Baldur's Gate Larian is moving away from D&D, no BG3 DLC or BG4

[mediocrepoet]

'For the sake of the fans' indeed. I'm amazed he managed to get that out without bursting into laughter, or being struck by lightning.

This is an artistic project and the fans deserve to know exactly what happens with each and every one of those beloved characters down to the minutiae and we'll be here to support every single one of those projects. Any buckets of money you may see me rolling through are simply coincidental as we go on this creative journey with D&D fans of all orientations, colours, and creeds.

I can feel the muse coming now!

 

[Hagashager]

And how will their morale be when their next title performs nowhere near as well I wonder?

Fabulously pessimistic. Larian doesn't need D&D, much like how Bioware didn't need them when they did Mass Effect and Dragon Age. There's precedence for a company using D&D to grab a lot of attention and then doing their own thing with comparable/greater success.

I didn't say anything about continuing work on BG3, there's plenty more that could be done with just Forgotten Realms, nevermind all the other IPs that Wizards of the Coast owns. If they were smart, they'd be pitching to other big established IPs outside of Wizards as well.

They don't like the systems, they don't like sharing the money. Swen also mentioned that all the people who they worked with on BG3 are gone so I imagine they don't like the company either (even though Swen had to give that PR statement saying Wizards wasn't the reason they bounced)

Also worth noting Larian had spent the better part of its existence as a company being ping-ponged between publishers and held at the brink of bankruptcy. Virtually every publisher besides WoTC fucked them utterly to the point Swen's disdain is visibly palpable.

D:OS 1 was a last-ditch, Hail-Mary, Final Fantasy for the company and had it failed Swen admitted he'd likely be homeless.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Great news for people who hated BG3, but walking away from an established IP with ~40 years worth of lore behind it is a huge mistake in the long run, just as it was for Bioware when they passed on making KotOR II in favor of Jade Empire and what followed. "We'll make our own IPs with blackjack and hookers!" is pie in the sky for most companies especially when generic fantasy/ sci-fi IPs are a dime a dozen these days. Wasn't even possible to whore out Dragon Age enough to secure a permanent place in the pop-culture and that was during the post-LotR fantasy drought of the late oughts. GFL in current year.

Here’s the difference between the two things you’re talking about: Larian Studios was already big before Baldur's Gate 3, BioWare was not big before Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Larian built a large audience all on their own before Baldur’s Gate 3 ever came out, and moved somewhere in the range of 7 million units of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Larian was already on an upward path all on their own just like FromSoftware was going into Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

I also wonder how much Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro even see much of a future for D&D games like Baldur's Gate 3. They outlined the future of tabletop D&D in that One D&D video a couple years ago, and it was pretty clear watching that video that the future of “tabletop” D&D is a closed system video game. I’m not sure Wizards of the Coast is going to even want something like Baldur’s Gate 3 competing with their “tabletop” video game, and I’m thinking future games like Baldur’s Gate will be something you buy within the D&D Digital thing they’re doing.

BioWare’s big mistake with Jade Empire was probably more gameplay related than setting. They sold a couple million copies of KotOR before Jade Empire released, people that played that we’re probably expecting something that played more in line with KotOR, what they got was an action game that played like shit (which came out in the middle of games like Def Jam: Fight for NY, Yakuza, Urban Reign, Bully, Shadow of Rome...among others) and maybe the worst shoot ‘em up game ever made. I’d guess a lot of people interested in BioWare’s next game after KotOR rented Jade Empire and after playing it didn’t care much to actually own it.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

And how will their morale be when their next title performs nowhere near as well I wonder?

I'd say it would be just fine. I don't think there's anyone at Larian that wouldn't get why the game that has "Dungeons & Dragons" plastered all over it sold better than the one that didn't. Same thing goes with the name "Baldur's Gate" followed by a number over something that wasn't "Baldur's Gate" followed by a number.

The Baldur’s Gate name before Baldur’s Gate 3 was basically meaningless. Everyone that thinks Baldur’s Gate was some big brand need to look at the sales numbers of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. The sales are not impressive in a general game sense, and are only big in comparison to the niche market of late ‘90s and early 2000s CRPGs those games occupied. More people probably played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance than either of the two BioWare Baldur’s Gate games they were making a follow-up to.

