Last year, Larian Studios confirmed that it would not be developing Baldur’s Gate 4 or any expansions for Baldur’s Gate 3, leaving Dungeons & Dragons behind for its own hallmark series, Divinity.
There has been plenty of speculation on why the team opted against making a sequel, with many citing Swen Vincke’s comment on the Wizards of the Coast layoffs as a possible reason: “Of the people who were in the original meeting room, there’s almost nobody left”. While that may be a factor (Vincke disputes this), speaking to GamesRadar+, he explained that the team simply wasn’t excited by D&D anymore.
“We’ll do our best, making the best game that we can,” Vincke said. “We’re excited about what we’re making, which is already a step in the right direction, because we weren’t excited about what we were making back when we were doing the D&D thing.”
“There Were A Lot Of Constraints In Making D&D”
This is something that Vincke touched on last year, when he explained at GDC that “There were a lot of constraints in making D&D, and the 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game”. He noted that the team had several combat ideas it experimented with, but unfortunately, they just “were not compatible” with the 5e rulebook.
Those constraints might not have shown in the final product, as Baldur’s Gate 3 won countless awards for its boundry-pushing cRPG mechanics and storytelling, but its exciting to imagine what Larian might do now that it has been unshackled by the D&D systems.
“Our ambitions are high, so we want to innovate,” Vincke said. “That means that we will fail on certain things, because we’re trying new things. So we’ll see where that leads us.”
There’s no release date for Divinity yet, but Larian is open to the idea of adopting an early access model again.
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
- Engine
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Divinity 4.0
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full cross-platform play.
