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Larian Studios Is Officially Done With The Baldur’s Gate Series (kotaku.com)
submitted 8 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/gaming@lemmy.ml
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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 113 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I bet this is a falling out with Hasbro execs on royalties. BG3 royalties were a cash cow this year for Hasbro, pushing Wizards (as a division) to be quite profitable, while almost all other divisions in their company lost money.

So now the agreement is over, and Larian is like: we will own the IP on our next project instead of paying $90M to Hasbro... And fair enough -- they've shown they can kick ass. Hasbro is probably gambling that it's the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer. So they'll kick tires on selling BG4 to another studio.

BG3 will go down in history as the legendary game before enshittification. Larian will make a few great games that don't sell as well -- before selling out to a whale that dumps money on the owner's front lawn (see also BioWare). The devs who made BG3 will found indie studios and make cool shit for a decade or two. So the wheel turns.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 46 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Larian already made DoS2 (which is better imo then bg3). In any case I look forward to the next Larian project.

[–] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 29 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This. If you like the mechanics of bg3, go play Divinity Original Sin 2. It has a lot of the same enhancements that Larian added to dnd for BG3. Including more comprehensive elemental fields and height mechanics.

And it has a great modding community.

The sad part about Larian and BG3 is I was hoping for a definitive edition that gave Karlach her good ending.

[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Going with her to the nine hells is her "good" ending.

Letting her explode is her bad ending.

[–] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Nah, that's her kinda bad ending. They cut the good good ending.
There is another ending for her involving the upper city(cut at the last minute due to performance issues) and I suspect the purified metal you get at the factory that involves her staying.

[–] swab148@startrek.website 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They did say something about releasing more endings (and also mod support) so here's hoping! 🤞

[–] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't think we're going to get the dos2 level of tools, simply because it would become a competitor to wotc's fabulous virtual tabletop microtransaction simulator.

It's nice to hope though, with you on that.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

DOS2's fatal flaw for me is that you really can't have an optimal mixed-damage party because you have spell shield and armor, which each block one of two kinds of damage. If you go all physical, you can just blast through armor and then kill people that way. All magical and you can do the same thing for people with shield. Mixed damage parties just kinda suck by comparison because you're effectively splitting your damage output.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

It's true, you should go either full magic, or full physical within a specific character, however a 2magic/2physical party is great as well since almost all the combat encounters will have a mix of heavy physical armor guys and heavy magic armor guys.

But really once you learn how the action economy works, as long as you don't gimp your characters by putting dex on a mage or whatever, you can blow up most encounters regardless of the magic/physical make up of the party.

And of course you can also go lone-wolf archer and single handedly win all encounters on your own ;)

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can I hug my big muscly girlfriend in that one though?

[–] kurcatovium@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If that's what makes reagular game a great game, there are not many great games...

[–] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago

Such is life. Grim and unfair

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[–] 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer

This is probably true, but how can executives be so stupid? Every review I read praised Larian specifically and how the made a huge game with no microtransactions and tons of little loving touches. You have to be willfully ignorant to think it was the IP and not the developer and their work that people were responding to.

[–] Joker@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 8 months ago

I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I'm running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think it's more that executives think the average consumer is stupid and cares too much about IP branding. And I feel they are not completelly wrong. Though I think the OGL fiasco showed the D&D fanbase might be smarter than that ...hopefully.

[–] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Basically Blizzard's story.

[–] Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago

How can we take our beloved cash cows and completely destroy them…

[–] Transtronaut@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 8 months ago

It's like poetry; it rhymes.

[–] albert@lemmy.sysctl.io 34 points 8 months ago

I know this will never happen by my friends and I talk about Larian doing something along the lines of Knights of the Old Republic. That would be absolutely amazing

[–] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 33 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Unpopular opinion probably, but creators should be allowed to stop creating more stories inside a particular world. It's like the issue we had with TV shows just getting the chewing gum treatment. Some worlds should have an end. Though maybe there can be spin-offs in this case, stories unrelated to the current cast in any way.

[–] FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

"But research shows nostalgia is how we milk the whales for every goddamn penny. GIVE US YOUR MONEY! GIVE US YOUR MONEY!"

~games company CEO

[–] MrBusiness@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The people of Wales have been deep in nostalgia for too long!