 

[Vyvian]

Give me Divinity in Space.

 

[Roguey]

The Baldur’s Gate name before Baldur’s Gate 3 was basically meaningless. Everyone that thinks Baldur’s Gate was some big brand need to look at the sales numbers of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. The sales are not impressive in a general game sense, and are only big in comparison to the niche market of late ‘90s and early 2000s CRPGs those games occupied. More people probably played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance than either of the two BioWare Baldur’s Gate games they were making a follow-up to.

Both titles eventually sold 2.5 million each. The competition:

Worldwide, Diablo broke 2 million sales by mid-2000 and reached 2.3 million by January of the next year. Ultimately, the game sold over 2.5 million units by mid-2001

Everyone knew Diablo and the BGs were just as successful.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Larian doesn't need D&D, much like how Bioware didn't need them when they did Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

And now they're dead.

As if it had anything to do with DnD and not the stupidity of the management who did everything to kill the studio. The fact that they failed to do so to this day shows that they are too stupid even for that.
Bioware would be doing quite well if they didn't try to follow exactly every trend that was popular without having the slightest idea what they were doing.
It would have ended the same even if they hadn't abandoned DnD.

BioWare’s problem is they suffer from a special kind of mental retardant found in 1990s PC developers that moved onto consoles, which makes them think things they’d done previously just won’t work anymore in the new console space, even when they have evidence to the contrary on their line of thinking. Knights of the Old Republic was BioWare’s biggest hit even into the 360 years, but for whatever stupid fucking reason (and it gets weirder when you look at Final Fantasy 12 [a game that basically plays like KotOR] sales numbers) it seems BioWare got it in their head that something like KotOR wouldn’t work on consoles even though KotOR did best on consoles. Even when they did the console version of Dragon Age: Origins years they seemingly forgot people liked KotOR on XBOX and did stupid shit to make it feel more like an action game on 360, which all they accomplished was making it feel like a really bad feeling action game to play, which got them a bunch of people complaining about the gameplay.

I’m not really sure how many trends BioWare was really following. Like you could say Mass Effect was them following a trend. But Mass Effect was in-development before the third person shooters really started to pop in the market. If anything the choice of going for a third person shooter was kind of an odd one back when its development started; it would’ve made sense if it was also a sandbox open world GTA kind of thing, (which it should’ve been given what they were seeking going for) but it wasn’t.

You ever see the original version of Jade Empire? Combat took places on a 2D plane. It was meant to look like a 2D fighting game. Now it looked like a fucking horrible 2D fighting game. The gameplay didn’t look like a 2D fighting game at all, it basically looked like the final version but on a 2D plane. But they were going for 2D fighting game, and at no point in Jade Empires development could it be said that releasing a 2D fighting game was trend following, even what they moved to at the last minute (seemingly because of complaints from the audience about wanting party members with them) I wouldn’t call trend following.

Maybe their only real big trend following moves have been:

- Baldur's Gate’s RTS inspired combat
- The move into something more open world with Inquisition
- And there upcoming Dragon Age seemingly being them trying (and badly from the look of the leak) their hand at combat inspired by FromSoftware.

 

[Roguey]

Even when they did the console version of Dragon Age: Origins years they seemingly forgot people liked KotOR on XBOX and did stupid shit to make it feel more like an action game on 360, which all they accomplished was making it feel like a really bad feeling action game to play, which got them a bunch of people complaining about the gameplay.

A lot of people liked kotor, but no one actually liked kotor's combat. They acknowledged this themselves in the post-mortem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/desig...-s-i-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-i-

Demonstrating the first playable version of the game at E3 2002 uncovered one of our biggest hurdles in the combat system's development: the graphics and camera angle made the game look so much like an action title that people didn't intuitively play it in a turnbased manner. Novice players wanted to mash buttons and twirl the thumbsticks during battle, breaking the combat system and making the game look extremely awkward. The interface's discrete character control enabled players to disrupt their current attack by moving or accidentally selecting a container while attempting to engage the enemy.

We battled this problem to the end of the development cycle, and it required a lot of concerted planning and work to overcome. Carefully controlling the player's access to gameplay functions in and out of combat produced a more intuitive system, but consumer trade shows are not the place to discover such problems in the first place, and we had to recover from some of the poor press at the show.

