Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Swen On Fan Expectations For Baldur's Gate 3

you cannot chase the past
look at all the other CRPGs that tried to chase it, it doesnt work

Though I liked Pillars of Eternity the more recent indie RPGs undoubtedly tried to play it safe but I suppose we are talking about the same thing. Swen is absolutely on the right track when he says creative risks need to be taken but if it's going to be so far removed from the predecessors then yeah maybe it should have been a spin-off instead of a mainline sequel.

It's not hard to understand. I understand it perfectly well. The lack of understanding is not on my side.

As you say, Swen has said he doesn't care about BG1&2, and he can safely ignore the fans of the older BG games. So then, given all of this, why call the game BG3? And don't tell me WotC made him do it. There is zero evidence to support that, and in that recent interview Swen himself says he chased after making a BG3 game specifically.

Finally a post of yours that makes sense to me and with which I agree. They want to create something new, and that's great. So why not call it something new as well? Why call it BG3?

Do you want a reason? it's very simple: MONEY CASH DINEROS
BG3 is just a job to earn a lot of money with the big D&D community, It's why most companies do license product because they sell well.
I am perfectly fine with that but I have no illusions that this is about more than money.

Such cynism. They wouldn't need to take creative risks if it was just about the money. Everything I have read about Sven and Larian Studios tells me it's not about the money, it's about creative freedom to make the sort of games they like. Money is of course part of the means to that ends, but money is not the ends, just the eans.

They went for BG3 and the Forgotten Realms (and some folks here seem to forget that BG is just a city in the Forgotten Realms, not the setting itself, the Forgotten Realms is the brand), because they are huge fans of D&D, BG, and the Forgotten Realms, they didn't need this IP, they have their own hugely profitable IP, they WANTED this IP for the love of it.

Ok, then @Hawke we agree, except for that you are fine with it whereas I am not.

Essentially, Larian is saying: We don't care about BG1&2 and their legacy; we also don't care about making the fans of those original BG games happy; but, we're going to call our game BG3, even though it is completely unrelated to and very different from the original BG games, just to see if we can con you fans of those original games into buying our game.

You're of course free to hold to your rosy view of Larian, and I'll hold to mine.

But you are dead wrong about the name Baldur's Gate. Yes it is just a city in that setting, but in the context of videogames it is the legal title of a videogame IP franchise. So a game titled "Baldur's Gate 3" is by definition linked to games titled "Baldur's Game 1" and "Baldur's Gate 2", whereas it is NOT linked to games titled "Icewind Dale" or "Neverwinter Nights" even though those games are also D&D Forgotten Realms games because those games are not part of the "Baldur's Gate" IP franchise. So this discussion has ZERO to do with a game being a D&D game or a Forgotten Realms game. It is about placing this game within the "Baldur's Gate" franchise.

I respect their creative aspirations towards D&D and the Forgotten Realms but as others have pointed out you can't call it BG3 and act as if the millions of fans who have played the previous games are trying to stonewall your efforts at making a sequel out of pure spite. If the devs had truly wanted a clean break and an opportunity to play with the FR setting without any strings attached they could have spared themselves a lot of trouble by calling their game something else. Heck, maybe not BG3 but Baldur's Gate: Mindflayer Scourge or something in that vein. They can still change the name if they like. I know dealing with fans isn't easy but I'm absolutely certain they knew full well taking over Bioware et al.'s legacy would carry a lot of baggage. If they think series veterans are disrupting the creative process I am 100% in favor of a name change for the sake of the game's quality. Perhaps it would make their job easier.

Not only are they linked by name but the storyline itself revolves around the Bhaalspawn exclusively. Even Beamdog stuck to the beaten path with Siege of Dragonspear (parts of which I thoroughly enjoyed). We will never know what the original tentative Baldur's Gate 3 would have looked like because it was canceled (I don't put too much stock in the design docs because it's no guarantee they would have stuck with the proposed setting). The only way I can see BG3 moving on from the Bhaalspawn saga is if it pays sufficient homage to 1 and 2 and draws on the events from those games in order to introduce a new setting and new characters.

The Forgotten Realms IS the IP, it IS the Setting, it IS the Franchise, it's like saying Andoria is a seperate franchise to Vulcan and Trill. It's not thr first BG named gane that wasn't about the Bhaal Spawn even. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance has that honour.

Look I agree they shouldn't have called it BG3, if only to save us from headaches, but WotC likely told them to.

We know it won't use 2e rules, it's the much better 5e rules, we know its not about Bhaal Spawn (although Bhaal is likely in it), we know it's well over a hundred years later, and so far it sounds extremely likely to be TB.

No "Baldur's Gate" is the IP. That's why when Atari owned that IP (yes they did own it) WotC - which owned the D&D and FR licenses could go to someone else to make some other D&D game, but could not make a BG game without Atari's agreement. That's also why WotC fought a bitter legal war with Atari for years before finally regaining the BG, IwD, and NwN licenses back from Atari a few years ago. FR is the setting, yes, but each individual videogame made within D&D/FR is its own separate IP for videogame-making purposes.

At least we agree that BG3 was a bad choice of title, though I don't accept the "WotC made us do it" line. From all of Swen's interviews it is clear he wants to make a game with the "BG3" title. "Baldur's Gate: subtitle" would have been the ethically proper way to go here, and had they done that we wouldn't even be having this debate because I for one would not even be in this forum right now talking about the game. The only reason I am involved in discussing the game, and also why I become impassioned about issues relating to the game, is precisely because it is being called BG3. If it were BG: blah blah, I wouldn't care about the game at all and would ignore the game as a game not for me, much like I did with BG:DA.

Are you seriously talking about ethics about video games?
Gamings are comsumer goods they serve no peurpose except making money, the sooner you accept that the better.

There is a lot of truth to that statement of yours. I know someone who forked over $60 for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order the other day. I'm not sure what features it boasts but according to HowLongToBeat the average playthrough clocks in at 15 hours. I would rather blow my brains out than let some middling developer fleece me like a sheep. Then again, perhaps my expectations are unreasonably high *cough*. The current economy has taught me valuable lessons.

If you really rate games by how much time they waste then I feel truly sorry for you.

Length does not have to correlate with quality or entertainment value but I like a lot of bang for my buck. Games like Baldur's Gate, Dark Souls etc. take a while to finish and you can replay them over and over again because of the variety in builds, equipment, skills and so forth. I humbly suggest you save your pity for your degenerate homeland.

Multiple people / companies approached WotC about making BG3. When they wanted to make BG3, they called Swen to see if he was still interested in doing so. If they wanted BG: Subtitle, that could easily have been a condition.



I don't recall any ethics debates over Fallout 3's name, etc. Lots of game / movie / book series have used numbers without being a direct continuation of previous entries.



If nothing at all about the game could possibly interest you by any other name, doesn't that prove it was a good choice of name?

WOTC clearly wanted this to be a numbered sequal so its gonna be one.
I dont realy see how ti beeing a numbered sequal actually detracts from the series, especialy since we know nothing about it.

That's the trick, isn't it? To not unfairly prejudge and make up your mind on information that's unavailable. It's almost as if there's certain expectations that are impossible to meet.

No, this discussion is based on known information, as in Swen has explicitly said he is making a new game as he wants to make it without any regard for how the first two games were done. That's the whole point of this entire thread.