Here’s how it’s gonna go down:
- Hasbro sells Wizards of the Coast to Microsoft
- Microsoft uses the new IP from WoC and forces Obsidian to make BG4
- Sidenote: Blizzard will take over MtG mobile
- Microsoft forces Obsidian to imbue BG4 with AI generated slop throughout and make it a live service game somehow
- BG4 flops hard
- Microsoft shuts down Obsidian
Id rather see NWN 3, or even better yet,
hear me out
something new.
NWN 3: The Winter
I have it on mostly dead authority that it’s coming!
Dungeons and Dragons: Birthright.
Let’s do it! Bring us back to Aebrynis!
I’m probably the only person out there who wants this. Some pen pusher would compare it to kingmaker which is just not the same at all.
Aebrynis
Is that Elvish for “Ay! Bronies!” ?
Given the success of BG3 it would be very hard to do BG4 successfully, and another studio will get raked over the coals for anything not as good, which is a very high bar. It’ll be first dismissed as Hasbro continuing to ruin D&D, then the studio will get called crappy and hit their reputation.
Hasbro/Wizards could instead have a few other studios build out some smaller standalone campaigns for half or a third the target price and see what sticks.
Imagine a Phandelver or Ice Spire Peak, or a Waterdeep series of campaigns with a smaller world and more linear story progression (you still need player choices to matter) — get the core mechanics right, build up some tight stories that players respond to, THEN take it open world with many characters and after that build out BG4.
BG2 to BG3 was a long ass time. I think fans would prefer BG4 done well even if it takes longer than having to pretend there is no BG4 in Ba Sing Se
Even if they really want to use an existing series for the brand recognition, they could do Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale or something.
IMO Don’t try to make a sequel, just make another story in the world. Call it Baldur’s Gate: GameTitleGoesHere
I’d take IWD though, I loved those games and own physical box copies I picked up at compUSA, and i’d even take it as a combat heavy spinoff with light story, just like the first one. Getting bogged down with dialogue in every city is a turnoff for me as much as I adore BG2/3. Was so nice bringing my own party and exploring the world, one dead beetle, lizardman or undead at a time.
Ooh, another Icewind Dale would be amazing. It’s been 26 years.
While we’re at other properties, when’s the last time Drizz’t made an appearance? We should do a Drizz’t game.
I enjoyed bg3, but DND 5e is not a system I enjoy nor want more of. It’s surprisingly shallow.
It’s by design. It’s just meant for more casual play, that’s all. I play Shadowrun (pre Anarchy) so I’m no stranger to crunchy systems, but 5e is nice for just getting together with friends, drinking some alcohol, and having fun role playing without having to pay too close attention or needing a group that’s really dedicated to learning the game deeply. More tilted towards friend groups and less towards gaming groups, if you will.
I’ll say as a GM, the low bar needed for learning and playing 5e is much easier to get people on board with and even then that bar isn’t always reached… I’ve had to kick people for just refusing the learn what dice to roll after months of sessions. 5e is a great gateway drug to get people into TTRPGs though, and then when you start finding out who is really getting into the hobby, you can spin that group off into crunchier systems and keep 5e around for the more casual role play enjoyers.
The dnd 5e-ness of BG3 was among the worst parts of it.
This is how I feel. And honestly how the developers of BG3 seemed to feel. Additional context for other readers if not necessarily for you, but 3.5 and Pathfinder have a lot of what they call the “magical Christmas Tree effect” where someone using Detect Magic on a player character would see a magical aura around every single one of your body parts. Barring specific character build decisions there was usually a best-in-slot magical item for every place you could have one, and the difficulty curve of the game assumed that you would.
5e, especially early 5e, attempted to curb this. Magic items were rare and powerful, but more importantly interesting. Strict numerical bonuses were powerful but boring so they were mostly eliminated. Flash or nothing was the name of the game, and indeed some magical items literally do nothing but enhance looks.
BG3 said no to this. Many possible character builds can only be done, or are strongly encouraged, with sets of magic items. It was an attempt to add depth and choice back in while restricted by a system that had little of it.
