Larian Studios refused to create Baldur’s Gate 4 due to a dispute with the owners of D&D. But even before that, the studio created a working prototype of the game.
Baldur’s Gate 4 ended up «on Larian’s desk right after the third game was finished. The sequel was canceled only after the studio started working on it. Larian CEO Sven Vincke said in an interview that «it was partially possible to play different things in».
«So, if you’ve done something super successful, obviously everyone will ask you: «When are you going to do the next one? And when you, as a developer, come out of that little miserable cave where you’ve been sitting for many, many hours finishing your work, you become vulnerable. …You tend to do the obvious things: make an expansion or a sequel, because that’s the easiest way to go,» said Vincke during an interview on the eve of Baldur’s Gate 3’s first anniversary.
So Larian started working on a sequel, initially in the form of an expansion:
«We have the engine, we have everything — all we need to do is add additional levels or just create some new stories. How hard can it be?».
Progress was rapid because «the production machine was still warm»:
«Oh yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. Let’s create BG4. Everything we did for this we can just move there, people will love it».
But for a studio that had been developing its own Divinity games for decades, it seemed questionable to spend a few more years on someone else’s setting:
«I mean, we’re probably going to have to redo this 10 times. And do we really want to do that for the next three years? … We have to look for ways we can do things that we are passionate about»
When Vincke talked about this with the team, the initial enthusiasm for Baldur’s Gate 4 quickly changed. The company is now working on two new games, details of which are not yet available.
Source: PC Gamer