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Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 is a gorgeous game, but the team behind the sprawling RPG is looking towards its next project. With Patch 8 dubbed the last “major” patch for the RPG, Larian is aiming to release its next title sometime after 2028.
As the new game, likely another RPG, enters pre-production, Baldur’s Gate 3’s talented engineers are hard at work on the newest version of the studio’s proprietary game engine. In the year since the release of BG3, the studio’s engine developers have already fixed the tools’ biggest technical hurdles.
Baldur’s Gate 3 successor won’t use Vulkan
Speaking at the Breda University of Applied Sciences, Larian Studios’ senior graphics programmer Wannes Vanderstappen revealed that the studio’s next game will not developed for DirectX 11 or Vulkan graphics APIs.
With the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ RPG allows players to use either Vulkan or DirectX 11 to run the game. However, with DirectX 12 offering much better performance for games with decent optimisation that can actually lead to massive gains for some very heavy titles.
During the panel, Vanderstappen explained that Vulkan and DirectX 11 were not ideal for Baldur’s Gate 3 and the APIs caused more issues than they were worth. Additionally, adding DirectX 12 support on top of DirectX 11 and Vulkan would have been a tonne of additional work for a small team.
“What about DirectX 12? Well, this was simply not worth the risk,” the programmer explained. “It would have the same feature set again and just need more support from our side for no real reason.”
“It’s already done. We’re finally rid of DirectX 11 and Vulkan we don’t use anymore.”
BALDUR’S GATE 3 SENIOR GRAPHICS PROGRAMMER WANNES VADERSTAPPEN
Learning from the past, Larian Studios has already scrapped both Vulkan and DirectX 11 rendering from the newest version of its game engine. In a slide during the panel, Vanderstappen revealed that everything related to DX11 and Vulkan has been removed from the new game engine to focus entirely on DX12.
“It’s already done. We’re finally rid of DirectX 11 and Vulkan we don’t use anymore,” the programmer explained.
Brand-new visual effects are coming
Alongside the overhauled engine, Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 successor is aiming to benefit from some hugely improved graphics techniques that weren’t possible in the current game. With the engine team granted “pre-production time” for the first time in the studio’s history, target features have already been laid out.
The new game is targeting a full global illumination lighting system to make scenes more dynamic and realistic—it’s not known if this is a ray-traced effect—as well as making use of mesh shaders. While other improvements will most certainly be used as well, even though BG3 is already a gorgeous game, this is all we know for now.
For more Baldur’s Gate 3 news, read about how the team is already “buzzing” with excitement for their next project as well as the modder bringing back cut content to the RPG.