, I forget) reading and adding to threads going to "DIAL THIS SHIZZ BACK MAAAAAN" and "This is the Forgotten Realms, not Warhammer 40K".

The devs did take it in well, and did slowly and steadily change. But I feel like Swen stayed mad about it, because Larian did this cool pre-launch thing for BG3 which featured tons and tons of very candid video interviews with Swen and others, just like hanging out at the basement pub thing where they did their announcements, and Swen very memorably and separately said:

A) D&D's system kind of sucks, now DOS2, that was a game with a good system (!!!)

and

B) Forgotten Realms is meh, now Rivellon, that's a good setting (!!!)

Re: link - it's somewhere in a long video, if I do find it easily, I will add it, otherwise I'll see it when I see.

Maybe he had a few beers or wines in him, and maybe it pre-release jitters/self-doubt, but I feel like he was just still mad that we'd had to push back on their initial vision for BG3. This was like, the day before or a few days before release!

That said, he's cool and he's smart and I imagine over a billion dollars in revenue probably y'know, maybe makes you re-think some preconceived ideas about what directions audiences like! Right?

I mean, even before EA, they'd already dumped Durge as the default PC, and they later did say originally Durge was going to be the only custom-class/race option, but even the semi-internal pre-EA testing they did caused them to ditch that and go to Tav. So they can make these kind of smart decisions, and the crazy money they've made has to help there, surely?

D:OS2's system was a great example of overdesign. Wanting to tackle the magic superiority of the first game, but does so by double dipping in requiring twice as many points invested into Intelligence for the same output, but also adding Memory as a requirement to unlock additional skill slots which affects casters far more than martials. On top of that, the physical and magical armour, which seems like a nice tactical addition on the surface that forces you to curate your damage, but in reality just means it's more efficient to invest everyone into one form of damage over the other - except you don't even need to bother with that because barrelmancy.

Put it far better than I could! I would have said similar but with like 2500 words and a lot of repetition!

Swen reminds me somewhat of Robert Schwalb in that they both seem to have a preference for puerile edginess but without irony.

Yes which I am not here to be mean about, but I do find a little odd in an intelligent person in their 50s.

My mistake

God bless you dammit lol <3