Larian Studios might have bid farewell to the Baldur’s Gate franchise, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the road for the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG, as Hasbro is now setting its sights on the lucrative IP, with early plans for a sequel sometime in the future.
This comes as no surprise, considering 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 was a massive success, garnering not only commercial and critical acclaim, but clinching numerous awards as well, and with developer Larian Studios shifting focus towards its next big game, which would be focused on its own original IPs, these leaves room for other companies like Hasbro to take over the reins of the franchise.
Sure enough, there’s no shortage of interested parties at Hasbro, according to the SVP of digital games at Hasbro Dan Ayoub, who spoke with IGN at the Game Developers Conference event in San Francisco. “We’re kind of working out our plans for the future and what we’re going to be doing with that.” he said, “And actually, in pretty short order, we’re going to have some stuff to talk about around that.”
Despite the interest, Ayoub admits that Hasbro isn’t “in a hurry” to push out a sequel, which is fair considering how monumental the task would be. “We’re going to take a very measured approach… We’ve got a lot of plans, a lot of different ways to go about it. We’re starting to think about, okay, yeah, we’re ready to start dipping [our] toes a little bit and talking about a few things.” he added, acknowledging that he eventually wants a Baldur’s Gate 4, but making one would likely take a while.
The pressure to get the next game in the series right extends to Hasbro’s other Dungeons & Dragons-related projects too, with the company announcing back in November last year that it was working on a new D&D game. Still, Ayoub assures that he is “never one to shy down from a challenge”.
“I think anything that forces us to raise our creative bar, and developers love to have a high bar to go after, and I think we’ve actually seen the team push some really interesting ideas that they’re like, ‘Okay, we need to raise our bar. We need to go bigger on this.’ And things like that. So, I think that’s our hope, right? We would keep raising the bar and everyone just tries to go a little higher.” he concluded.
A Baldur’s Gate sequel might not arrive anytime soon, but at least fans can be assured that Hasbro has plans to keep the franchise alive. In the meantime, those itching for their Baldur’s Gate fix can look forward to jumping back into Baldur’s Gate 3, which is set to receive its final major patch sometime in 2025, introducing cross-play, 12 new subclasses, and a photo mode.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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