[–] FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 2 points 8 months ago

Oh lol I wrote wales instead of whales lmao

[–] Malgas 4 points 8 months ago

maybe there can be spin-offs in this case

They haven't said they intend to stop making D&D games. And every D&D crpg in the last 20-odd years (since Torment, I think) has been set in the Forgotten Realms. So it seems highly likely that future games will be loosely related to BG, just without that specific title.

I would love to see them bring back some of the weird old settings, like Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or even Dragonlance. But I'm not holding my breath.

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 27 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I like how they just came and dropped one of the best games of the year then immediate quit the series.

I understand the reasons why but when phrased that way it sounds pretty funny

[–] Caitlyynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They made great games before, this just went viral

[–] arefx@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago

n

bg3 isnt even their best game, dos2 is. BG3 just got mainstream hype. Its a great game but its a little over rated lol.

[–] CybranM@kbin.social 25 points 8 months ago

Imho the DnD settings kind of held the game back anyway, the combat in Divinity 2 was a lot more fun since they didnt have to constrain themselves to the super basic DnD item system.

[–] Fisk400@feddit.nu 24 points 8 months ago

I would have done the same. Hasbro is poison to anyone that works with them and they would fire everyone at Larian for a penny.

Even if everything went well with Hasbro, Larian is big enough now that they dont need to tempt fate twice.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They'll probably work on another divinity game, but I'd love them trying out a game based on pathfinder.

[–] tissek@sopuli.xyz 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think Pathfinder is as bad of a match for Larian as DnD mechanically speaking. Compare the sheer battlefield joy and chaos of DoS to the austere strictness in BG3. And Pathfinder is in the same vein. Better I think it would be if Larian picks up a setting fitting their humour and shenanigans. Heard good things about Discworld.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I guess people just have different preferences. To me, the chaos of DoS turned rather monotone. You could get rich by betting that every combat encounter would end with half the map on fire. It was a real issue that Larian fixed in bg3 thankfully.

And have you payed pathfinder wrath of the righteous? In my opinion, the combat experience is better than DoS 2 and bg3. I will say that I enjoyed the freedom of movement in DoS 2 though, it made positioning a core part of the combat.

[–] eRac@lemmings.world 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I got most of the way through DoS2 and gave up. Every fight was a giant mess of surfaces. Reducing that makes BG3 far more enjoyable.

[–] tissek@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Played a good bit of Kingmaker and while not as refined as WotR I think is very similar. I agree with you that the DoS chaos can be a bit monotone and is too much. But I'd take that over the environmental flatness of other cRPGs.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

Environmental flatness isn't really tied to the game mechanics/rules though. Larian are just using a better engine with a larger budget than their competitors

[–] kurcatovium@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

Discworld might be absolutely genius if done well. And of all the dev studios I believe Larian would be the best pick. Maybe throw in some co-op with Obsidian and I'm sold!

[–] macabrett@lemmy.ml 8 points 8 months ago

I liked playing DOS2 a lot more than Baldur's Gate 3 so I hope we get a DOS3 at some point. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I cannot stand spell slots. They're not a fun or interesting game mechanic to me.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This could have been us but Hasbro playin'

have fun trying to make your own video game for the 20th time you bunch of losers (directed at Hasbro)

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Hasbro is gonna sell to some heartless VC and D&D will be dead as we know it as they try to bleed every last dollar from whoever stays. Sad times ahead. Capitalism strikes again destroying everything we love.

[–] ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago

Have you heard of D&D Beyond? It's already a subscription service, I'm not sure D&D is in the best hands as it is.

[–] HonestMistake_@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Unfathomably based

[–] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Too bad BG3 was boring, excited to see what they'll do next

[–] ActionHank@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

As a long time CRPG fan, I was not into it at all. But expressing that you didn't enjoy it is wrongthink, and the rabid fans will downvote you to oblivion.

[–] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago

I speak the truth

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I was really hoping for some standalone campaigns in the same engine though

[–] Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Same, but Hasbro is shit. I don’t blame Larian for running.

[–] MrBusiness@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If Larian did a collab with Paizo on a Starfinder series I could die happy.

[–] Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

That would be so amazing.

[–] intro@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

Will they also stop releasing patches?

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 1 points 8 months ago

The time is ripe for an original property, but with a 8 be year development cycle who knows