Larian's next game might have been Neverwinter Nights 3, but it won't

Antimatter

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Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, waking up to the news about Tencent...

But tbh, Tencent has shares in Larian, and I think we all kinda benefited from that extra financial support Larian got for BG3.

 

Antimatter

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I think what happened wasn't actually planned. It's clear Larian were working on something D&D related. Just 1 (!) day ago a Hasbro rep said so.

https://www.gamesradar.com/hasbro-e...pports-larians-plan-to-take-the-time-we-need/

This confirms it even further:


I would dare say it's related to royalties to WotC. I think Hasbro (and Wotc) are having real difficulties. And looking at all the speeches by Larian leadership, it's clear they're not supporting corporates & all.

Something must have happened recently, maybe even this or the previous week. It's not a normal situation when a Hasbro guy says: "We want a Larian game" and then a Larian guy says: "We do not want anything related to D&D" just less than 24 hours later.
 

WarChiefZeke

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WoTC has always been a terrible game company, i have been saying that for years on DnD forums and I will say it again. So many examples but if this and their short-sighted greedy IP changes haven't convinced you then you should re-examine them.
 

shmity72

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WoTC has always been a terrible game company, i have been saying that for years on DnD forums and I will say it again. So many examples but if this and their short-sighted greedy IP changes haven't convinced you then you should re-examine them.
Electronic Arts are the epitome of higher standards and sound business practices' well i mean when they made the original bard's tale they were...
 

Black Elk

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Just read this stuff as well. I was in the camp that was pretty convinced they'd drop an expansion. I got an update to my shipping/tracking yesterday and thought it might mean new news coming down the pike lol.

Instead confirmation of my earlier suspicion during EA that they'd probably run the complete opposite direction at the earliest opportunity, since I don't think they were ever fully prepared for everything that catering to an Android's Dungeon fandom would entail hehe. I'm glad that they were finally able to say something, cause people were waiting in trepidation, even if its not the news I was hoping for.

It's bittersweet for me, obviously, as it does take the wind out the sails a bit, but I'll love that dog for all time!

BG3'll go down in the annals for me.

I hope their next title will bring them much success and new chapters equally rewarding.

I guess from here it's really up to the Mods to give it an afterlife now, so it'll be interesting to see where that all ends up, if anywhere.

For the Wizards, I think their coastal tower is on a real shaky foundation right now, cause they keep making some pretty questionable decisions with their golden goose. They always seem to do this same thing, shopping D&D around and splitting the playerbase in half precisely at the point when it looks as if things might be coming together. I'm sure Wizards would love to replicate the BG3 magic trick and flex and weigh in on it, but that's just not a thing they can pull off it seems.

People want that heart! The gold can follow after. Try to reverse it or rewind it back, peeps can tell and don't vibe. I'll be salty on it cause I think it had legs still. For other players who were perhaps less enthusiastic about Larian's approach, I'm sure they might breathe a sigh of relief, wondering who might be next up at bat for D&D.

I think a lot of the Early Access players had already decamped a while back, for parts unknown. I'll probably poke around just to watch the dust settle, as I tend to enjoy that, same as with the Partha pewters hehe. But since my interest was primarily that window on the game design it'll be fun to see what Larian does for the next thing. Guess we'll find out at some point lol.

Meantime, that was an incredible run!

Hats off for sure!

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Zaxares

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I think what happened wasn't actually planned. It's clear Larian were working on something D&D related. Just 1 (!) day ago a Hasbro rep said so.

https://www.gamesradar.com/hasbro-e...pports-larians-plan-to-take-the-time-we-need/

This confirms it even further:


I would dare say it's related to royalties to WotC. I think Hasbro (and Wotc) are having real difficulties. And looking at all the speeches by Larian leadership, it's clear they're not supporting corporates & all.

