Baldur’s Gate 3 is a top-to-bottom triumph, but Larian’s moving onto other things. Which, personally-speaking, I’m fine with—but it does present a bit of a tricky moment for Hasbro, which suddenly has a world-famous franchise on its hands. What the heck do you do without Larian, and with your cadre of famous characters? Well, turn them into mascots for a bit while you figure out who’s gonna make your next game, probably.
Speaking in a recent interview with our friends over at GamesRadar, Shadowheart’s voice actress, Jennifer English, has said she’d be happy to return to the role—as long as Hasbro doesn’t mess it all up.
She says that her and her compatriots are “all open to the future of it,” but “if there is a future with Shadowheart, I would want it to be beautifully written and honor the game’s audience, and how inclusive and forward-thinking Larian is. If that opportunity came up and she was beautifully written, and that audience and inclusivity was honored, I would certainly consider it—but only with those conditions.”
And thus, the gauntlet is thrown. Honestly, though, I’m glad to hear it. Listen, I like Dungeons & Dragons as much as the next TTRPG player, but as a company, Hasbro hasn’t exactly been making the best decisions lately—well, the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide was pretty solid, but I credit that to the designers at Wizards of the Coast rather than Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, who is all about AI in D&D for some unfathomable reason.
Point being, Baldur’s Gate 3 was incredible because of its writers, not the staying power of its IP. The Forgotten Coast is formidable as a setting, sure, with decades of worldbuilding fleshing it out—and I don’t doubt that Larian Studios benefitted from getting to play around with D&D’s extensive lore. But characters like Karlach and Astarion touched me because of the very human emotions poured into them by their very human writers, and Larian would be a fool to let them go.
Simply put, there’s every chance that the new studio who handles Baldur’s Gate 3 mucks it all up. “I wouldn’t want to take her and make her into a cartoon version of her. I’d want to go forward with that only if it honors her in a way I think we would all be proud of.” To be a mischievous little scamp, I do want to point out that Jennifer English has, in fact, voiced a cartoon version of Shadowheart—for our own gaming show, no less—but I do get her meaning. You either let a story end naturally, or you live long enough to suffer Flanderization, and I dearly hope Hasbro doesn’t do the latter.