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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I was thinking about this, and the trouble is, I can't think of any time where that actually happened with AAA game where there was a gap of less than 15 years between "object of inspiration" of "high quality recreation of that formula". Like, often you get a bunch of games aping a formula 5-10 years after some inspirational game comes out, and usually they're all mediocre at best, but later on, really good ones start appearing. I'm not sure why this is, exactly. Are there counter-examples in recent AAA history? (let's ignore the ancient times when a couple of guys in a shed could turn out three games in twelve months).

 

[TwoSix]

There was 23 years between BG2 and BG3? Consider game development time nowadays, another 23 years seems correct, so a 2046 release for BG4, using the new 7e engine.

 

[darjr]

@Ruin Explorer Maybe, but if Larian Studios heart wasn’t in it I don’t think they could. In fact I think they recognized that.

But I’ll say I hope so. That would be cool.

 

[Anthro78]

Instead of trying to re-make BG3, why don't they just focus on making a good game? Maybe it's a sequel, maybe it's not. But the good game goal should be first and foremost ahead of any other concerns. I personally would love to see a game set in Eberron, as it's my favorite setting, followed closely by Planescape and Spelljammer. But that's just my opinion. If they make a good game set in a world I'm not as fond of, maybe it would change my mind about that world.

 

[darjr]

Saw someone mention they could probably do DLC for ten years for BG3.

Who’s doing that work now? Is it still Larian?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Instead of trying to re-make BG3, why don't they just focus on making a good game? Maybe it's a sequel, maybe it's not. But the good game goal should be first and foremost ahead of any other concerns. I personally would love to see a game set in Eberron, as it's my favorite setting, followed closely by Planescape and Spelljammer. But that's just my opinion. If they make a good game set in a world I'm not as fond of, maybe it would change my mind about that world.

I mean, maybe they should, but that's not really how WotC work.

Even BG3 wasn't made that way.

After DOS1, Swen Vincke approached WotC, as several other companies had over the decades, to ask to make a BG3. WotC rebuffed him, like they had other companies, citing "inexperience" on Larian's part (which is pretty funny given other companies WotC did licence games to but w/e). Then WotC saw how well DOS1 was still doing, and how good DOS2 pre-release footage looked, and contacted Swen to ask him to pitch to them. That hurriedly-put-together pitch was successful, and the rest is history.

But there was no "let's just make a good game". There was a cold calculation that Larian might be able to resurrect this long-dead IP and make money for both of them off it.

I do think it would be smarter for WotC to actually have a studio making CRPGs if they want an in-house studio to y'know, make CRPGs. Instead their in-house studios all seem to be making shooter-RPGs or action-adventure games or similar. No CRPG company gets it right the first time. Or even close. If WotC really wanted this they'd have a CRPG in production right now that very intentionally wasn't using the BG or Planescape brands, but was a smaller and more focused deal so they could build up expertise and experience.

 

[BMaC]

Saw someone mention they could probably do DLC for ten years for BG3.

Who’s doing that work now? Is it still Larian?

In my first play-through when I found the portals in Sorcerous Sundries I exclaimed, "Yes...each one will lead to a DLC! Yessss!"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Saw someone mention they could probably do DLC for ten years for BG3.

Who’s doing that work now? Is it still Larian?

No-one. There will be no DLC for BG3.

Larian are the only people who could, because it's made with a proprietary engine that only Larian employees are trained on. It would be expensive and very time-consuming for Larian to licence that to WotC and train WotC studio employees to use it, and frankly, I don't think WotC could pay Larian enough to justify it given Larian have moved on, and it would be a significant resource drain for them, especially if WotC wanted them to support the engine. Further, low-quality WotC DLC could damage Larian's reputation re: BG3, potentially damage BG3 long-term sales (which have to be staggering, it still regularly sneaks back into the Steam top 10 sellers!), and I don't think Larian would want to risk that. Hell, if they screwed up big enough they could basically break BG3, and whilst it would get fixed, that'd be an expensive distraction.

 

[JConstantine]

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

I don't think Obsidian is actually a realistic candidate at this point. They moved on from licensing to creating their own IPs a decade ago - Pillars of Eternity, Outer Worlds, most recently Avowed. The Microsoft money would make licensing more accessible for them, but Microsoft want their own IPs, so it's even less likely.

Owlcat honestly seems like the only choice. They've been carving out a nice little niche for themselves of cRPGs of popular (within geekdom anyway) franchises.

I guess Tactical Adventures (Solasta) is a possibility. They've arguably been the most faithful to the tabletop mechanics, but the narrative has been lacklustre.

 

[darjr]

No-one. There will be no DLC for BG3.

Larian are the only people who could, because it's made with a proprietary engine that only Larian employees are trained on. It would be expensive and very time-consuming for Larian to licence that to WotC and train WotC studio employees to use it, and frankly, I don't think WotC could pay Larian enough to justify it given Larian have moved on, and it would be a significant resource drain for them, especially if WotC wanted them to support the engine. Further, low-quality WotC DLC could damage Larian's reputation re: BG3, potentially damage BG3 long-term sales (which have to be staggering, it still regularly sneaks back into the Steam top 10 sellers!), and I don't think Larian would want to risk that. Hell, if they screwed up big enough they could basically break BG3, and whilst it would get fixed, that'd be an expensive distraction.

Weren’t there new subclasses? Someone mentioned them.

Ok. So DLC that isn’t DLC, who’s doing that?