Larian Studios Is Officially Done With The Baldur’s Gate Series
Larian Studios Is Officially Done With The Baldur’s Gate Series
A studio rep confirmed what founder Swen Vincke said during the Game Developers Conference
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I bet this is a falling out with Hasbro execs on royalties. BG3 royalties were a cash cow this year for Hasbro, pushing Wizards (as a division) to be quite profitable, while almost all other divisions in their company lost money.
So now the agreement is over, and Larian is like: we will own the IP on our next project instead of paying $90M to Hasbro... And fair enough -- they've shown they can kick ass. Hasbro is probably gambling that it's the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer. So they'll kick tires on selling BG4 to another studio.
BG3 will go down in history as the legendary game before enshittification. Larian will make a few great games that don't sell as well -- before selling out to a whale that dumps money on the owner's front lawn (see also BioWare). The devs who made BG3 will found indie studios and make cool shit for a decade or two. So the wheel turns.
Larian already made DoS2 (which is better imo then bg3). In any case I look forward to the next Larian project.
This. If you like the mechanics of bg3, go play Divinity Original Sin 2. It has a lot of the same enhancements that Larian added to dnd for BG3. Including more comprehensive elemental fields and height mechanics.
And it has a great modding community.
The sad part about Larian and BG3 is I was hoping for a definitive edition that gave Karlach her good ending.
Going with her to the nine hells is her "good" ending.
Letting her explode is her bad ending.
Nah, that's her kinda bad ending. They cut the good good ending.
There is another ending for her involving the upper city(cut at the last minute due to performance issues) and I suspect the purified metal you get at the factory that involves her staying.They did say something about releasing more endings (and also mod support) so here's hoping! 🤞
I don't think we're going to get the dos2 level of tools, simply because it would become a competitor to wotc's fabulous virtual tabletop microtransaction simulator.
It's nice to hope though, with you on that.
I turned her into a mind flayer. She seemed fairly happy.
DOS2's fatal flaw for me is that you really can't have an optimal mixed-damage party because you have spell shield and armor, which each block one of two kinds of damage. If you go all physical, you can just blast through armor and then kill people that way. All magical and you can do the same thing for people with shield. Mixed damage parties just kinda suck by comparison because you're effectively splitting your damage output.
It's true, you should go either full magic, or full physical within a specific character, however a 2magic/2physical party is great as well since almost all the combat encounters will have a mix of heavy physical armor guys and heavy magic armor guys.
But really once you learn how the action economy works, as long as you don't gimp your characters by putting dex on a mage or whatever, you can blow up most encounters regardless of the magic/physical make up of the party.
And of course you can also go lone-wolf archer and single handedly win all encounters on your own ;)
If possible, play with mods, there are a few good ones that modify how the armor/magic armor system works in different ways.
Same. It bugs me that people think larian only existed when making BG3. When DoS2 released on steam that game hit overwhelmingly positive in no time and I bought it day one with no idea what it was because the reviews were so good. Larian will be fine because they stick to what they're great at and they've been around a long time.
I feel like this was part of their plan though. Get the limelight with dnd and show the kind of games that they make to people that wouldn't have known beforehand. Now their next fully owned game is going to make them absolute bank in both money and good faith I think.
I really hope they're going sci-fi. I can only replay the Mass Effect trilogy so many times.
Keep going, I'm almost there
Can I hug my big muscly girlfriend in that one though?
You can hug a very thin, very tall, cannibalistic girlfriend though.
Sounds close enough
Sebille ftw!
If that's what makes reagular game a great game, there are not many great games...
Such is life. Grim and unfair
Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer
This is probably true, but how can executives be so stupid? Every review I read praised Larian specifically and how the made a huge game with no microtransactions and tons of little loving touches. You have to be willfully ignorant to think it was the IP and not the developer and their work that people were responding to.
You have to be willfully ignorant
At this point I'm convinced that MBA classes are really just training willful ignorance, in favor of "line go up" strategies.
That is all they teach.
Jack Welch is seen as MBA-Jesus and they all strive for similar stockholder returns as to what happened under him with GE. If you want a good read, GE under Welch is the OG enshitification story. He took a juggernaut of a company and completely destroyed it for short term shareholder gain.
Now it’s just a shell of its former self, but those guys at the top sure made alot of money.
Screw Hitler. If I invent a time machine, Jack Welch will get a tommy gun to the back of the head before he can lay off one worker, or gut a single workers protection.
Edit: autocorrect got me
The thing is that being "willfully ignorant" has served them well, so it makes it the smart move when the goal is "line go up".
Give me money and call me stupid, why would I care what a few "smart" people think when millions of "stupid" people give me all I want?
I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.
Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.
If I'm running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.
In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.
I think it's more that executives think the average consumer is stupid and cares too much about IP branding. And I feel they are not completelly wrong. Though I think the OGL fiasco showed the D&D fanbase might be smarter than that ...hopefully.
I hope paizo will jump in and Larian will make a pathfinder game next (it's the better system anyway)
This would be very feels good the whole way round.
Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money
Laughs in Divinity: Original Sin 2
Can't wait for the EA live service BG4
Such is life, but I am saddened by this news.
Basically Blizzard's story.
How can we take our beloved cash cows and completely destroy them…
It's like poetry; it rhymes.
Don't think most people read the last part. Pretty good take until then
Agreed, it was pretty good until then. But the last paragraph is what made it a great take.
Laughs in Divinity Original Sin 2