Baldur's Gate 3 - Why It Took 20 Years To See BG3

Mortismal Gaming tries to retrace the legal spaghetti around the franchise.

Why It Took 20 Years To See Baldur's Gate 3

Ever wonder why it took so long to see BG3 after the release of BG2: ToB all the way back in 2001?

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Not the most rigorous presentation of the franchise's history, but still fun to listen to.

It's hard to see what could have been done to top BG2, if the black hound had been released it might have dissapointed some fans of the epic sized Bhaalspawn Saga. A top down Ravenloft spin off would have been an exciting substitute to give a break from the setting

More then twenty by the time Larian Studios completes BG III.

This is practically click bait. it's hardly presenting anything new or detailed.

The more "articles" I see only presented as videos, the more I'm inclined to not watch any videos at all anymore …

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
The more "articles" I see only presented as videos, the more I'm inclined to not watch any videos at all anymore …

Alrik video killed the written article. Twitch and YouTube actually.

Originally Posted by shamroxor
It's hard to see what could have been done to top BG2, if the black hound had been released it might have dissapointed some fans of the epic sized Bhaalspawn Saga. A top down Ravenloft spin off would have been an exciting substitute to give a break from the setting.

It's a shame as Black Hound, Van Buren, and Torn sounded like good RPGs before Black Isle closed. If you want to play a Ravenloft RPG check out the various mods for NWN.

Originally Posted by Pappy
This is practically click bait. it's hardly presenting anything new or detailed.

Of course, since it's about history

After thinking the reason why it took twenty years was TSR. Atari, and Wizards of the coast. After Black Isle closed down they all turned to Bioware and Obsidian.

That lead to two NWN games. After that they moved direction to online MMO's for many years. Then came the crowdfunding golden age that rejuvenated Niche RPGs.

So yes lets thank Obsidian, Owlcat, and Larain Studios.

Edit#1: I forgot to mention the huge court battle between both Atari, and Wizards of the coast. The legal battle was messy but Wizards of the coast won and got control of the IP.

Edit#2: Also forgot to mention Sword Coast Legends. It was the first attempt to make more SP Dungeons & Dragons RPGs on the PC, but it turned out to be a huge flop.

Almost stopped any future games on the PC as well.

It was caused by FMV and 3D graphic obsession. First killed adventure games, second killed isometric, party based rpg games. Took 15+ years and raise of indie development community to recover. Now it shines more then ever before.

20 years? There's some wishful thinking for you.

How many acts are in the game now? I'm only going to play it when it's completed.

They market each patch so hard they feel like DLC addons!

Originally Posted by SirJames
20 years? There's some wishful thinking for you.

How many acts are in the game now? I'm only going to play it when it's completed.

They market each patch so hard they feel like DLC addons!

Yeah, same here. Knowing Larian there will be dozens of patches even after the game is officially released. I won’t touch this before there is a Definitive Edition. With Larian it’s basically like early access = early alpha, release version = final alpha, ten patches later = beta, another ten patches later = version 1.0 .

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Yeah, same here. Knowing Larian there will be dozens of patches even after the game is officially released. I won’t touch this before there is a Definitive Edition. With Larian it’s basically like early access = early alpha, release version = final alpha, ten patches later = beta, another ten patches later = version 1.0 .

Yeah, that's true.

A lot of the best, most ambitious RPGs have been riddled with bugs. Maybe that's the sign of a good game?

Originally Posted by Andrew23
It was caused by FMV and 3D graphic obsession. First killed adventure games, second killed isometric, party based rpg games. Took 15+ years and raise of indie development community to recover. Now it shines more then ever before.

I consider it a mixed blessing. We would of probably got a Dragon Age type game in that time but worse and there would probably be no talk of an isometric experience except in terms of being an outdated thing.

Originally Posted by SirJames
20 years? There's some wishful thinking for you.

How many acts are in the game now? I'm only going to play it when it's completed.

They market each patch so hard they feel like DLC addons!

I don't really understand. That doesn't matter, what counts here is that they had the licence to do so, just about when D:OS2 was released. The talk is not at all about the release date but about the legal complications.

Even if you want to count like that, we have seen BG3 in action since last year, it's quite advanced already.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
After thinking the reason why it took twenty years was TSR. Atari, and Wizards of the coast. After Black Isle closed down they all turned to Bioware and Obsidian.

That lead to two NWN games. After that they moved direction to online MMO's for many years. Then came the crowdfunding golden age that rejuvenated Niche RPGs.

So yes lets thank Obsidian, Owlcat, and Larain Studios.

Edit#1: I forgot to mention the huge court battle between both Atari, and Wizards of the coast. The legal battle was messy but Wizards of the coast won and got control of the IP.

Edit#2: Also forgot to mention Sword Coast Legends. It was the first attempt to make more SP Dungeons & Dragons RPGs on the PC, but it turned out to be a huge flop.

Almost stopped any future games on the PC as well.

There's the Baldur's Gate licence, which went through all this process (one can retrieve most of it on the Copyright Records Public Portal though it's tedious, pity Mortismal didn't put any reference of what he said), and there's the D&D. Honestly, developers could have used any other D&D setting to make a good game. Which some did, like you said, NWN. Or as @shamroxor suggested.

The funny thing is that BioWare added the lore of Baldur's Gate, not WotC or TSR.

So I wonder what Larian would have done if WotC hadn't come back to them. Maybe we would have another D&D setting, and it wouldn't have pissed off so many Baldur's Gate fans who want the game to feel like the old BG games, whatever this means. Wouldn't they have almost the same success without the trouble?

I'm not an expert in D&D lore, so perhaps I'm missing something.

Got to agree on FMV and 3D, although 3D to a lesser extent. I remember when I played mad dog mcree for the first time on my pc back in the day and having a bit of fun but there sure wasn't much of a game there. It got worse and worse and the years went by and only a few did it right i.e. Wing Commander 3 and Gabriel Knight 2/Tex Murphy etc. The FMV really added a massive budget sink for the AAA games of the time and there just wasn't much of a payoff in most games. An animated sequence like in Ultima7 was often just as effective (vs the grainy FMV of the time) and cost much less.

I think that's the MMO who killed the single player rpgs and why we dont see any BG2 like game , nor anything anymore. Ultima online 1997 , everquest 1999, then 2001 for daoc ,finally 2004 for world of warcraft, there's so much time you can spend on games, those were great mmos worth playing, still unmatched. My interest and most people for single player rpgs faded, then we shifted towards those.

Nowadays you realize online isnt that great, very little interaction , other players are
just an hindrance. There's absolutely no more innovations in mmo, nothing new at all except they are looking better graphically. Same time wow lose millions of subscribers there's a single player rpg renaissance.

Originally Posted by Mortmal
I think that's the MMO who killed the single player rpgs and why we dont see any BG2 like game , nor anything anymore. Ultima online 1997 , everquest 1999, then 2001 for daoc ,finally 2004 for world of warcraft, there's so much time you can spend on games, those were great mmos worth playing, still unmatched. My interest and most people for single player rpgs faded, then we shifted towards those.

Nowadays you realize online isnt that great, very little interaction , other players are
just an hindrance. There's absolutely no more innovations in mmo, nothing new at all except they are looking better graphically. Same time wow lose millions of subscribers there's a single player rpg renaissance.

I know so many people that were keen on WOW back in the day but I always felt that was the death of Blizzard to me. I liked their single player content but as soon as devs get that MMO money it disappears.