Speaking at GDC 2024, Baldur’s Gate 3 director Sven Vinke announced that Larian Studios will not be developing any DLC, expansions or sequels for the highly-acclaimed RPG, which won Game of the Year at Wednesday’s Game Developers’ Choice Awards. However, speaking to IGN, Vincke said that Larian has already started working on DLC and is even giving some thought to a potential Baldur’s Gate 4 before moving on to other projects.
“Because of all the success, the obvious thing to do would be to do a DLC, so we started on one. We even started thinking about BG4,” says Vincke. “But we weren’t locked into BG3 yet, and it just felt wrong to move on to something new. We’d also spent a lot of time developing the system into a video game, and we wanted to do new things. There are a lot of limitations in creating D&D, and 5th Edition video it’s not an easy system to put into the game. We had all these new combat ideas we wanted to try and they just didn’t fit.”
Vincke previously talked about the challenges of working with 5th Edition, especially when it comes to how powerful players will be when they reach Level 12 and beyond. Shortly after the release, Larian Studios said that the team wants to create new content, but they don’t know what yet. To date, Larian Studios has mainly focused on adding content that was not present in the release, such as a new epilogue and additional endings.
When it came time to make the DLC, Vincke said Laria went through the motions. “You could see the team doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really from the heart, and we’re a very heart-filled studio. That’s what made us miserable, and that’s what led to our success.”
‘They rejoiced’
Vincke said he was on vacation over the Christmas break and made a decision when he returned. ‘[I] I came back and told the team, ‘You know we’re not going to do it. We’re going to shift and start doing the other things we’ve been talking about that we’ve been planning to do before we start BG3.’ Those were always the later plans, we have two games we want to make and a lot of concepts. So let’s wrap up BG3, it was great. We did our job. It is a story with a beginning, middle and end. So let’s pass the torch to another studio to carry on this incredible legacy.”
When asked how the studio responded, Vinke said the team was “ecstatic.”
“I thought they were going to be mad at me because I couldn’t muster up the energy. I saw so many happy faces, which I didn’t expect, and I could tell they shared the same feeling, so we all got along. And I had a lot of developers come up to me and say, ‘Thank God,'” Vinke says.
“I’m always the person who starts with an initial idea, then I give it to the team and they start iterating on it and turning it into something better. During BG3, I told them what the next game was going to be… If I see they’re excited, I’ll say, “Okay, let’s do it.” If they don’t, it’s back to the drawing board. So they were very excited about a few things we had planned to do. Then the turn to start doing the BG3 DLC was expected, because that’s what you do… We had no antagonism towards BG4 or the DLC, but the heart wasn’t there. It was more routine than exciting. Now we have excitement in the room again, and that’s a very important thing.”
Vincke said that the next game will not be Divinity: Original Sin 3 and that it will be “different than you think” but “still familiar”. Elsewhere, Vincke said there will be a new project “dwarf” Baldur’s Gate scope 3considering the scope of this game, that would be pretty impressive.
Meanwhile, Vincke confirmed that Larian Studios is still working on more new content for Baldur’s Gate 3, including cross-platform mod support. After that, the future of Astarion, Karlach and the rest of the characters of Baldur’s Gate 3 will be in the hands of Wizards of the Coast.
One way or another, Baldur’s Gate 3 leaves an impressive legacy. We gave it a perfect 10 in our original review, and it swept awards season in a big way. Even if you’re done, there’s still plenty to see, so be sure to check out the full Baldur’s Gate 3 walkthrough. As for Vinke, he believes he has Act 1 ready for his next play. But if it’s anything like Baldur’s Gate 3, which took nearly six years to develop, it might be a while before we get to play it.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as the host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Do you have any advice? Send him a DM at @the_katbot.