Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 4

Alright... rephrasing the question:
You are a tadpole in Swen Vincke's brain. No one knows you are there. How do you steer the direction of Larian's plans post-BG3 in your desired direction without changing too much such that you are discovered?
(Please have an answer that is more creative than "No, I won't make a game like Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm cancelling anything that remotely smells of it.")

Edit: Wtf do you people like? WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Derived from another thread about our biggest fears about the BG 3 release. BG 3 is too bombastic from the start. You are directly confronted with the strongest opponents (Mind Flayer, Dragons) and you can fight in the prologue against LVL 6 Cambions incl. a Commander as a LVL 1 party... If there should ever be a sequel, which big opponents and associated plot should there be left to top something like that? In the first two BG games or IWD you start in areas with very weak opponents. I fought some rats in BG 1 prologue... That was ok and I liked the "progression curve" for stronger opponents. So again. If there should be a BG 4 that is continued by BG 3, like BG 2 was once the continuation of BG 1. Since we have already fought the strongest DND monsters in BG 3, what storyline and new enemies should there be for a launch party with LVL 10-12?

Seen from this perspective. Larian may have botchet a good (direct) part 4 here because part 3 set the benchmark so high that a future sequel can't keep up. On the other hand, this confirms the trend towards a new setting, as has already been discussed here.

I agree with this. I don't hate the Baldur's Gate 3 story or journey. But if one thing really rubs me the wrong way about it is that there are parts that feel like Michael Bay is directing the game.

Yes, thank you: someone else noticed this shallow direction.

Baldur's Gate: Planescape or Baldur's Gate: Doors of Sigil, a direct continuation that ignores attempts at replicating the Planescape game and instead uses the IP as a setting for the sequel lol
Would prefer another homage and re-imagining of a classic CRPG with another Planescape game, but if attaching it to Baldur's Gate works, then...

I've never played Planescape and it's not that appealing to me. Sigil sounds interesting. But tbh what I would be more interested in, however, would be if you go back a little more to the roots: i.e. I found it a pity that Balduran was only briefly dealt with in an addon so far. Baldur's Gate: Balduran's Legacy would be exciting. Perhaps he has descendants, or supposed descendants who only claim so, in Anchorome or any other area he once explored, who suddenly appear in Baldur's Gate and kidnap one of the Grand Dukes there. You sail behind and try to fathom the mystery behind it. Ok that reminds too much of Imoen's kidnapping. Maybe then just an assassination attempt with escape.

I would buy the studio that made Solasta and then would build upon their engine for the next game.

??? What ingredients? Fly? Wall-climbing? Errm, normal fing movement? Normal camera control? Reactions on enemy's turn? Flow of time? When it comes to 5e experiences, not only Larian's engine is worse than it's competitors, it's trash.

Same here. I've played Ps:T, and I found it to be highly overrated and not very interesting or appealing.

Agreed.

I'll say again here what I've said before, which is that I would bet that the reason Larian won't give us such things as day-night cycle, a different way to handle party group movement, and pausing during realtime exploration, just to name a few, is because their engine cannot handle those things. Their engine is indeed crap.

That's a shame. I played it for the first time maybe a decade ago and I freaking loved every minute of it. It's one of my top 5 games of all time, no joke.

It is a shame. Especially with kanisatha preference for not doing combat, I expected Planescape to be his THE RPG.

It is, because I played it for the first time only recently, after the EE was released, and went in with all those built-up expectations of people telling me for years what a great game it was. but I found it just so-so and not anything great. I think it just comes back to my low evaluations of Avellone's writing. As for the combat, technically, my preference is not for no combat so much as it is for melee combat over spellcasting (though I'd be fine with no combat).

I enjoyed games Avalonne has worked on. I can't say what imput is his or not, but he does seem to be a positive presence. He can be wordy, yes, but I feel he understands medium of games very well - his characters tend to be well inwined with campaigns, and reference players actions in interesting and organic way. He knows what players will be doing, and he writes for that, which I think is a rare thing.

