Owlcat Games co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin has praised Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 for reigniting the games industry’s love for dense, choice-based RPGs.
Alongside Larian, Owlcat has been one of the few studios these past two generations to deliver on dense CRPGS. Alongside the studio’s Pathfinder games, which are some of the best CRPGs available today, the studio has also released the brilliant Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
As Owlcat continues to work on more Rogue Trader DLC, the RPG studio is also working on Dark Heresy, which is currently in early player testing. The studio is also expanding into more casual friendly RPGs with its upcoming The Expanse game, which we previewed here.
Speaking to IGN, Mishulin explained that Larian’s work on Baldur’s Gate 3 and the game’s unparalleled success in the genre has been a huge boon to RPG developers. “BG3 did a great favour to a lot of RPG games. It brought them into the spotlight. Now RPGs can be a mainstream experience,” the developer said.
“When so many players enjoyed BG3, they started to look for what our next game will be, and we enjoyed this experience. ‘What can we try?’ Some of them go to our games to try them and enjoy them,” the Owlcat co-founder explained.
“So we are really grateful to Larian that they made such a great game not only because we enjoyed it — like, most of our developers played it for hundreds of hours — but also because they really made a lot of players aware of the genres and of the great games that are present there. Not only ours, but all of the games that are in there.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 has been seen as the peak of the CRPG genre as of late, and it’s undeniably one of the most accessible entries in the genre. While some will argue over whether Larian or Owlcat’s games are better than the other, the reality is that the existence of Baldur’s Gate 3 has helped to bring more players to a wealth of CRPGs.
“We were really humbled that a lot of players and a lot of streamers compared us to BG3,” the Owlcat co-founder said. Mishulin explained that “BG3 is an enormous behemoth”, they said, adding that, while their CRPGs don’t compare in scope yet, they hope to compete one day soon. For now, it’s a strong inspiration for Owlcat’s future titles.
“[Baldur’s Gate 3] is one of the greatest RPGs ever made with a lot of ambition, passion, everything. We hope that at some point we will be able to compete directly, but not at the time of Rogue Trader. It is not like a real competition,” the developer said.
At the time of writing, the only upcoming classic CRPG to match the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3 is Larian’s own Divinity game. Currently in development at the studio, the game has been described as “Larian Unleashed” with the game likely not releasing in early access until sometime in 2028 at the earliest.
