Larian Studios teasing... ...Baldur's Gate III? Edit: Confirmed!

Larian Studio's official website is currently teasing something with this logo:

Now, the most obvious assumption is that it's Divinity: Original Sin III. However, as reported by PC Gamer, a little digging reveals that the logo's video file contains references to Baldur's Gate III.

If confirmed, I'm excited. I don't think there's a better pairing than Larian and Baldur's Gate right now. Of all the studios, Larian are the only ones who could do this justice.

Edit1: Confirmed! Here's the teaser trailer that debuted at the Google Stadia stream:

Edit 2: As reported by US Gamer, it will NOT be an Epic Games Store exclusive! In fact, it sounds like it will be the reverse:

"You will see Steam pages pop up, you will see GOG pages pop up, but no Epic pages will pop up," says Swen Vincke, founder of Larian Studios. "I don't see why not; I don't believe in exclusives, I prefer to be everywhere."

Ohohoho. This news just gets better and better.

wut wut!

Larian has been consistently one of the best devs in a long time. And all without big publisher money! The dream is real!

Heard it might be Divinity 3.

Oh god , pls let it be real only Larian can make a sequel worthy to the series

Don't see it, they nor MS own the IP. And Larian have already confirmed they are not.

While I would love a new D&D game, I am a bit unsure why bg3 would make much sense, as the story is over and a bit unsure where it would go?

So yeah think its divinity 3, which of course would be freaking awesome, as the previous entries are some of the best games released in the last decade.

Only ones that I would trust with BG3 are Larian and Obsidian.

Indeed.

CDP are overrated and Bioware are now an on-going car-crash.

I just started playing Divinity Original Sin 2 so the timing here is great lol.

Hope so, it's been 10 years since Divinity 2

Yeah I bet it's Divinity 3 too. Obsidian would have my vote for a BG sequel anyway, based on their PoE efforts

@xantufrog: its a shame though, most of the obsidian crew were actually working on bg3 back in the days, of course back then they were called Black Isle, but unfortunately the game got canned for some reason, looked amazing...:(

If true, 2019 is the craziest year of returning franchises in gaming ever. Baldur's Gate 3 Reveal, Half Life 3? Prequel? Reveal, System Shock 3 Reveal, Borderlands 3 Reveal, Kingdom Hearts 3 release, CoD: MW Reboot, and hopefully a release for FF7 remake.

@madrocketeer: i wonder how relevant the Baldur's gate IP would be in 2019.

It is much more likely Original Sin 3.

If I were to guess... about as relevant as a new Command & Conquer in Red Alert style would be. Kinda on the level of Settlers 2019 and Age of Empires 4 relevant. So a bit below Warcraft 4 relevant for sales, and more than a new Star Control. So... still pretty relevant. And so far removed from a Battle Royal game or a 100+ mill marketed milk factory that it can't be a 10+ million hit. They can forget about that. You need to market it to get there and you need to give the IP at least one game to reintroduce itself to the people before you'll see good AAA sales.

But... I think you are right that it will be Original Sin 3 and honestly that's still fantastic news!

I hope not. Their character building is really weak. Their entire combat system revolves around manipulating elements in the environment which was interesting in the first game and grew old in the second. Also they introduced shielding forcing you to waste skills and spells on grinding down shields in the second game which bored me to tears.

Unpopular opinion I know but they absolutely are not the right team to evolve the BG legacy. It would take someone like Bioware (of old) at their best. These guys would be massively out of their depth they would just produce Divinity 3 and change the name and the game would feel exactly like the other two.

They make good games but 'good' doesn't cut it in this instance.

That would be pretty awesome. I loved the previous two Baldur’s Gate games so another one would be greatly appreciated.

Something tells me you're thinking about the Dark Alliance games.

MS gonna buy them.

Highly doubt MS could pay Larian enough to buy them out. Swen Vincke, the studio's founder/owner/director, GREATLY values his studio's independence. And after DOSII, he's not in a tough financial spot anymore either like he was before.

@bussinrounds: Well that something would be wrong. I’m talking about the two PC games. I’ve never played the Dark Alliance games.

Does Baldur's Gate really need a sequel though, considering the ending of ToB?

Although, it would be fun if they brought back the 2nd edition ruleset. So I am not complaining.

The thing I’d like to know is, if true, what ruleset is it going to use?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess if the license moves forward they will pretty much have to go with 5th edition.