I must ask: Did you try recent Disco Elysium?

I don't see how in the long-term Larian can't incorporate mechanics that people loved in Solasta into their future games. Not necessarily saying they (Larian) are or aren't, or that they should or shouldn't, but the Solasta devs don't have a patent on reactions or on flight. I mean, they're not splitting the atom here. While a purchase of the company could be a good move, I think it's just as feasible for Larian to see the main critiques of their game today, and improve upon it in five years (because "the engine can't handle it" has taught us that they certainly can't make major improvements now or in the short term). If other games outperform their own, or if they just like a mechanic in another game, they could easily make modifications for the next iteration of the engine. Or for a new engine. I'm pretty sure whatever is after Baldur's Gate 3 is far out, time wise.

Larian has other interests. I highly doubt they’ll be chained to DnD, there’s a significant faction that wants them to return to Divinity for instance.

If they don’t plan on any further DnD games, it’d be an argument to not bother putting in the effort to overhaul their engine in order to have it handle reactions, for instance.

Meanwhile the Solasta devs are new and their entire history is based on DnD, and probably would be open to an acquisition or direct partnership rather than licensing. Safer bet than Larian for the future.

This is a good point. Personally, I would prefer a new IP from Larian if not a DnD product. I don't hate Rivellon, but I don't find it to be the most compelling world at its lore bones and DNA. I think DOS2 tried (so did Dragon Commander), and I appreciate that, but I worry that's the furthest they're willing to stretch the world and its lore. Rivellon has always seemed so surface-level, without a universal world map that expresses physical, political, and demographic geography, without a firmly established history of its races' cultures and subcultures from beginning to end, without a greater description of the theology or theologies of the world, without having greater written works establishing the background of the world.

Since DnD as a brand on its own is getting stronger, it would make sense for a studio to take over the license as a whole and as its identity. Perhaps it should be Tactical Adventures, while the Larian gang get to continue making whatever games they feel like making.

Between Divinity 2, DOS1, and DOS2, I don’t think there really is any real established lore for Rivellon to begin with. All I ever got is that…

1) A hero named Lucian defeated a dark force, but refused to kill infant Damian who was already destined to become the next bringer of darkness or something (which came true in Divinity 2).

2) Lucian was killed prior to Divinity 2, and the Dragon Knights were framed for it, all hunted down and killed until the player character becomes the last one. Except Lucian wasn’t actually dead, just sealed away. Damian nearly takes over the world during Divinity 2, but by the end of the game, you end up freeing Lucian and start the beginnings of a resistance. This particular timeline has been left on a cliffhanger.

3) DOS1 started establishing new lore by taking place approximately 2 thousand years prior. It talks about the threat of the void and the Source (which in the original timeline was the domain of healing magic from what I remember).

4) DOS2 takes place a couple decades before Divinity 2 from a chronological standpoint, but there’s enough retcons or changes that it might as well be a separate timeline. For one, Lucian wasn’t sealed away here, he faked his death. Lucian also has a biological son this time around. Damian is mentioned but doesn’t make an appearance. Dragon Knights are already being hunted down but are closely tied to the lizard race, while they were dragons or humans who had the ability to take dragon form in the original timeline. Apparently the next DOS game before it got put on indefinite hold was going to have Damian as an antagonist.

Anyway my point is Larian is capable of fully fleshing out Rivellon if they want to. They just never really tried until they essentially started with a soft reboot in DOS1.

Tbh, the main innovations of BG3 over DOS2 are cinematics, jump/verticality, improved graphics, and... uh... other things that are all very transferable to a DOS3 title. For as much as people like to shit on BG3 with the "DOS3" joke (myself included on occasion), I think I'd really like to play a DOS3 game with these improvements. A lot of what's in BG3 that wasn't in DOS2 is stuff I would really like to see in a future DOS3.

Yes. Played it all the way through to the end. I liked it quite a bit, though I wouldn't put it at the very top of my list of loved RPGs.