The fundamental lesson learned, albeit in retrospect, is that the scale of player actions allowed by a combat system must match the scale of actions on which the system operates; if a combat system is based on doing discrete combat actions at any time (like throwing a single punch or firing a single magic spell, as occurs in our upcoming Xbox RPG Jade Empire), you should allow equivalent “peraction,” low-level player control. Games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with higher-level strategic systems should actually restrict players to only controlling higher-level strategic actions.

Dragon Age was supposed to be PC-only but after they were acquired by EA it became multiplatform, so they fell into the same trap.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

BioWare’s big mistake with Jade Empire was probably more gameplay related than setting. They sold a couple million copies of KotOR before Jade Empire released, people that played that we’re probably expecting something that played more in line with KotOR, what they got was an action game that played like shit (which came out in the middle of games like Def Jam: Fight for NY, Yakuza, Urban Reign, Bully, Shadow of Rome...among others) and maybe the worst shoot ‘em up game ever made. I’d guess a lot of people interested in BioWare’s next game after KotOR rented Jade Empire and after playing it didn’t care much to actually own it.

Storyfags don't care about gameplay, certainly not in 2005. KotOR's gameplay was nothing to write home about. Speaking purely for myself, I didn't buy Jade Empire until years later because my opinion at the time was it was ching-chong weeb shit, a setting I had zero investment in, and a story I had no attachment to. Even the title was generic. I don't hate JE's combat even to this day, if I went back I might have a few quibbles now, but I have no strong positive or negative feelings tied to it and I last played it about a decade ago.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Everyone knew Diablo and the BGs were just as successful.

Sarcasm or for real? I always had the perception that Diablo II was wildly more successful compared to BGII due to far lower barrier to entry complexity-wise, very reliable multiplayer etc.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The Baldur’s Gate name before Baldur’s Gate 3 was basically meaningless. Everyone that thinks Baldur’s Gate was some big brand need to look at the sales numbers of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. The sales are not impressive in a general game sense, and are only big in comparison to the niche market of late ‘90s and early 2000s CRPGs those games occupied. More people probably played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance than either of the two BioWare Baldur’s Gate games they were making a follow-up to.

Both titles eventually sold 2.5 million each. The competition:

Worldwide, Diablo broke 2 million sales by mid-2000 and reached 2.3 million by January of the next year. Ultimately, the game sold over 2.5 million units by mid-2001

Everyone knew Diablo and the BGs were just as successful.

Eventually. Those are lifetime sales numbers. It also feels like you’re missing some of your own post there.

Diablo 2 came out in 2000. Diablo 2 sold 2 million in a month and a half. You can’t compare the Diablo and Baldur’s Gate series, especially pre Baldur’s Gate 2. Maybe you kind of could if Diablo was only the first game Diablo, but it isn’t, it got much bigger with the second game. Diablo is also attached to Blizzard, and Diablo 2 was following StarCraft having been a hit.

 

[Baron Tahn]

I liked KotoRs combat! But then I like RTwP just fine. I used to think it was cool pausing it when lightsabers were clashing. Needed some more animations but when u look at something like Baldurs Gate where everyone just swings, the dodging and blocking in KotOR was sweet!

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I liked KotoRs combat! But then I like RTwP just fine. I used to think it was cool pausing it when lightsabers were clashing. Needed some more animations but when u look at something like Baldurs Gate where everyone just swings, the dodging and blocking in KotOR was sweet!

The animations in KotOR are great. The problem is the lore itself had many restrictions, Jedi have a pretty rigid set of powers, some toying can be done and was done to add plausible buffs and debuffs, but at that point in the old canon you were never going to get the thousands of spells and abilities that D&D 3.0 had and all the added complexity that brings to combat for all other classes besides melees. I like that they stuck with D20 and tried what they could, but I don't think it was indispensable to the game's popularity. Actually, between the two Jade Empire would have benefitted more from it and using 3e they could have even set it somewhere in Kara-Tur.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Even when they did the console version of Dragon Age: Origins years they seemingly forgot people liked KotOR on XBOX and did stupid shit to make it feel more like an action game on 360, which all they accomplished was making it feel like a really bad feeling action game to play, which got them a bunch of people complaining about the gameplay.

