Original Baldur’s Gate designer Mark Darrah believes Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best possible sequel to BioWare’s originals because it takes so much liberty with what the series should be.
Speaking to FRVR for the latest episode of our FRVR Podcast, launching later today when I finish editing it, Darrah explained that zealously sticking to the foundations of the original games wouldn’t have resulted in the juggernaut success Larian’s sequel has found.
Darrah explains that one of Larian’s biggest strengths is that Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t “super literal in terms of what a sequel should look like” which should be a given considering there’s “22 years between those games”. Other games have come buy which are more faithful, but those titles often play it too safe in terms of their reverence for what has always been a quite niche genre.
“Pillars of Eternity feels like an Infinity Engine game. It’s not. I played it and I’m like, ‘wow, this feels very much like a spiritual successor to a Baldur’s Gate or an Icewind Dale or something like that. It has some of the same people. And I played it and it’s like, yeah, I can’t fault anything it does in terms of being true to that inspiration, but the reality is that the industry has moved on so much since then that I was like, oh yeah, this is a really faithful adaptation of that and it turns out that I didn’t actually want that anymore.”
Darrah, who worked not only on Baldur’s Gate but Dragon Age Origins and other BioWare properties, explains that Larian willingness to look not just at Baldur’s Gate but its own back catalogue for inspiration resulted in something that feels unique from the Infinity Engine original while retaining what fans loved about those older games.
“Larian is, they are, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Baldur’s Gate 1 flavoured, but they’re also Divine Divinity flavoured. They are flavoured by their own track record, they are flavoured by what CRPGs have become in the intervening 20 years. So I think it’s a greats sequel. I think they did what is the right thing to do given that large of a gap.”
Darrah explained that Larian’s RPG has cleverly learned from the wide expanse of CRPGs that came after the Infinity Engine games, including Dragon Age, which was designed to push CRPGs forward. “If you inject Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age Origins and draw that line, then it leads pretty clearly to a game like Baldur’s Gate 3,” he said. “If you don’t include Neverwinter and Dragon Age Origins, then it’s like, I’m not entirely sure where we’re heading. So the sweep of that arc obviously includes Baldur’s Gate 3, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but it’s not as obvious because the gap is so large.”
One of the larger issues with Baldur’s Gate 3 is just how successful it’s become. While Hasbro is keen for a Baldur’s Gate 4 to happen, studios are actively turning down the opportunity as living up to Larian is a titanic task. Darrah believes the correct sequel would follow in the footsteps of Fallout New Vegas which you can read about right here.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the highest selling CRPG of all time, bringing in tens of millions of players. For fans of that genre, you can track its inspirations quite clearly, not just the elements of Larian’s past. It’s clear that Larian isn’t just interested in paying homage to the past, but pushing the genre forward, and Baldur’s Gate’s original designers have taken notice.
While Larian won’t be working on Baldur’s Gate for the future, the studio is working on its next CRPG: Divinity. Described as Larian “unleashed”, the game is expected to continue to push the genre forward with major engine improvements set to expand the scale of its brutal fantasy world.
