Larian had a playable piece of Baldur’s Gate 4 at one point

Well, mostly playable

Larian Studios

Larian's plans for a Baldur’s Gate 4 progressed so far that the team had a partially playable build for part of the RPG before deciding to move on. The news comes from a hefty interview PCGamer conducted with Baldur's Gate 3’s lead writer Adam Smith and Larian studio head Swen Vincke in July 2024, where Vincke reiterated the reason he – and others at Larian – wanted to leave the Gate behind.

“You tend to be prone to do the obvious thing [after a long dev cycle], which was really just make an add-on, or a standalone add-on, or start working on a sequel, because it's the easiest route to take,” Vincke said. “And we actually started doing that, because we've got the engine, got everything in here, all we need to do is add extra levels or just make some new stories—how hard can it be?”

"It's something that you all would have liked,. and we actually went pretty fast, because the production machine was still warm. You could already play stuff.”

Vincke said that playable segment started life as DLC for Baldur’s Gate 3, but it meant spending more time with D&D after the six years it took to make BG3 – more time away from Larian’s own plans built on original ideas. He said he realized it wasn’t worth the effort for an add-on, but decided it would be worth making BG4.

“That sounds like a really good idea – let's make BG4,” he said. “All the stuff that we did for this thing, we can just move it in there, people are gonna love it. Go for it.”

After sweeping The Game Awards 2023 and taking a break over the holidays, Vincke said he realized the next step for Larian had to be something that excited the team.

“I don't think, as developers, we ever felt better since we took that decision [to not make BG4]," he said. "Honestly, you really cannot explain or express it, how liberated we are. So morale is super high, just because we're doing new stuff again.”

What that new stuff is remains a mystery, though Vincke said the studio has two big projects in development. A new Divinity game is probably a solid bet for one of them, as Larian has gradually evolved the franchise over the past few decades, though Vincke didn’t let slip anything that suggested his plans for the future.

Meanwhile, BG3’s last major patch is set to launch sometime in fall 2024, adding mod support and some fancy cinematics for evil endings, which is nice if happy thralls clapping for you isn’t your idea of a fitting sendoff after spending 100+ hours being very bad indeed.