Wizards of the Coastsaid this week that it’s planning to make more games in the mold ofBaldur’s Gate 3. “Don’t get me wrong,” WotC president John Highttold PolygonatSummer Game Fest, “we are going to do CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3.”
That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given that Larian Studios’ RPG earned enough Game of the Year awards to encumber even Karlach, and is still enjoying phenomenal success nearly two years after release. But a number of factors have stood in the way of a traditional follow-up. Most insurmountable: Larian announced that it wouldn’t make a sequel, and is instead focusing on other projects. So the first announced D&D game to follow BG3 will instead bean action-adventure game in development at Giant Skull, a new studio headed up by God of War 3 and Star Wars Jedi director Stig Asmussen.
How Do You Follow A Game Like Baldur’s Gate 3?
WithoutLarianattached, making a worthy follow-up to Baldur’s Gate 3 is a borderline impossible task. Even if the game isn’t called Baldur’s Gate 4, a new D&D CRPG will inevitably be held to the high standard BG3 set. A developer might rise to the occasion and knock it out of the park, but doing so will be a tightrope walk.
The biggest obstacle is finding a studio in a similar position to the Larian Studios of 2017. The Belgian developer had nearly two decades of experience making RPGs under its belt before it began work on Baldur’s Gate 3. Though its first released game, 1997’s The L.E.D. Wars, was a sci-fi RTS, the bulk of its output from then on was made up of increasingly complex fantasy RPGs. Divine Divinity wasn’t hailed as an instant classic upon release, but its moderate success allowed Larian to continue to hone its craft as an RPG developer. In particular,Divinity: Original Sin and its sequellaid the groundwork for the kind of expansive CRPG it would perfect with Baldur’s Gate 3.
Climbing RPG Mountain
Most great RPG developers have a similar arc. It doesn’t always take as long as it took Larian, but most of the heavy hitters of the genre produce mixed results before they knock it out of the park. They travel from obscurity to niche success to mainstream triumph.CD Projekt Redfollowed that path withThe Witcherseries.Bethesdaspent years making semi-successful PC RPGs before getting a niche hit with Morrowind, then cresting the mainstream mountain with Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim. This path often follows the developer’s push into the console market. BioWare had been a successful PC developer since Baldur’s Gate, but didn’t fully conquer the console market until Mass Effect broke its Xbox-exclusive containment to come to PS3.
RPG developers are like athletes or musicians. They tend to hit a clear peak where they’re dominating their game, then decline from there. It happened with Bethesda, which has been on a downward trajectory since Skyrim’s mountaintop success. It happened with BioWare, which enjoyed huge wins in the late ’00s and early ’10s, before facing lackluster reviews and commercial performance for Mass Effect: Andromeda,Anthem, andDragon Age: The Veilguard.
Any studio that would tackle Baldur’s Gate 4 would likely be on the way up. Studios on the way down have their own franchises to look to in hopes of rejuvenation. Why make Baldur’s Gate 4 when fans are clamoring for Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6? So, the studio that eventually takes it on will be one who is looking to level up the way Larian did with Baldur’s Gate 3.
Do The Risks Outweigh The Rewards?
The problem is that the risks may outweigh the rewards. Whether it’s Planescape: Torment 2, Icewind Dale 3, or Baldur’s Gate 4, any studio taking on a D&D CRPG after BG3 will be compared to Lariant. Larian had the good fortune of taking over a series that was long dormantandof being the first big triple-A CRPG to break out in years. Its work on BG3 could be compared to its own previous work, not to another titan of the modern genre.
Whoever makes the next D&D RPG won’t have that luxury. It may be deep, but is it as deep as BG3? It may have great companions, but are they as iconic as Astarion and Lae’zel? It may have fun, tactical combat, but is it as reactive and layered as BG3’s fights? It could have tremendous role-playing options, but are there as many as in BG3? It’s a tempting proposition for any developer, but making a D&D game in the same mold as Baldur’s Gate 3 may be a poisoned chalice.
