„It's a brave decision.” Former Rockstar director praises Larian for walking away from Baldur's Gate
The former creator of the GTA series congratulated Larian Studios on its departure from the Baldur's Gate brand. In his opinion, this is a very bold and risky move.
It's no secret that one of the safest ways for developers to keep making money is by constantly expanding a well-known and loved brand. The trust built over the years makes players more likely to choose sequels over completely new titles. For this reason, a former creator of the Grand Theft Auto series congratulated Larian Studios for moving away from the Baldur’s Gate franchise and the Dungeons & Dragons license.
A bold move by Larian Studios
Obbe Vermeij worked at Rockstar Games from 1995 to 2009, during which time he developed many installments of Grand Theft Auto. He knows well what it's like to avoid the risks associated with the desire to make a completely new brand. It's no surprise, then, that during a conversation with GamesHub, he praised Larian Studios for making the difficult decision to abandon Baldur’s Gate.
It's nice to see a studio like Larian, which just released Baldur’s Gate 3, say that they don't feel like doing Baldur’s Gate 4 right now and will simply make another game. And you know, kudos to them. But it's a bold move. It's not obvious at all, quite the opposite, it's very risky. It would be easier to just keep doing what they've been doing.
It's hard to disagree with the developer – we've seen many situations where studios focused solely on their most popular brands because they guaranteed a return on investment. Even Vermeij himself once worked on several other projects at Rockstar Games, which were never realized. Instead, we received more installments of GTA.
The reality is, if you've got a studio that hit it big with one game, making any wild changes just doesn't make sense. Whatever strange ideas come to mind, we should rather incorporate them into GTA instead of releasing an entirely new game.
Relying on established brands shouldn't be surprising. Even though a lot of developers have pointed out that companies tend to go for "safe" investments, the big publishers are dealing with too much money to risk experimenting often (just look at what Paul Sage said last year). And Larian is by no means a small independent studio anymore, but a developer with hundreds of employees.
Although Larian is abandoning Baldur's Gate, it doesn't create a completely new brand, but returns to the well-known Divinity series, which gained considerable popularity thanks to Original Sin 2. The Belgian studio also doesn't intend to abandon the solutions it has been developing for over a decade, so fans have a rough idea of what to expect.
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Author: Martin Bukowski
Graduate of Electronics and Telecommunications at the Gdańsk University of Technology, who decided to dedicate his life to video games. In his childhood, he would get lost in the Gothic's Valley of Mines and "grind for gold" in League of Legends. Twenty years later, games still entertain him just as much. Today, he considers the Persona series and soulslike titles from From Software as his favorite games. He avoids consoles, and a special place in his heart is reserved for PC. In his spare time, he works as a translator, is creating his first game, or spends time watching movies and series (mainly animated ones).
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