Something must have happened recently, maybe even this or the previous week. It's not a normal situation when a Hasbro guy says: "We want a Larian game" and then a Larian guy says: "We do not want anything related to D&D" just less than 24 hours later.
There were some rumours (very unconfirmed, I should add) that WotC/Hasbro were heavily leaning on Larian to add in things like microtransactions for BG3 or additional content, and ultimately that was a red line for Larian. Because yeah, I agree that something must have gone very sour between Larian and WotC and quite recently too. Post BG3-release Swen and Larian seemed quite amenable to the idea of exploring more of BG3's world (even the epilogue seems to hint at this, that Tav and Co's adventures were not over. Why else would Withers go to such an extent to bring them all back together?), but it seems that there's too much bad blood between them now. :(
 

Black Elk

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I had been hoping that all the feedback and telemetry they were gathering was going onto some colossal dry-erase board with more pipelines and flowcharts than a dungeon graphed out by Irenicus, like for the express purpose of translating a BG3 into a NWN3.

I don't know, but just some gigantor BG3 version of the Rosetta stone, which could then decrypt and lay it all out, whatever sorts of things might be needed to make an updated cinemascope version of Neverwinter using that kind of formula. That's what I was secretly hoping was going on, but it seems not to be the case hehe.

It's too bad really. I'm slightly annoyed that part of the big plan for BG3 wouldn't have been something like "OK, if BG3 is a run away success, then we lock down IWD3 and NWN3 off the strength of that initial success..." Maybe leverage it to somehow seize the Wizard's tower and swoop 'em all? That would have been so rad!

It's a silly fantasy, but just that idea that some rogue out-of-town Mages might waltz into the Wizards C suite and be like, "yeah there's a new Sorcerer in town now" and then we all get took back to school lol. Go Bayside, saved by the bell! Instead it was just like damn, everything fell apart and they closed the Max as well? Oh no!!! lol

the-max.jpg

Honestly, I was blown away by mainly the Goblins. Like the Goblins were just the best part of the whole thing. I thought to myself many times, 'wow, if the Goblins are this good, surely this game has legs!' Some real standouts and showstoppers there! I feel like Goblin Fezzerk could have been some sort of strategic shorthand there, perhaps from the dropdown emotive menu in Char creation? Bow and scrape and grovel I guess, just do whatever it takes to stay alive!

Alas I will miss the lvl 13-20 campaign where Lae'zel somehow takes Vlaakith's head and becomes Gith Magna Mater for the next age - standing 50 ft tall!

Laezel_EA_Model.png


They could have gone anywhere with it. Like any of those portals from Razaminth's tower? or the chamber of doors in Hell? Or just fall into a whole'nother Underdark campaign with Minthara?! I'd have been on any of those in a heart beat!

Upside, at least I found that Jaheira portrait... That alone would have been worth the ticket price, but then I got a full game out of it too, so I guess that was solid hehe. Still though, I'm going to miss what might have been!

thethingabouthome.png


Maybe someone somehow gets the band back together again? Who could say

I've got a Bard - her name is Brevity!

Never quite made it there though. She'll just be waiting in the wings I suppose hehe.

Also I really wanted the Scratch Origin! Maybe someone can still pull that off? Like doesn't even need words really...

Scratch-face.png




Good times! Done deal!

ps. speaking of portraits check these out...!!!



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Antimatter

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"We're now talking to lots of partners and being approached by a lot of partners who are embracing the challenge of, what does the future of the Baldur's Gate franchise look like?" says Evans [ senior vice president of Digital Strategy and Licensing for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast ]. "So we certainly hope that it's not another 25 years, as it was from Baldur's Gate 2 to 3, before we answer that. But we're going to take our time and find the right partner, the right approach, and the right product that could represent the future of Baldur's Gate. We take that very, very seriously, as we do with all of our decisions around our portfolio. We don't rush into decisions as to who to partner with on products or what products we should be considering."

This confirms my old point that "Baldur's Gate", no matter how much fans of original BG1&2 wanted, is just a trademark, and also a symbol of a highly successful videogame setting up new standards. BG3 managed to follow BG2 from this perspective, so there will be an attempt to create BG4.

"Larian created a much loved cast of characters, who were even celebrated by their nominations, the voice actors behind them and the talent behind them was celebrated at the [BAFTAS]," he says. "And they are now essentially part of D&D canon."

So the question is, what happens to them from here?

"I think it's too early to express specifics and I think that there's a much bigger question about how we approach Baldur's Gate in the future," says Evans. "But I would like to think that all of those characters, for the sake of the fans, could potentially appear in future products.


