Larian Studios’ narrative director doesn’t want the Baldur’s Gate 3 sequel’s future developer to make the RPG solely for financial gain.
After creating countless Tavs and playing over a thousand hours of Larian’s RPG, I’m ready for Baldur’s Gate 4 – or at least some confirmation that it’s coming. Adam Smith, Baldur’s Gate 3’s lead writer and master wordsmith, says that he is too – as long as the successor is made for the right reasons. Sadly, Larian is done with Baldur’s Gate 3 and D&D, but that doesn’t mean another studio won’t pick it up.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at the Digital Dragons Conference in Krakow, Smith reveals that he doesn’t care what direction the fourth instalment takes, he just wants its developers to craft a game out of passion rather than for financial gain. “I don’t mean that in a harsh way. What I would want is for somebody to do it because they wanted to do it, not because somebody said ‘that would hit our earnings next quarter.'”
Smith explains why Baldur’s Gate 4 shouldn’t come from someone thinking they “need a bonus next year.” Instead, “it’s got to come from a position of wanting to do it.” If a developer makes the potential sequel because “they have an idea and they go, ‘this is a story I can tell with these characters in this world,'” Smith says he hopes the game is “fucking great.”
Thinking back to Larian’s own work on Baldur’s Gate 3 and how the team refused to sacrifice quality for money, the writer delves into what inspired the studio to make the third entry and why it fit well within the series. “We love Baldur’s Gate. We always knew this was a Baldur’s Gate story, because thematically, Baldur’s Gate was always about people who were put into positions where they could change the world and people’s lives, but were struggling against something inside themselves – an inheritance, a legacy, that pushed them towards darkness.”
From the Dark Urge to the wriggling parasite behind Tav’s eye, Smith says that every element of Baldur’s Gate 3 works to “justify the title.” Larian recognised that the beloved RPG “wasn’t just a Forgotten Realms game – it was a Baldur’s Gate game.” If there ends up being another sequel, Smith wants it to stem from a similar thought process. “I hope that if there was a Baldur’s Gate 4, it would come from the same place where somebody said, ‘Here’s the thing that I think is cool about this, and here’s what I think I can do with it.’ I think it has plenty of stories that can be done with it.” Until we see whether or not Smith’s hopes for Baldur’s Gate 4 come true, Larian is gearing up for its “two very ambitious RPGs” that we have to look forward to for now.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 director isn’t giving advice to whoever makes Baldur’s Gate 4, saying he doesn’t want to “poison the well” for the next developer.