Yeah, but unfortunately they kept 5e’s design principle of “you barely get any feats”. I want my characters to be interesting because of who they are, not because of what glowing doodads they looted from more interesting dead people.
Also class + level is so coarse. I’d rather be able to, like, buy individual things I want. Get XP for doing a quest, buy more sneak attack. Or a spell slot. Maybe hit dice. Really let me mix and match.
But DND 5e is designed to have a small decision space in builds. They want the half paying attention guy’s character to perform about as well as the optimizer, instead of the huge gap between those archetypes that 3e had.
i really liked the… I think it was the Oracle class in pathfinder. that would be fun.
D&D was optimized for pencil-and-paper-and-dice play. I mean, it has to keep the math simple to keep the game going.
I think that a ruleset optimized for computer RPGs would probably look somewhat different.
It’s funny because while 5e has simpler math than the predecessors, it’s still kind of clunky. 1d20 + proficiency + modifier isn’t that bad, but I’ve seen a lot of players who can’t correctly add 16 + 7.
I really liked the nWoD system where you roll a bunch of d10s and just count how many came up >= 8. No addition or subtraction.
Also 1d20+stuff is flat probability, which feels bad.
I think that a ruleset optimized for computer RPGs would probably look somewhat different.
But also 100 times this. You could do so many things that would be painful to do by hand at the table.
The variance on a single d20 is miserable after playing games with better probability curves.
Yep I moved to gurps it was a game changer
It’s among my favorites, and I’m nervous for whatever Divinity’s got in its place.
That’s a controversial opinion but I agree with you. Going by the Original Sin games I prefer 5e over the rules Larian made for Divinity.
The surfaces system was superior in Divinity OS2 but I felt the physical/magical armor system was kind of awkward.
While BG3 was a better game, the combat in Divinity was more fun. Not only was cheese encouraged, it was almost required at higher difficulty levels. Summoning a lava worm to shoot a laser beam at some tossed out fire traps to cause a million damage? Sure, why not?
Given how much more likely one is to have played 5e than any other system, it’s probably not all that controversial.
5e is a great system for a “Rule of Cool” style of DMing. That’s amazing for a decent DM and inexperienced/less technical players.
But it is not a good CRPG system or a good system for experienced and technical players. There’s a lot of “can I…” and “I want to…” that slows down combat even when you know the rules.
Plus, there’s stuff like “can a centaur ride a horse?” where 5e is inconsistent. Or the infamous peasant rail gun.
5e is a great system for a “Rule of Cool” style of DMing. That’s amazing for a decent DM and inexperienced/less technical players.
It’s not even that good at that. Fate, for example, is a much lighter and better system for that. Aspects are a very simple system for setting expectations and letting players do wacky things based on them.
If I was going to run a game for new players I would absolutely not reach for 5e. It provides too much fertilizer for “can I move that far?” and “if he’s flying 30’ up can I still shoot him?” minutia.
I probably had fewer “can I…?” questions in BG3 than any other CRPG, if for no other reason than that all of the enemy attributes are exposed at all times, and your spells tell you which attributes they interact with. It’s that same quality that allows the technical design of Larian’s engine to shine, and it made large swaths of the genre feel dated immediately. Either in the video game or the tabletop, my combats don’t have many questions to bog them down.
I think I’d rather see more 4e than 5e at this point. Its so one-dimensional
To be fair, bg3 is more Divinity Souls 3 than BG3…
They just slapped some BG paint on top of it.
Trying to find a studio that can make a sequel to that isn’t going to work out well. They need to make the tough call of finding another studio that will take the franchise and make a good game how they know how to make a good game.
I suspect Hasbro went ahead and continued offering BG4 to studios until one of them took the bait.
Classic Hasbro trying to brute force success when they have no clue what they‘re working with. One can only hope nobody takes on the project when Hasbro approaches them. Best thing that could happen is that nobody really cares and the game is forgotten quickly since it would be nothing like any of the other BG games. Worst case it tarnishes the franchise forever.