Jaheira was good in BG3, but I wasn't happy about Minsc in BG3. At this point, it feels VERY weird to imagine, say, Lae'zel, Shadowheart or Astarion in a different game created by different developers and whose personalities are written by different writers.
 

Sylvus Moonbow

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Have yet to even finish BG3, getting to Act 2 and have left it there for the time being. The first Act was a lot of fun though, and from a number of YT videos I have seen, there are a plethora of ways to get through Act 1 by role playing. So much meat and ways to come to a resolution, it is nice for a change to see a game simply stand on its own without the need for DLC.

But like Bioware did, Larian is also stepping away from the Dungeons and Dragons IP which is certainly a good thing if Hasbro/WOTC is interested in season passes or in-game micro transactions. Larian mined the gold and presented it with polish and success, which truly does make one wonder what caused them to break this partnership off.
 

JustKneller

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God forbid they should create an original IP.
I know, right? The thing is, I think that doing something "original" is now too risky for a large company with millions on the line. They have to play it safe with an established IP, but then things like this happen.

if Hasbro/WOTC is interested in season passes or in-game micro transactions
People are kinda blowing up in ttrpg circles over this. Everyone kinda figured that, once Hasbro was in the mix, the franchise would take a turn for the douche. But it still comes as a shock. I think there are going to be some obstacles porting D&D to other mediums. And, even for table games, people have been more likely to explore alternatives. OSR is still going strong and there's already a ton of TSR material out there if you know where to look.
 

JustKneller

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I've been trying to keep my finger on the pulse of this, but I'm not really hearing a lot of buzz from the tabletop community. I'm really expecting the current practices to put people off of 5e, but I don't think the repercussions have really hit yet. We'll see.
 

Black Elk

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The word "authentic" ringing out there like half a dozen times is pretty telling, since that's the literal do-it-yourself right? lol

It's funny to hear corpos announcing how real they intend to keep it, after just failing to keep it real in such spectacular fashion.

They were legit 0 for 3 in '23 on it, the Hasbro Wizards I mean. They should have had an Air Jordan Year, instead they just sorta faceplanted rather than going GOAT.

First they flopped at the box office, then they botched the OGL and that AI art stuff, then they couldn't lock it down for BG3 to get a sequel or a proper follow up?

Somehow the idea of a NWN3 seems further distant now. NWN1 was like an OGL sorta deal, or a bucket of parts, where the player just had to bring their own hot potato heads to make it happen. For all the many ways that Hasbro might learn from it's own past, that's probably the angle on it right there. Cause much as I enjoyed Larian's Early Access, I don't think D&D ever really demonstrated that they knew what to do with a million highly enthusiastic EA players, or like how to tap into that for a NWN style playset or a Vault that could be essentially user created and maintained. I think Larian probably took a stance on general principle not to charge all that much for what they were putting together, in exchange for some kind of good will and perhaps tempered expectations from their players maybe. Like playing the underdog card basically or courting that sensibility in the face of adversity, maybe just to get that extra time they needed to create a game that could actually fill those giant BG shoes. You know so they wouldn't dirt nap it. Makes sense.

To do something similar for a modern Neverwinter seems much harder, cause Neverwinter wasn't about the Official Campaign Modules, but rather the DIY Modules (ie the toolset, the Vault, the Persistent Worlds etc.) I was too young to actually play the goldbox Neverwinter in 1991, but I was old enough to hear about it while playing Ultima Online a few years later, and definitely old enough to remember the second go around with NWN 2002. Like I don't think it was Lady Aribeth and the gang who sold me on on NWN (although I do love her!), really it was the Solstice Toolset and like thousands of budding GMs that made that whole thing happen.

What made it compelling to me was that it was really the opposite of a pay to play subscription service, or I don't know how exactly to frame it, but if it something like Everquest or WoW (or even the original AoL, or UO) was the equivalent of studio Blockbuster late fees and HBO add on bundles, NWN 2002 was more like the public library card or some kind of student film workshop hehe. It had heart cause it was kinda amateur in that way, but with a spirit of semi-professionalism, like the Olympics of D&D campaigns meets Napster. The options were extensive, even if the archives were somewhat disorganized hehe.

