Larian Studios prepared a nifty Christmas video for its large community of fans. First and foremost, greetings from every office worldwide are included: Kuala Lumpur, Warsaw, Ghent (the headquarters), Barcelona, Guildford, Dublin, and Quebec.
Then, the focus returns to Senior Communications Developer Aoife Wilson, who claims she’s got one more thing. It’s a big gift with a ‘Larian’s Next Game’ tag on it. She’s got just enough time to shake it once before Larian CEO Swen Vincke jokingly tackles her off-screen, though. Vincke said:
Oh no, you don’t! No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry about that. No, this thing, it needs a lot more time in the oven. By the time it’s going to be finished, it’s going to be so big! For the time being you’re going to have to wait.
And then he proceeds to kick the package far away. I have to say, I certainly wasn’t expecting them to start teasing the game so soon. After all, they released Baldur’s Gate 3 in August 2023, and we only learned they wouldn’t do DLCs or a sequel in March.
Moreover, Vincke himself said not long ago that the next title could come as late as 2029. Sure, he also later added that it was kind of a throwaway line, and he did not want Larian to be beholden to a date. However, a lot of time is clearly needed. After all, Baldur’s Gate 3 was revealed ahead of E3 2019 and only launched out of early access more than four years later. From the sound of it, this one will be similarly big, and triple-A development times are only increasing with each new release.
Perhaps this very early tease is an indirect confirmation that the studio’s next project will also be released on early access. While this won’t make its full launch come any quicker (in fact, the opposite might be true), it would put an early version of it in the hands of the players a lot sooner, probably in the next two to three years.
Whatever the case, the studio’s fans must be patient. In the meantime, there’s their Advent Calendar Web game to go through. Speaking of actual videogames, Larian has at least one major Baldur’s Gate 3 update scheduled for next year. It will add cross-play for cooperative multiplayer, a built-in Photo Mode, and twelve new subclasses to the award-winning cRPG.
