It’s no secret Baldur’s Gate 3 was a massive success, and naturally, Hasbro would want to make Baldur’s Gate 4 to follow, but a developer thinks it would fail without Larian Studios.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was a staggering success, winning GOTY honours in 2023 and selling millions of copies on all platforms since launch. With such prestige, you’d imagine developers would be lining up with the prospect of getting to develop Baldur’s Gate 4, considering Larian Studios has dropped out of development of the sequel to work on the new Divinity, but that’s not the case. Hasbro may have a problem on its hands; Baldur’s Gate 3 might be too good.
Larian Studios didn’t just bow out of the role; they also developed multiple updates for Baldur’s Gate 3. This includes the big Patch 8, which dropped a whopping 12 new subclasses for fans to adventure through the narrative, along with a mess of quality-of-life features. Larian Studios also started production on Baldur’s Gate 4 but called it off when they realized they wanted to do their own thing rather than pigeonhole themselves into “doing the same thing” again. Larian Head, Swen Vincke, said, “We should be looking at how we can do stuff that we get excited about,” and just like that, Baldur’s Gate 4 at Larian was shelved.
It turns out other devs might not be too keen to pick up the mantle where Larian left it. Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast pitched Baldur’s Gate 4 to one of their studios, Archetype Entertainment, but Archetype Entertainment said no as well. PCGamer reports Archetype’s studio boss, James Ohlen, said, “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.’”
Ohlen says, “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.” He goes on to explain how Larian Studios was the perfect option for Baldur’s Gate, how they built the entire game using their in-house engine, and how Archetype would have to develop all of those tools from scratch. Ohlen said it would take “at least half a decade of horror, building all that stuff.”
Ohlen ultimately thinks Larian is too hard to “dethrone” when it comes to development of this series (and it’s presentation), and he believes the next studio that tackles Baldur’s Gate 4 will need to “Do everything different.” Ohlen has since left Archetype, citing burnout as one reason after Cox approached him with the opportunity.
As of this moment, no developers have signed on for Baldur’s Gate 4. But citing the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, Hasbro will likely find a studio to make the sequel sooner rather than later.
