By all accounts, Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent game and one of the best role-playing games ever released on PC and consoles, its quality so high that the game developed by Larian Studios became 2023's Game of the Year. However, it has raised the bar so much for IP owner Hasbro that even series' veteran James Ohlen declined developing a sequel, believing it would be insanity to compete against its predecessor.
"The day [Chris Cox, Hasbro CEO] knew they weren't going to do it, he called me. 'Hey James, what do you think about doing Baldur's Gate 4?' And I was like, 'I don't, I would fail, and here's why I would fail,'" the Baldur's Gate 2 co-lead designer, who still could be easily reached by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast as they were at their subsidiary studio Archetype Entertainment working on Exodus, said to PC Gamer. "I wouldn't want to compete against that. Doing Exodus is hard enough, but having to compete against Baldur's Gate 3? That would be insanity."
It's not just the high bar Baldur's Gate 3 set that is making developing a sequel such a daunting task. For starters, Larian built a custom engine for the game, and without it, developers would be talking about "at least half a decade of horror, building all that stuff." Ohlen also asked if the engine could be licensed, but even then, Baldur's Gate 4 would be a challenge. "Swen's always going to be the master of building those kinds of things. It's really hard to take him off that throne, just because of everything—the tools, institutional knowledge, team," Ohlen said.
The former Baldur's Gate 2 co-lead designer also reflected on how the drive to do something different than everything that has been done before was a major motivator for the development of the second entry in the series as much as it was for the third, so it is understandable how, without it, trying to one-up one of the best role-playing games of all time is an almost impossible endeavor.
At this time, the future of the Baldur's Gate series is unknown, so we do not know if any other development studio has accepted working on a new entry in the series. Regardless of who makes the game, it is set to be a very different game, as it would lack that Larian Studios flair that makes the studio's games so entertaining, from the older entries in the Divinity series to the Original Sin games and Baldur's Gate 3.
Thankfully for fans of both, the future holds great promise. Larian is working on Divinity, which is set to further raise the bar for role-playing games, while full remakes of the first two entries in the Baldur's Gate series involving Ohlen's original BG2 co-lead designer Kevin Martens are reportedly in development at Wizards of the Coast.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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