Larian says it started 'pushing around ideas for Baldur's Gate 4' but 'we didn't have the fire'
In case you missed it, Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the all-timers. Not just a brilliant RPG, and a near-perfect return to a gaming touchstone, but a game that over-delivered while knowing exactly when to call it a day. Developer Larian was almost built to make this but, after a hugely successful launch followed by a bow-tying epilogue, it knew where to draw the line: CEO Swen Vincke announced at GDC earlier this year that it was done with Baldur's Gate. No DLC, no sequel, just a dream project perfectly executed.
So it's up to Wizards of the Coast, or Hasbro if you prefer, to work out what the future looks like for Baldur's Gate. But that doesn't mean Larian never thought about it, and in a new interview Baldur's Gate 3 narrative director Adam Smith told GamesRadar+ about how the studio was «pushing around ideas for Baldur's Gate 4» but «we didn't have the fire.»
Smith was speaking at Digital Dragons, an event in Poland, when he addressed the studio's decision to move on from Baldur's Gate 3. The way that Sven Vincke talks about it, the reaction was one of collective relief, and what Smith says has a similar vibe.
«For us, we didn't have anything unfinished that we wanted to say, we wanted to move on to other worlds,» said Smith. «And we tried, we did start pushing around ideas for Baldur's Gate 4, and they didn't excite us, we didn't have the fire. It feels like it should have been a harder decision than it was, but it wasn't.»
The key factor? Larian is independent. Baldur's Gate 3 was an enormous commercial success, to the extent that in another context a sequel would've been an inevitability. But Larian didn't need to do Baldur's Gate 4 to keep the lights on.
«We came to the realization,» continues Smith, "'do we have that fire?' And we didn't, so it was obvious: we don't do it. And it's great to work in a place where that's true, and you're not told 'yeah but it'll earn us this much money so therefore we're going to do it'. That was never a question."
Smith also
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