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

“Baldur’s Gate is an incredible game. And of course, we're going to do a successor."
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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.

 

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I would be happy with more AA games like Solasta, a game that in some ways I enjoyed more than BG 3. Admittedly the original game could have used a bit more (perhaps significantly more) polish but it doesn't need to go to the extremes that Larian did to be a fun game. Solasta II looks like it's a pretty massive improvement in many ways, we'll see what happens.
I agree solasta is a nice game but one 1️⃣ f the developers did a live stream and you can tell they are really limited personnel and budget wise in simple cosmetic things. One person asked how about dyes to change leather color on armor and the answer was something to the effect of if we have resources etc etc. you can tell these single a company’s are barely holding on . I can see why ea and other studios buy them up
 

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I guess I'm focusing too much on the words "Baldur's Gate 4" and not enough on "Wizards of the Coast."
That is the issue.

You're seemingly assuming because of the name that this would be, like the other BG games, an exceptional game.

Unless you believe in like, fate/destiny and that the BG name is especially blessed, there's no reason to think a WotC-produced BG game would be even good at this point. Now, that's not "forever". Maybe WotC's upcoming games will be excellent? It could happen. But WotC are not reliable here, and the major concern is that they appear to want to do this in-house, when they have zero experience with CRPGs and no sign that that is going to change, and don't have any team obviously well-suited to this particular kind of challenge, which is a pretty major challenge, given how insanely good BG3 was.

I mean, on the one hand I am with you, but on the other hand the history of D&D games has a certain Russian roulette cycle: the next one could be a masterpiece or a massive dud. Who knows??

It's not random. It's not Russian Roulette. It's just that WotC are very, very bad (historically and seemingly still, given the Sigil mess) at anything to do with digital, including selecting people to make D&D games. You can look at the studio making a game and have a pretty good idea if the game is going to be at least "okay", and if it has the potential to be amazing. Or at the very least say "We have no idea". But WotC haven't even suggested a studio yet, and they don't own any with any real experience/skills here (the closest being Archetype, but I suspect if Exodus is a hit, they'll want a sequel, and if it's a dud, well, that'll be the end of Archetype - there does exist a middle path where it reviews decently and sells okay but not crazy numbers and maybe that's when we might see them attempt a BG4 via Archetype).

I don't think there's any particular problem with the announcement; the worst case is that the game is bad and we just ignore it.
I think the worst case is a little worse than that, because it's likely to take well over $100m to develop it - and if it takes five years (so $20m+/per year), that's like, a significant proportion of WotC's revenue (not profit, revenue) every year. The worst case is probably game releases, is terrible, flops, causes WotC to take a big loss, Hasbro decides to fire the majority of people at WotC generally (not just this game studio) and probably several WotC game studios to try and get a share bump to make up for this loss.

That's more consequential than "we ignore it".

There are other pretty bad cases too.

Same is true of virtually all games, even ones from established studios.
I don't agree actually, and I think I can support my opinion well.

It's extremely rare for a studio who has a history of making "good" games to suddenly make a "bad" game. When it does happen, there's usually a clear and well-established reason why it does.

Look at Bioware - despite being constantly pushed to ridiculous levels of crunch and insanely short dev times, they put out good game after good game. Even their worst games, were, in retrospect, pretty good (even brilliant in ways). This only changed when, due to a combination of insanity from Bioware leadership and greed from EA, they talked themselves into focusing resources on a GaaS looter-shooter, two things they'd never even attempted before. They've never recovered from that, or not yet but there was a clear cause to their downfall.

Look at Owlcat. They've steadily got better. PF:KM was a bug-filled mess with an okay story and mostly-okay characters. PF:WotR was a much-less-buggy game with a really good story and some good characters. WH40K: Rogue Trader has an amazing story, really good characters and was only normally buggy for a CRPG. Likewise gameplay and UI have steadily improved game on game.