I'm definitely way more about D&D's hidden Phi's Φ φ, than their hidden Fees! They just need to give NWN to a studio that will commit for the long haul and who isn't going to leave us holding the bag after nickel & diming us. Keeping the mean somewhere between golden and extreme, with a focus on the Dragons right? But it just gets harder to see how that happens, when they're all authentically trying to keep it in-house. Like when was the last time that actually worked? Probably not since the late 90s. Larian had plenty of bona fides and a reserve of street cred and community goodwill to draw upon. Even if BG3's EA development seemed to move at a glacially slow pace from my player perspective sometimes, I at least trusted Larian to navigate that nautiloid while skipping from plane to plane. With the Wizards piloting the ship directly, I worry. Whoever is next up to bat will have a lot of groundwork to lay before we can go gold with confidence again...

Aribeth_de_Tylmarande.png


noms.png



hehe
 
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JustKneller

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What made it compelling to me was that it was really the opposite of a pay to play subscription service,

To start: sorry for any typos. I have a toddler in my lap watching YT videos as I write this. It does not help with the proofreading. :p

I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I suspect that "toolkit" games are likely a thing of the past, at least for large/corporate developers. Or, if they do continue, creating modules will somehow come with microtrans. I have a friend who, among other things, has a background in organic chemistry and microbiology. This is an analogy she was applying to larger corporations in a different industry, but really you can apply it to corporations across the board. That is, and I hope I don't mess it up, the larger a cell gets, the more resources it needs to consume to stay alive. Eventually, a cell can get too big and it reaches some kind of critical mass where it can't practically sustain itself and it usually just collapses and/or produces low quality garbage for the surrounding system.

WotC can possibly retain some independence as a child company under Hasbro. However, Hasbro spent $325 mil to get them, and they need that money back and then some. They seem to be pretty hands on, too, unlike how Microsoft is being with all the IPs and developers they are swallowing up. A game where you can buy three books for maybe $120 and play "new games" indefinitely isn't going to keep the lights on. A video game toolkit like NWN, with a much higher production cost, that you can buy for $40 and play "new games" indefinitely is definitely not going to keep the lights on. With the former, this is why they created the DM Guild and started exploring VTT options. Plenty of opportunity to take an additional cut there. I honestly think that, once Hasbro finds their way and gets their shit together, D&D is going to go the way of Fallout. There will still be a product with the D&D label, but it won't even resemble the original spirit of the game. It's just like, you still have Elder Scrolls Fallout games being developed, but if you want the "real" Fallout, you're going to play the originals or the Wasteland series from inXile (who cleverly stepped in to fill the void).

And it's not just them. Look at what happened last year with Paradox (now owned by MS) and HBS. The big corporation is holding tight to the IP, while the indie company that actually knows how to develop the titles (Shadowrun and Battletech) walks away with nothing. I really hope they (HBS) pull an Obsidian and just create their own thing like Obsidian did with PoE. That's really the way to go, I think. Let the big guys keep their fancy labels which will proceed to have lowest-common-denominator content, and let the little guys have the freedom to create something new and original.

This is my prediction. Hasbro/WotC is going to create a product, and that product will have D&D stickers all over it. However, it won't even resemble the original spirit of D&D. It'll just be another corporate cash grab. This will leave a void where "real" D&D used to be, and someone will create something that fills that void. It won't have the D&D label on it, but we'll all know what it really is. I think that, technically, this has already happened to an extent with OSR. But, there's a zillion flavors of OSR, so you're not likely to have one game to rule them all (which is probably a good thing). I even have my own side project where I'm trying to retrofit the few good design elements of WotC's early editions of D&D to TSR's system in a way where you can just run the old TSR modules with a more updated system and it "just works". Of course, this is just my take on on the genre and others have a different perspective, but that's the beauty of it. There's plenty of room for all of us in the wake of Hasbro/WoTC's transition, and unfortunately for them, they don't stand to make much/any money off of any of us.

I'm with you Black Elk. I'll tell you about the best $10 I ever spent on this hobby. Terraria. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I easily have 6,000 hours in that game. For $10. On one hand, I kinda feel bad for Re-Logic because they've done an amazing job but only made 16 cents/hour (and dropping the more I play the game) off of me. On the other hand, I have a lot of respect for a developer that can create a solid entry that "just works" without having to continue to shovel money at it to keep it running. It's a hobby, not a mortgage.
 
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