Larian boss says the Baldur's Gate 3 approach would "scare" shareholders and publishers: "You will try to box it, you will try to control it, which is the exact opposite of what we want"

Baldur's Gate 3 screenshot showing Gortash, a human man with tousled brown hair and shadow-y facial hair, smirking
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Larian doesn't reckon its approach to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3 game design would be a huge hit with sharehol🍰ౠders and publishers.

Despite i🌳ts scale and massive success, Baldur's Gate 3 is an RPG made by an independent developer that isn't beholden to publisher nor shareholders. Although it has investors, including China-based tech giant Tencent, it's generally understood that the development team operates independently from them. In short, they get to do what they want.

 , Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke suggested that a buyout would lead to a constriction on the team's creativity and unique method of making games that keep players consistently engaged.

"If you sꦗee it, it'll scare you, as a shareholder, as a publisher," Vincke said. "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. These days, especially when you have so much entertainment, people are only going to put their time into something that keeps on engaging them."

In the case of Baldur's Gate specifically, there's a ton of content that players will never see even on their second or third playthrꦓough because of the way the story branches off in so many different possible directions depending on player choice. It's that sort of content that may ap🔴pear superfluous to people outside the creative team forking up the development funds, but is nonetheless crucial to story and immersion in Larian's view.

"In the type of game that we make, that means that we need to have a lot of content, and you put a lot of content in there that nobody's ever going to see. Which is really not obvious, right? 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 tܫhe bloody dragon there, because that's the logical consequence of the things that they've done."

Of course, Larian was right to trust its intuition, as Baldur's Gate 3 is widely regarded as 2023's GOTY despite fierce competition from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Alan Wake 2, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In the same interview, Vincke shared his initial response to the RPG's explosive launch, sayi🎀ng at the time, 'You know what this means? It means we get to♉ do it again'.

Meanwhile, the scrapped Baldur's Gate 3 add-on was playable when Larian canned it, and director Swen Vincke has some salt for the wound: "It's something you all would have liked".

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was🍸 hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.