Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest RPGs of all time. The beloved CRPG has become a global phenomenon with an official HBO series follow-up on the horizon. However, there were plans for a BG3 years ago with original developer BioWare planning their own version of the game.
In a recwnt interview, BioWare co-founder Trent Oster explained that Baldur’s Gate 3 was a dream project for the studio. Now running Beamdog, who painstakingly remastered the original duology and other CRPGs, Oster recalled the pain of trying to get the third game made.
In fact, even under Beamdog, Oster still tried to make Baldur’s Gate 3 alongside veteran BioWare staff. “Our Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t as big picture as what Larian pitched,” he told PC Gamer. “Obviously, we were doing it at a much smaller scope. It wasn’t going to be a $100 million game. I think we were pitching it in the $20 million range.”
Beamdog’s version would’ve been “pretty close to the formula” of the original games whereas Larian’s take adapts and tweaks D&D rulesets for a more casual CRPG. The issue, though, is that no one wanted to fund the game, especially back when single-player games were falling out of fashion compared to huge live-service titles.
“All the companies out there were like, ‘It’s a single player RPG, it’s not going to do that big in numbers, and Wizards owns the IP,” Oster recalled. “So why are we spending our money to increase the value of their IP? Why don’t we do our own IP?’”
While some developers have claimed that Baldur’s Gate 3 has reignited the potential of funding RPGs, Oster doesn’t believe that’s actually the case. While RPGs can be successful, many investors are looking at the overall quality of Larian’s project, which requires a lot of money to do right.
“Now everybody’s like, ‘Oh, well, sure, RPGs will sell a lot, but they have to be huge, and you’ve got to put a ton of money into them, and you’ve got to have seven romance-able characters and full fidelity conversations, and it’s got to be all performance captured and super high-res.’ You’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m not sure about that’.” he said.
Nevertheless, Oster is content that Baldur’s Gate 3 exists in some form, even if it isn’t the game he would’ve made at Beamdog. “I don’t really get jealous about things,” he told the outlet. “I’m like, ‘Hey, you guys had the same opportunities we had, but you just happened to have a bunch of capital behind you that allowed you to roll in on it. And then you had enough capital that you’re able to execute at a very high scale, and you were able to pay the costs of chasing the vision that you had.’”
Right now, Hasbro is looking to create a Baldur’s Gate 4, albeit without the help of Larian Studios. As Hasbro doubles-down on games to pump $1 billion into D&D, Transformers and other IPs, Larian is now off working on its own Divinity franchise with a game that’s been described as “Larian unleashed”.
As it was for nearly two decades, the future of Baldur’s Gate is, once again, unknown. Outside of the HBO show and an upcoming book, it’s not known when we’ll actually get to play more official BG content, despite the fact that demand is definitely there.
