Baldurs Gate 3 devs tease future non-D&D games, say morale is “super high”: “we're doing our own thing again"

Flippin’ heck, what a journey it’s been for Baldur's Gate 3, eh? It seems just yesterday I was getting very jealous at Matthew Castle (RPS in peace) for getting to preview the sequel to my beloved Shadows Of Amn. Fast forward several turns, Larian’s RPG banger is officially one year old since release, and there’s now a much higher chance that strangers at pubs will understand why my failed romance with Jaheira as a youth was such a deeply heartbreaking experience. Baldur’s Gate 3 itself looks to be done and dusted following the upcoming patch, but Larian now seem to be gearing up for their next charm offensive with a new “community focused” YouTube channel, as well as further teasing their two games currently in development.

Following the naming convention of their sporadic Panel From Hell hype-casts, The Channel From Hell is pitched as an anniversary celebration. It currently sits barren, although vids are supposed to be on their way soon. They’ve said it’ll be community focused, so part of the channel’s purpose could well be to showcase some of the wild mods that are sure to follow the release of Patch 7’s modding toolkit. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up running some sort of “thirstposts of the week” segment either - surely, an endless well of content if I ever saw one.

Elsewhere, Larian are currently at work on two new games. Back in May, they announced the opening of a new Polish studio based in Warsaw, as an addition to their 24 hour dev cycle. “Our plan for the Polish studio is very simple,” said CEO Swen Vincke. “Build a team that can work on our two - very ambitious - new RPGs and enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

"The machine is meant to make large games," Vincke recently told PC Gamer. "We actually know what we want from our gameplay systems, how to evolve them, how to do new things … and they're all big." In the same interview, Vincke spoke about how this approach - one that it sounds as if they’re carrying forward from Baldur’s Gate 3 - is only really possible because of the studio’s independence.

"If you see it, it'll scare you, as a shareholder, as a publisher, the very first thing you will try to do is get it under control—you will try to scope it, you will try to box it, you will try to control it, which is exactly the opposite of what we want to do. Because it's like, why are we spending a million dollars on a dragon, which nobody's ever going to see, except like five people who made that obscure choice? Because if they see it, they have to be happy too. So that's why I put the bloody dragon there, because that's the logical consequence of the things that they've done."

While many of us I’m sure would have loved to see a full on Throne Of Bhaal style expansion for BG3, it’s clear that moving on to these new projects has reinvigorated a studio on the verge of burnout with the Dungeons And Dragons setting. Vincke tells PC Gamer that he doesn’t think “as developers, we ever felt better,” since deciding to move on. "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. We're doing our own thing again, we're not rehashing, we're not trying to convert rules from 50 years ago into something new."