Baldur’s Gate 3 has been out of early access for almost a year now, and it remains one of the biggest games on the planet. Everyone is so busy talking about its characters, narrative, and all the awards it keeps winning, that Larian regularly rotates folks on the team that attend award shows around the world. It’s an unrivalled phenomenon, and is currently in the throes of its victory lap. But this isn’t the first assumed farewell we’ve had for the game.
An epilogue released several months ago served as a closing chapter for the main story and not only addressed prominent questions, but also worked in a number of cutesy references that started in the real world community. I and several others saw this as conclusive proof that Larian was done. Having already announced it had no plans to make Baldur’s Gate 4 and would be leaving these characters and the D&D universe behind, the epilogue felt like it was striking while the iron was hot before finally walking away.
Fast-forward halfway into 2024, and we're still here, with an upcoming update set to add new lines of dialogue, updated animations, new companion options, and various changes aiming to subtly alter the original experience. I’ve little issue with Baldur’s Gate 3 evolving alongside the community in this way, but I am worried about the other negative effects that will emerge from holding onto Baldur’s Gate 3 when so much more can be earned from letting go.
Speaking to Edge Magazine, studio founder Swen Vincke touched on how the growing pile of awards that Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps on winning has become a bit of a nuisance, partly thanks to how much harder it is to find closure at the end of a project when it’s this successful. And I get it. People will be playing and talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 for decades, and in years we will look back on it as a genre-shifting RPG that changed everything. Larian may be on top of the world right now, but it also needs to move on and follow up its masterpiece with a title that many will expect to be even greater.
Whatever Larian does next could be just like Baldur’s Gate 3, or nothing like it all. Interviews with Vincke have him addressing fans directly who are eagerly posting on forums about what they’d love to see in a sequel or how Larian should return to develop new expansions over a new title, requests that he kindly turns down both to temper expectations and keep the team grounded.
They must be on cloud nine right now and desperate to return to Earth. It reframes the regular updates and patches we keep seeing, and how the next will be the last, as it introduces modding tools and a few final fixes before Larian finally says farewell. I hope it does, but also understand how difficult it must be to cut ties with something so magnificent.
Imagine you spent years creating something, and in the process formed a community who came to love, appreciate, and critique everything you did in service of helping it shine that much brighter. Baldur’s Gate 3 began life as an early access title bearing only a single act, but from the offset it was clear Larian was onto something special. Across several years, it built on those foundations, sanded down edges, and strove to create something that could introduce this daunting genre to more people than ever before. It achieved that mission and then some, and watching as a stream of perfect reviews and millions of sales rolled in couldn’t have been easy.
Larian is suffering from success, and right now is probably anxious about how it should bid farewell to Baldur’s Gate 3 when millions are still so fondly attached to it. To deliver a final update is to basically tell its audience that everything it ever wanted to do has been carried out, so it’s time to move on. Even if the game was left in a potentially imperfect state where further things could be meddled with, there is value in that too that both Larian and fans are best to appreciate. Value what we are lucky enough to have, not what we desperately want.
We have no idea what Larian is going to do next, but Baldur’s Gate 3 should be proof that it will knock it out of the park and should be left to its own devices instead of being held hostage to a masterpiece it quite clearly wants to move away from. As players, we owe it to Larian and ourselves to respect the studio’s wishes and allow this RPG masterpiece to go out on a high. Besides, the game we love isn’t going anywhere.
Baldur's Gate 3
5.0/5
Baldur's Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.