Look at Larian. DOS1 was good. DOS2 was great. BG3 was astonishing. And it wasn't an accident. They refined how they worked, what they invested in, and how they operated after every game. They realized the limits of having a non-primary English-speaking team write dialogue which was then translated (often leading to some clunky wording or fall-flat jokes) and spent money and effort

Need I go on? I can. There are sometimes more complex situations, like Bethesda Game Studios - their problem isn't simply that they got left behind because their leadership aren't up to scratch. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim were all pretty amazing because they were actually going ahead of the curve. But they failed to keep up with the team size they needed, and they let mediocre writing stay in place (even when Skyrim came out, people discussed how the writing was nowhere near as good as contemporaries), and stuck with an engine that people will defend to death, but clearly has some issues. So Fallout 4 was only good/decent, and Starfield took 7 years only to be a pretty massive letdown, and we're still multiple years out from Elder Scrolls 6.

Then occasionally there's an amazing game from developers nobody has ever heard of.
It does happen, but it's very rare in the AAA sphere, which is what we're discussing. It's maybe more common in the indie sphere.

Basically you seem to be treating this as 50/50, i.e. 50/50 a new game from an established, successful studio working in that genre is bad. 50/50 a new game from developers no-one has heard of is good.

But those aren't the odds. It's more like 90/10 or 80/20 that an established studio makes a good-to-amazing game, and more like 10/90 that brand new AAA studio makes a good game.
 
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I think the worst case is a little worse than that, because it's likely to take hundreds of millions to develop it. The worst case is probably game releases, is terrible, causes WotC to take a big loss, Hasbro decides to fire the majority of people at WotC generally (not just this game studio) and probably several WotC game studios to try and get a share bump to make up for this loss.

That's more consequential than "we ignore it".
Sure, but I'm not sure how that actually impacts me as a bad thing.
 

I agree solasta is a nice game but one 1️⃣ f the developers did a live stream and you can tell they are really limited personnel and budget wise in simple cosmetic things. One person asked how about dyes to change leather color on armor and the answer was something to the effect of if we have resources etc etc. you can tell these single a company’s are barely holding on . I can see why ea and other studios buy them up

When it comes to questions like dyes, I simply scratch my head. Like ... how much of a difference does that really make to the gameplay? There are far, far more important things I want the devs to focus on. You can have the prettiest game in the world and if the gameplay and overall structure is bad it's not going to be a good game. There have been a few games that looked awesome that I either didn't finish or ended up setting the difficulty to easy just to get through to the end. I haven't watched most of the live streams but did play the demo and it is already far prettier than the first game. I really don't know what people expect.
 

Sure, but I'm not sure how that actually impacts me as a bad thing.
Well if you don't care about WotC or what they create, that's totally fair. But you appeared to be speaking more broadly with your use of "we" rather than "I". I think an awful lot of people on the D&D board of ENworld probably do actually care about WotC and the blow-back/damage to WotC as a whole due to a BG4 flopping could be significant. Especially if it happens at a vulnerable time for D&D - which might well be moving on to a new edition (or having just moved on to it) around the same time a BG4 came out.
 

Well if you don't care about WotC or what they create, that's totally fair. But you appeared to be speaking more broadly with your use of "we" rather than "I". I think an awful lot of people on the D&D board of ENworld probably do actually care about WotC and the blow-back/damage to WotC as a whole due to a BG4 flopping could be significant. Especially if it happens at a vulnerable time for D&D - which might well be moving on to a new edition (or having just moved on to it) around the same time a BG4 came out.
Oh no, I was talking about "we" as video game/CRPG players, not "we" as "consumers of WotC".

WotC damaging themselves because of trying too hard on BG4 is pretty darkly funny, though.
 

It's not random. It's not Russian Roulette. It's just that WotC are very, very bad (historically and seemingly still, given the Sigil mess) at anything to do with digital, including selecting people to make D&D games. You can look at the studio making a game and have a pretty good idea if the game is going to be at least "okay", and if it has the potential to be amazing. Or at the very least say "We have no idea". But WotC haven't even suggested a studio yet, and they don't own any with any real experience/skills here (the closest being Archetype, but I suspect if Exodus is a hit, they'll want a sequel, and if it's a dud, well, that'll be the end of Archetype - there does exist a middle path where it reviews decently and sells okay but not crazy numbers and maybe that's when we might see them attempt a BG4 via Archetype).
Yeah, I do largely agree, but with third parties they did, at least, have mixed results: they had Seord Coast Legends, but also BG3...and basically the same decision makers st WotC were involved with both of those.