I’m probably going to make a few people mad with this, but to be honest, Larian’s writing is just not that good. Cheesy at best and downright embarrassingly bad at worst. You can’t bring that kind of writing to this franchise. On top of that, 5th edition rules.... that just sounds like a bad idea all around.

The originals used 2nd Edition with an insane level cap of 40 in BG2. 2nd Edition is perfect for this type of game. IWD 2 used 3rd Edition, and the game was radically different in pacing because of it. I don’t believe 5th would work well in this type of game, 5th was designed with MMO type gameplay in mind.

Anyway... as much as I would like to be excited about this, I just see a train wreck in the making.

Agreed.

I used to love RPG's like Icewind Dale and Baldurs Gate and all that stuff, but sadly I just don't have the time or attention span these days to enjoy the new ones like Pillars of Eternity.

Larian is an exception to this; Divinity: Original Sin 1/2 are works of art, masterpieces of gaming.

I could not imagine a better studio to receive the IP of Baldur's Gate.

I’d happily take BG3 from Larian, they are solid devs. I’d have preferred Obsidian but they’re a little busy with Outer Worlds.

No, but they're probably just using BG to sell more copies due to name recognition, as that bhaalspawn storyline is done and it is just a city on the sword coast anyways. So they can/should make a BG3 which has zero to do with those characters & plotlines.

Just hope it's turn based and they lose the cartoony artstyle and whimsical humor. Being based on the D&D rules should hopefully improve a lot on their systems and such, although I'm not familiar with 5.0...the one they will most likely be using.

Love Larian and would be happy with either BG3 or Divinity 3 from them

Rumored to be announced tomorrow as the opener for the Google Stadia show.

RPGCodex users claims it's Baldur's Gate 3. Larian denied the rumor last year.

If they're going to bring back the franchise that would be great, but they should just upgrade editions. 2e is basically a weird relic compared to 3.5 and 5e, especially in the context of making a video game.

Having said that, I'm almost positive this is not BG3. As far as I know, Beamdog scooped up the rights to all these old Black Isle franchises. Getting BG3 out would require they, Wizards of the Coast, and Larian all were working to get this going with no leaks or public motions whatsoever.

That's true. I'd rather they done an original IP with unique elements.

A Western RPG? A Feudal Japan RPG? DnD style high fantasy has basically been done to death.

Bump. Confirmed at the Stadia pre-E3 stream! Here's the teaser trailer:

Woo hoo! Baldur’s Gate III confirmed!

I love it when my posts age well. To be fair to me though, based on the teaser image and trailer the story doesn't seem like it will have much of anything to do with the original games save being Forgotten Realms and Sword Coast. Something surrounding Mindflayers, so likely references to the Bhaalspawn events will be vague at best. I'll expect this to be a sequel in the same sense that Nier Automata is a sequel, or Neverwinter Nights 2 is a sequel.

Have you even played the originals?

@Random_Matt: Yes I have, in fact I still have them in my game collection.

A little more news now. First, the game will be based on 5th Edition D&D.

Also, according to US Gamer, Baldur's Gate III will NOT be an Epic Games Store exclusive. In fact, it sounds like it will be the reverse; it will launch first on Steam and GOG, then come to EGS later:

"You will see Steam pages pop up, you will see GOG pages pop up, but no Epic pages will pop up," says Swen Vincke, founder of Larian Studios. "I don't see why not; I don't believe in exclusives, I prefer to be everywhere."

GOG it is then. Wonder if they will keep all the original classes.

Prob get it off GOG as well just to support them.

We're in E3 already ^_____^

Amazing news! No idea how it will tie in with the previous games, but so pumped for another D&D game! Please please keep the turn based combat from Divinity!! Any more info available anywhere??

Will buy day one. Absolute fantastic developer.

Also

PC Gamer has three different articles on it, here, here and here. IGN also has a rather extensive one themselves.

That's just the ones from my Firefox bookmarks.

@madrocketeer: thanks, will dive into those immediately!!

Just thought it looked like a mindflayer.

This is a sequel to a GOAT game, so there is a lot riding on it. They can't half arse or dumb this down just for consoles. It's got to be full fat Baldur's Gate. Not the most in depth RPG of all time but more so than most today.

This will be interesting. While I like Larian games their core storytelling isn't particularly strong.

isnt even announced for consoles yet, so fare its an pc and stadia exclusive.

This will be BG3 in name only. Larian's writing and character building is really weak, two of the biggest attractions of the BG games.

Expect a renamed Divinity 3. What a waste.

Swen Vincke said it's the biggest game Larian's ever done and they tripled the size of their studio.