Baldur’s Gate 3 is the big game of 2023. Players love the world and the possibilities it offers. There probably won’t be a Baldur’s Gate 4, even though Larian Studios already had playable aspects, as they revealed in an interview.
What about Baldur’s Gate 4? Despite the huge success of their role-playing game, Larian decided against a fourth installment. In March, the studio announced that they did not want to make a DLC or a sequel. They wanted to move away from D&D.
The idea of a fourth part was apparently not off the table from the start, as Swen Vincke revealed in an interview with PCGamer. There were even playable parts, but ultimately Larian Studios decided against part 4.
Almost a year after release, the game is still doing well: Baldur’s Gate 3 is 1 year old, still has 100,000 players on Steam every day and I know why
No desire for the easy way
In the interview, Vincke explains that work on Baldur’s Gate 4 began while they were still in the swing of things from the third part. It went so well that they had playable sequences that, according to him, the players liked.
I think you all would have liked it. I’m sure of it. And we were actually pretty quick because the production machine was still warm. You could play things. But you played it and watched it and, well, that’s OK.
Swen Vincke on Baldur’s Gate 4 (Source: PCGamer)
Why did the team decide against Baldur’s Gate 4? Meanwhile, the questions also arose. Do you really want to make Baldur’s Gate again for several years after having already spent six years on it? The idea of Baldur’s Gate 4 sounded good to him because they were already experienced and the players would love it.
He and the team ultimately decided against a fourth part because they did not want to deal with the same things, the exact same mechanics, the same problems, the [sie] have actually already solved, just developed further. In addition, planned things would then have to be put on hold.
It was the right decision for the team. Vincke explains in an interview that the team was happy with the decision. They are free and morale should be high because they are doing something new. We are doing our own thing again, we are not rehashing, we are not trying to transform the rules from 50 years ago into something new.
But he also makes it clear that they don’t have a problem with D&D per se. It will always be one of the coolest things he has worked on. In the future, Larian Studios wants to devote itself to other projects that offer the team new challenges. The new challenge will also be to develop two games at the same time: Instead of Baldur’s Gate 4: Larian is working on two new games