Larian Started Work on Baldur's Gate 3 DLC, Then Canceled It: 'The Studio Was Elated'
During a talk at GDC 2024, Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke announced that Larian Studios would not be making any DLC, expansions or sequels for the highly-regarded RPG, which took home another Game of the Year award at Wednesday’s Game Developers Choice Awards. However, speaking with IGN, Vincke did say that Larian began work on DLC and even gave some thought to a potential Baldur’s Gate 4 before pivoting away to other projects.
“Because of all the success the obvious thing would have been to do a DLC, so we started on one. We started even thinking about BG4,” Vincke says. “But we hadn’t really had closure on BG3 yet and just to jump forward on something new felt wrong. We had also spent a whole bunch of time converting the system into a video game and we wanted to do new things. There are a lot of constraints on making D&D, and 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game. We had all these ideas of new combat we wanted to try out and they were not compatible.”
Vincke has spoken before about the challenges about working with 5th Edition, particularly when it comes to how powerful players get when they reach Level 12 and beyond. Shortly after release, Larian Studios said that the team wanted to do new content but didn’t know what yet. To date, Larian Studios has mostly focused on adding content that wasn’t available at release, such as a new epilogue and additional endings.
When it came time to make DLC, though, Vincke says Larian was going through the motions. “You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really coming from the heart, and we’re very much a studio from the heart. It’s what gotten us into misery and it’s also been the reasons for our success.”
‘They were elated’
Vincke says that he took a vacation over the Christmas holidays, and when he returned his mind was made up. ‘[I] came back and I told the team, ‘You know we’re not going to do it. We’re going to shift around and we’re going to start doing these other things that we talked about, that we planned on doing before we started on BG3.’ Those were always the plans for afterward, we have two games that we want to make, and we have lots of concepts. So let’s just have closure on BG3, it’s been great. We’ve done our job. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s pass the torch to another studio to pick up this incredible legacy.”
Asked how the studio responded, Vincke said the team was “elated.”
“I thought they were going to be angry at me because I just couldn’t muster the energy. I saw so many elated faces, which I didn’t expect, and I could tell they shared the same feelings, so we were all aligned with one another. And I’ve had so many developers come to me after and say, ‘Thank god,'” Vincke says.
“I’m always the one where it starts with the initial idea and then I give it to the team and they start iterating it and they turn it into something much better. During BG3 I pitched to them what the next game would be…If I see they’re excited, I’ll say, ‘Okay let’s do that.’ If they’re not, it’s back to the drawing board. So they were very excited about a couple of the things we were planning on doing. Then the pivot to start doing BG3 DLC was expected because it’s what you do…We didn’t have any antagonism against BG4 or DLC, but the heart wasn’t there. It was more routine work than actually being excited. Now we have the excitement back in the room and that’s a big important thing.”
Now we have the excitement back in the room and that’s a big important thing.
Vincke says the next game won’t be Divinity: Original Sin 3, and that it will be “different than what you think it is” but that it’s “still familiar.” Elsewhere, Vincke said that the new project will “dwarf” the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3, which would be quite impressive given the scope of that game.
In the meantime, Vincke has confirmed that Larian Studios is still working on more new content for Baldur’s Gate 3, including cross-platform mod support. After that, though, the future of Astarion, Karlach, and the rest of Baldur’s Gate 3’s now-beloved characters will be in the hands of Wizards of the Coast.
One way or another, Baldur’s Gate 3 leaves behind an impressive legacy. We gave it a perfect 10 in our original review and it has largely swept awards season. Even if you’ve finished it, there’s still plenty more to see so make sure to check out our complete Baldur’s Gate 3 walkthrough. As for Vincke, he reckons he’s figured out Act 1 for his next game. But if it’s anything like the development of Baldur’s Gate 3, which took some six years to complete, it may be a while before we get to play it.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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