It is quite a great fortune that we got Baldur’s Gate 3. Because at the crucial moment, Larian really failed.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was the RPG mega-hit of the last few years and probably one of the best RPGs ever made. But the fact that we even got the game is already a bit of a miracle. Because when Larian wanted to acquire the license and thus the permission to actually make the title, they nearly failed at the task.
What happened back then? The rights to Baldur’s Gate and the “Dungeons&Dragons” franchise were held by Wizards of the Coast. After Larian had already made a deal, it was then time to present the planned game in more detail. It is customary to present a design document to the rights holder, in which the game is introduced.
The problem: This document was really, really bad. So bad that Wizards of the Coast also communicated this to Larian. The problem was apparently a lack of time.
Why didn’t Larian have time? According to Swen Vincke, the head of Larian, it was because they were fully occupied with releasing Divinity: Original Sin 2 in 2017. They were in the final phase of development and had their hands full taking care of this game. The next project, Baldur’s Gate 3, was indeed already roughly planned, but they simply couldn’t commit to it.
Vincke said about this (via gamesradar):
That was really bad. We had to write something, otherwise we would have lost this deal. But we didn’t have the capacity to do that because we were busy taking care of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Wizards [of the Coast] wrote back and let us know in corporate jargon that our paper was “really crap.”
And we replied: We know, but we are currently releasing a game – please don’t ask us to do this right now. Grant us an extension of the deadline. Fortunately, they understood that and we got another chance.
Why Baldur’s Gate, anyway? If Larian was so busy with their own game, it raises the question of why they were so eager to be able to make Baldur’s Gate 3 at all. For Swen Vincke, that was basically the only logical step for Larian’s development. Because he knew that if Larian wanted to continue to grow with talents, they needed an IP from outside that people would love to work on.
It felt like we were under a glass dome that we couldn’t break through unless we had AAA production values, the corresponding budget, marketing, and all those AAA things.
It had to be Ultima, it had to be Fallout, or it had to be Baldur’s Gate. There wasn’t much choice.
So we all seem to have been quite lucky that it ultimately turned out the way it did – because that has given us one of the best RPGs of all time, which is still being improved over a year after its release and has likely introduced a whole generation of gamers to RPGs.
Whether the predecessors of Baldur’s Gate 3 are still worth it today was clearly answered by a fan.
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