Larian Studios surprised many with the announcement that the studio would be stepping away from the Baldur’s Gate series, despite the roaring success ofBaldur’s Gate 3. Larian’s reasons were twofold: the team was burned out from working on Baldur’s Gate 3, and the IP is owned by Hasbro, meaning Larian would not wholly own any additional instalments.
Naturally, this came as a disappointment to many fans who were certain the RPG had a wealth of expansions on the way post-release. Despite the departure of Larian, Astarion actor Neil Newbon is eager to step back into the role. In an interview withRadio Times Gaming, Newbon opened up about his hopes for the character (nice spot,PC Gamer).
Stick To Your Convictions
“I really hope that I get to reprise Astarion in some form or another again, whether it’s BG4 or what-have-you, I’d love to play him live-action, that’d be amazing, that’d be awesome to do that,” Newbon said. “But I don’t get a call on any of that stuff, so I don’t know if that’s going to be possible or not.”
He went on to clarify that he’s anything but upset at Larian for finishing up with the series.
“I really love the fact that Larian, when they knew their heart wasn’t in doing another game, or even DLC for that matter—that this was the experience, it’d taken them eight years, they were exhausted, they were tired, they were happy, and all the rest of it—but it was like ‘that’s done now’,” Newbon remarked.
“I like the fact that they stuck to their convictions, and they knew in their heart it wouldn’t be as good as the endeavour they’d just done, because their hearts weren’t fully in it, and they wanted to do other things, I think it was absolutely the right call.”
Larian is currently working on two seperate projects, with the intention of cutting down on idle time by having a subsequent project in pre-production by the time the first project releases.
As for Baldur’s Gate, Newbon is curious as to who Hasbro could contract to make a fourth one: “I don’t know who could do it. I’m very curious as to who could do a fourth one… and to see what they will do with it, because you don’t want a carbon cutout of [BG3].”
Newbon is set to star alongside Ben Starr in Dead Take, a cinematic-video game hybrid from Surgent Studios, set to release on July 31.
