Baldur’s Gate 3 was a huge success for developer Larian Studios and Hasbro, the latter of which owns Wizards of the Coast and the Dungeons & Dragons series. Despite that success, Larian is moving on to a new project and is not making Baldur’s Gate 4. But Hasbro is keen to continue the Baldur’s Gate series with a different team at the helm.
Eugene Evans, the senior vice president for digital strategy and licensing as Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, told PC Gamer that it’s going to take its time to map out the future of Baldur’s Gate.
“We’re now talking to lots of partners and being approached by a lot of partners who are embracing the challenge of, what does the future of the Baldur’s Gate franchise look like?” Evans said. “So we certainly hope that it’s not another 25 years, as it was from Baldur’s Gate 2 to 3, before we answer that. But we’re going to take our time and find the right partner, the right approach, and the right product that could represent the future of Baldur’s Gate. We take that very, very seriously, as we do with all of our decisions around our portfolio. We don’t rush into decisions as to who to partner with on products or what products we should be considering.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 introduced fan-favorite characters like Shadowheart and Astarion, and these are owned by Wizards of the Coast, not Larian. Evans said these characters are now “essentially part of D&D canon,” and Evans hopes they might appear in future products down the road.
“I think it’s too early to express specifics and I think that there’s a much bigger question about how we approach Baldur’s Gate in the future,” Evans said. “But I would like to think that all of those characters, for the sake of the fans, could potentially appear in future products.”
Beyond a future Baldur’s Gate title, Hasbro is planning a number of other D&D games that will appear “over the next five years,” Evans said. These games will cover “all genres, all platforms,” he confirmed.
One of these games is a multiplayer co-op adventure title from the developers of the Payday series. Meanwhile, the developers of Disney Dreamlight Valley are making a D&D life sim.
As for Larian, the studio has said it’s not making Baldur’s Gate 4 because that is “literally the opposite of what Larian is about.” CEO Swen Vincke said, “We want to do big, new things. We don’t want to rehash the thing that we’ve done already.”
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