Following the massive success of Baldur’s Gate 3, Hasbro is keen to make a Baldur’s Gate 4. Right now, though, it seems that getting a fourth game off the ground is tough as no one wants to follow-up on Larian’s phenomenal work.
Speaking to FRVR for an upcoming episode of our FRVR Podcast, original Baldur’s Gate developer and Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah explained that the most obvious through-line for a sequel would be to develop a game in the same vein as Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas.
Darrah explained that starting development of Baldur’s Gate 4 with a new team and a new engine would result in a game that couldn’t possibly deliver the same features that Larian did. “Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t Larian’s first game,” Darrah said, explaining that the scaffolding for what BG3 would become was laid in games like Divinity: Original Sin 2.
Darrah likened the eventual Baldur’s Gate 4 to EA’s sports games where major tech and team changes simply couldn’t replicate the past. “Your graphical fidelity goes up massively and maybe you introduce a couple of new features, but you lose three or four old features that it turns out people really wanted to exist even though they barely used them.”
The CRPG veteran explained that anyone new who picks up the Baldur’s Gate bottle would be in a rough situation. “Someone new comes along and they do not understand that scaffolding, they do not have many, many, many, many years building this kind of RPG, likely. I mean, maybe bring on Owlcat or someone like that… but you’re going to get that same kind of thing. You’re going to get some new things that are really neat and really cool, and a bunch of stuff is going to fall away because they either didn’t think of it, didn’t realise it was important, didn’t know how to do it.”
For Darrah, the best path towards a Baldur’s Gate 4 would follow the same rule as Fallout: New Vegas. In this scenario, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast would license Larian’s Divinity Engine and maybe re-use some Baldur’s Gate 3 assets with the use of a team that has already made RPGs. This would allow the framework for a sequel to be largely identical, albeit with its own changes, new characters, and the like. However, that requires a partnership that some may not want to have.
“Get Larian to agree to license out the Divinity Engine and essentially let someone make an oversized expansion pack for Baldur’s Gate 3 and call that Baldur’s Gate 4. That could work,” Darrah said. While it may not be a perfect solution, the original Baldur’s Gate developer believes it may be the best path forward.
“Honestly, that would be probably my advice to Wizards would be if you really want to make Baldur’s Gate 4 that’s actually probably the way to go,” he continued. “The alternative is you go and say, ‘okay, we’re going to call it Baldur’s Gate 4. We’re going to buy everyone asbestos pantsuits and we’re going to just put the spurs to it and go way out here and we’re going to do something really different.”
As with any franchise, it’s hard to follow-up on one of the biggest games ever made. As far as CRPGs go, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best selling entry in the genre by a considerably amount. It’s a game with an audience that rivals The Elder Scrolls and Cyberpunk 2077, and there are few ways you can follow up on that without disappointment.
Larian themselves aren’t making Baldur’s Gate 4, either. Instead, the studio is working on a reboot of its Divinity franchise, which has been described as Larian Unleashed. There are few details surrounding the game at the time of writing, although the studio has made some major tech advances that should make for a much grander game.