WotC video game initiatives are still a big question block: hiring a large amount of proven talent snd goving them to.e and money to cook is an approach WotC hadn't tried before, and can theoretically work
I don't agree actually, and I think I can support my opinion well.

It's extremely rare for a studio who has a history of making "good" games to suddenly make a "bad" game. When it does happen, there's usually a clear and well-established reason why it does.
100% on this, and I'll go wsy bigger:

Consider Nintendo. They have been producing video games across 6 decades, just about as long as TTRPGs have existed as a medium. And while not every game they have produced is some timeless classic...quality is pretty consistent.
 

That is the issue.

You're seemingly assuming because of the name that this would be, like the other BG games, an exceptional game.
That is one possible issue, yes. Another might be the same three people on EN World are assuming it will be a failure because of the name of the producer. Or have already decided to hate it sight-unseen, purely because of the name of the producer.

EDIT: my post was quoted before and after I made an edit, so I'm trying to accommodate both quotes.
 
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Oh no, I was talking about "we" as video game/CRPG players, not "we" as "consumers of WotC".

WotC damaging themselves because of trying too hard on BG4 is pretty darkly funny, though.
Yeah that "we" makes sense for sure.

I think the most likely outcome here is one of two things:

1) By far the most likely - WotC sells/spins off/shuts down its videogame studios before BG4 is released (quite possibly before it's started).

Unless Exodus is a massive hit (and my guess is it's a real 75%-80% Metacritic kind of game, which will sharply limit sales - but that opinion may be updated as we approach release), then I think there will be a lot of skepticism in the c-suite towards all these expensive game studios. But they may give the God of War guy's action game time to release - I think the odds of that being good and doing well are a little higher, especially because games like that are fairly popular and slightly underserved (because that market has been dominated by Soulslikes for a long time now). If that is also only a low-key success though, or worse, I think that'll be it for WotC's videogame studios.

2) Next most likely - BG4 gets cancelled 30-80% of the way through development. If the projected cost is $100m (a very low estimate), and it gets cancelled 2 years in, whoever cancelled it can claim to have saved WotC $60m and declare himself a hero and probably get a promotion, big bonus, etc. Even if you cancel it in year 4, that's "saving" $20m + however much advertising and any physical distribution would have cost on top of the dev costs, and so on.

I think it actually reaching release and flopping is probably quite unlikely.

That is one of two possible issues. The other being, of course, that the same three people on EN World are assuming it will be a failure because of the name of the producer.
🤷‍♂️ I'm not assuming it'll be a failure, so I'm not sure who you're referring to exactly. But is unlikely to be a success, and that's not "because of the name of the producer".

It's because AAA CRPGs which aren't failures hard-require two things:

1) Commitment of large amount of money for a long time.

$100m would a dead minimum for a BG3-style game, but realistically it'd going to be more for any company that hasn't done this before because they have to develop tools, expertise, etc.

And that means the publisher (WotC in this case, which is who I assume is what you mean by "producer") needs to be stable enough that they don't going around cancelling or dropping projects. Sigil, however, suggests WotC isn't there. Exodus may prove otherwise (but also may get cancelled itself).

2) A team who have the skills and experience to make an AAA CRPG.

WotC don't currently have this. Just period. No point arguing about it. It's possible the Archetype team might have enough of the skills/experience after Exodus is finished, but there's no other WotC studio that anyone has suggested that could do it.

You're trying to make out like I'm being unreasonable, but my position here is very reasonable and further, reasoned. It's not "because of the name". If WotC had bought a CRPG studio and/or was having a team build up by making small CRPGs (if they'd wanted to, they could have 1-2 out already, if that had been their priority) as they gain the experience/skills to make an AAA CRPG, then I'd think failure was less likely.
 

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