Larian has been clear that its next project would not be a sequel to the wildly successful Baldur’s Gate 3. However, it seems like Larian doesn’t intend on ever making Baldur’s Gate 4, and actually plans on leaving the Dungeons & Dragons license behind.
Larian Studios head-honcho Swen Vincke addressed the topic during his Game Developers Conference talk, saying that the team will be ‘moving away from Dungeons & Dragons entirely’ going forward, and would not be releasing any DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Swen went a little deeper on the topic during a follow-up interview with Gamespot. When asked “At what point did you start thinking about what’s next for the studio?” Swen replied almost instantly, saying “Before we started!”
“So, this was part of a larger plan that I have towards what I called a very big RPG that will dwarf them all” Swen said with a shit-eating grin plastered across his face.
Swen elaborated that the next game the studio works on won’t be that very big RPG, either. “I think there’s some tech we don’t have yet,” he said. “I hope – I dunno what the specs are going to be in the next gen – I hope we’re gonna get something that’s going to bring us closer.”
For a while though, the plan was actually to start working on a sequel.
“…so for a while, I was actually saying yeah, yeah, that’s what we should be doing, should change our plans, we should be doing that. And so, the team actually said yeah, we should be doing that. And then, later in the year I realised, well, that’s not what we’re made for. I mean, that’s literally the opposite of what Larian is about. We want to do big new things, we don’t want to rehash the thing that we’ve done already. So that’s why we said we’re not going to do that. So we’re just back on our original plan which is going to the next thing, right, and the bigger thing.”
Hasbro will undoubtedly be disappointed that Larian is moving on since Baldur’s Gate 3 reportedly earned the company $90m. Not a bad payday for simply licensing out an IP.
What Larian’s project will be isn’t known yet, but people are hoping that the company might decide to return to the Divinity series. They’ve hinted at plans to return to that universe before, after all. Swen Vincke told IGN: “It’s [Divinity: Original Sin] our own universe we built, so we’re definitely gonna get back there at some point,” Vincke said. “We will get back there at some point. We’ll first finish this one [Baldur’s Gate 3] now, and then take a break, because we will need to refresh ourselves creatively also. You’re seeing 400 developers putting their heart and souls into this. You’re getting the best of them and their craft into this game. And so I can tell you, it’s quite a thing.”