Veni, Vidi, Vici… Vitavi
Fresh off their supermassive success with Baldu’s Gate 3, Larian Studios confirms… they out:
I told you at the beginning that we were a company of big ideas. We are not a company that’s made to create DLCs [or] expansions. We tried that actually, a few times, and it failed every single time. It’s not our thing. Life is too short, our ambitions are very large. And so, like Gustav [the codename for BG3, taken from Swen’s dog who recently passed away], Baldur’s Gate will always have a warm spot in our hearts. We’ll forever be proud of it, but we’re not going to continue in it.
We’re not going to make new expansions, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re not going to make Baldur’s Gate 4, which everybody is expecting us to do. We’re going to move on. We’re going to move away from D&D, and we’re going to start making a new thing. I’m saying it here because I have a forum and [we’re getting] bombarded by people that expect us to do these things, but that’s not for us. It’s going to be up to Wizards of the Coast, because it’s their IP, to find somebody to take over the torch. We think we did our job and so, for us, it’s time to get a new puppy.
It’s an amazingly ballsy move to just, you know, move on from something like Balder’s Gate 3. At least, until you realize that Hasbro pocketed $90 million of those BG3 dollars for licensing reasons. Why continue that arrangement when you could just, you know, put the same work into Divinity: Original Sin 3 and keep all the money in-house? Mystery solved.
“I’m always the one where it starts with the initial idea and then I give it to the team and they start iterating it and they turn it into something much better. During BG3 I pitched to them what the next game would be…If I see they’re excited, I’ll say, ‘Okay let’s do that.’ If they’re not, it’s back to the drawing board. So they were very excited about a couple of the things we were planning on doing. Then the pivot to start doing BG3 DLC was expected because it’s what you do…We didn’t have any antagonism against BG4 or DLC, but the heart wasn’t there. It was more routine work than actually being excited. Now we have the excitement back in the room and that’s a big important thing.”
Vincke says the next game won’t be Divinity: Original Sin 3, and that it will be “different than what you think it is” but that it’s “still familiar.” Elsewhere, Vincke said that the new project will “dwarf” the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3, which would be quite impressive given the scope of that game.
Well then.
Good on them. In this age of cynicism, enshitification, and corporate greed, Larian’s stance of actually caring about their team is wildly refreshing to see outside the indie space. Not many companies would be willing to leave giant piles of money on the table. Then again, perhaps it is precisely the passion of new projects that Larian understands will lead them to find other tables with fresher piles of money.
Posted on March 25, 2024, in Commentary and tagged Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 3, Interview, Larian, Money on the Table. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
In An Age 
You could call it “ballsy”. Or you could call it “self-indulgent”. I guess if you can afford to be that inwardly-focused, why not, but I’m not so sure it’s a good look from outside the company. As a consumer, I think I’d rather see a little more focus on meeting customer demand than attention to the “excitement” of the people producing the product.
I’m all in favor of the designers and artists being appropriately rewarded for their work but in the end this is commercial art we’re talking about, not fine art. Then again, I haven’t bought BG3 and I’m not all that big a fan of Larian’s earlier work, so I’m happy for them to move on and leave the next BG to someone else. Because there surely will be another instalment, given the proven money-making power of the IP.
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Yes. YES. The studio is out.
I respectfully but thoroughly disagree with Bhagpuss.
I’ve banged on about this kind of thing before – maybe it’s the yearly rant –but we need more authorial hauteur (especially in the charming collective mode apparently in play at Larian) and less explicit deference to the consumer in video games. Give me more Meier and Kojima. Give me less Call of Duty Current Number. Yes, the peculiar existence of Chris Roberts is an acceptable trade-off.
This may seem a bootlicking or hero-worshipping stance, and sure, it’s partly a defence of good taste, but it mostly comes from an anti-wirehead, anti-capitalist place. In the face of the increasing frenzy of capital – turn over the growing mass in ever-faster circuits, at a riskless, reliable rate of growth, but above all more, more, more – the human urge to fulfill personal visions is one of the few reliable, however fragile, pressure valves.
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