Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game you can get lost in. There are multiple paths to completing the main quest, branching narratives for the main characters, and lengthy skirmishes that can spill over into epic battles. If you fancy it, you can even romance your favourite ally.
Having slayed their fair share of goblins, witches, and tentacled Mind Flayers since the game’s release last August, it’s no wonder fans of the fantasy RPG are clamouring for more content. But, that may not come to pass - at least not from the game’s lauded developer Larian Studios.
Speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke made the shock announcement that Larian would not be making any DLC, expansions or sequels for the acclaimed game. He later elaborated to IGN that the studio did, in fact, start work on a DLC before cancelling it to focus on other projects.
DLC, short for downloadable content, is a purchasable add-on that typically expands a game’s main campaign.
"Because of all the success, the obvious thing would have been to do a DLC, so we started on one,” Vincke said. "But we hadn’t really had closure on BG3 yet and just to jump forward on something new felt wrong.”
Larian also considered doing a sequel to Baldur’s Gate 3, but ultimately shifted to other projects, Vincke noted. Discussing the obstacles it faced, the main issue was adapting a tabletop game like Dungeons & Dragons, Vincke said, especially its latest and most popular version, known as the fifth edition.
“[It’s] not an easy system to put into a video game,” Vincke told IGN. “We had all these ideas of new combat we wanted to try out and they were not compatible."
Taking to Twitter (now X), the director said that while fans may be disappointed with the developer’s decision to leave behind Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dungeons & Dragons, it was ultimately “the right thing for Larian”.
“It was a story with a beginning, middle and an end, and it doesn’t need more,” Vincke added in another tweet.
As Larian moves on to other pastures, that leaves the fate of Astarion and Shadowheart in the hands of Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) and its owner Hasbro. Last December, Hasbro laid off 1,100 workers including most of the Dungeons & Dragons team that helped get the game off the ground.
Is Baldur’s Gate 4 coming out?
Still, Larian’s departure doesn’t mean that there won’t be a Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC or sequel. Seeing as the game has scooped multiple best game awards and sold over 10 million copies, a follow-up would be a no-brainer.
Furthermore, Wizards of the Coast already has a strong roster of internal studios and external partners that it works with to create video games based on its tabletop properties, which also include Magic: The Gathering.
Among the notable candidates is Archetype Entertainment, though it has its hands full with an upcoming sci-fi RPG called Exodus. Notably, Archetype’s boss James Ohlen was the lead designer on Bioware’s original Baldur’s Gate game from 1998.
WOTC also acquired Tuque Games, now known as Invoke Studios, in 2019. The developer released the Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance video game to mixed reviews in 2021. In 2022, WOTC established a new studio called Skeleton Key led by another Bioware alum, Christian Dailey.
Meanwhile, external developers Otherside Entertainment and Hidden Path Entertainment have both previously announced Dungeons & Dragons games that have since hit roadblocks.
What will Larian do next?
As for Larian’s next game, we know that it won’t be Divinity: Original Sin 3, another entry in the long-running RPG series that it has produced since 2013. Instead, Vincke said that the new title will “dwarf the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3”, which would be an impressive feat considering that the game can take hundreds of hours to fully complete.