A lot of people liked kotor, but no one actually liked kotor's combat. They acknowledged this themselves in the post-mortem https://www.gamedeveloper.com/desig...-s-i-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-i-

Demonstrating the first playable version of the game at E3 2002 uncovered one of our biggest hurdles in the combat system's development: the graphics and camera angle made the game look so much like an action title that people didn't intuitively play it in a turnbased manner. Novice players wanted to mash buttons and twirl the thumbsticks during battle, breaking the combat system and making the game look extremely awkward. The interface's discrete character control enabled players to disrupt their current attack by moving or accidentally selecting a container while attempting to engage the enemy.

We battled this problem to the end of the development cycle, and it required a lot of concerted planning and work to overcome. Carefully controlling the player's access to gameplay functions in and out of combat produced a more intuitive system, but consumer trade shows are not the place to discover such problems in the first place, and we had to recover from some of the poor press at the show.

The fundamental lesson learned, albeit in retrospect, is that the scale of player actions allowed by a combat system must match the scale of actions on which the system operates; if a combat system is based on doing discrete combat actions at any time (like throwing a single punch or firing a single magic spell, as occurs in our upcoming Xbox RPG Jade Empire), you should allow equivalent “peraction,” low-level player control. Games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with higher-level strategic systems should actually restrict players to only controlling higher-level strategic actions.

Dragon Age was supposed to be PC-only but after they were acquired by EA it became multiplatform, so they fell into the same trap.

What point do you think that quote is making that you put there? Knights of the Old Republic came out in 2003. Making adjustments to how combat worked after an E3 2002 showing because people were seemingly having a hard time understanding what BioWare were trying to go for is not any indication that nobody liked the combat of Knights of the Old Republic on release, and that that’s something even BioWare knowns.

With further hindsight (that postmortem is from 2003) it can safely be said it was a stupid move for them to move away from what they’d done in Knights of the Old Republic with Jade Empire and Mass Effect, both of which would end up preforming worse. Final Fantasy 12 makes it all the weirder too, because there’s a game that has combat much like KotOR, and it sold over 5 million in a year. BioWare must have been aware of FF12 too, I mean they take that game’s Gambit system for Origins.

I’m also well aware that Dragon Age Origin was originally meant to only be a PC game. That factoid has nothing at all to do with what I said, which is that for some stupid fucking reason someone at BioWare got it in their head the console version need to play like a different (worse) kind of game. They could’ve just made the console version play like KotOR and Final Fantasy 12 on consoles, (both successful console games) but they didn’t do that, instead they made it play like a really bad action game. In fact what they did with the console version is even funnier after reading that KotOR postmortem given they learned during that game’s development they shouldn’t do what they would later do in the console version of Origin.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/h...certainly-hope-that-its-not-another-25-years/

Hasbro wants to make another Baldur's Gate sequel but it's early days yet: 'We certainly hope that it's not another 25 years'​

Last month, Larian announced that it's going to "move away from D&D", and suddenly the future of Baldur's Gate seemed a lot murkier. The smash success of Baldur's Gate 3 has firmly revived the classic RPG series, but without Larian to continue to shepherd it, what can we actually expect from any possible sequels or spin-offs?

It's a question Hasbro, owner of Wizards of the Coast and by extension D&D, is in the process of figuring out an answer to. Following yet more success for Baldur's Gate 3 at the BAFTA awards, I talked to Eugene Evans, senior vice president of Digital Strategy and Licensing for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, about where the series goes from here. The good news is, a sequel is very much on the cards—but the company is still exploring its options when it comes to what that looks like and what developer might get to create it, and it could still be a long way off.

"We're now talking to lots of partners and being approached by a lot of partners who are embracing the challenge of, what does the future of the Baldur's Gate franchise look like?" says Evans. "So we certainly hope that it's not another 25 years, as it was from Baldur's Gate 2 to 3, before we answer that. But we're going to take our time and find the right partner, the right approach, and the right product that could represent the future of Baldur's Gate. We take that very, very seriously, as we do with all of our decisions around our portfolio. We don't rush into decisions as to who to partner with on products or what products we should be considering."

Of course it's not just the future of the series itself that's in question. Baldur's Gate 3 also introduced us to what are now some of the most beloved companion characters in RPG history, and there has understandably been some concerns among fans about what might happen to Shadowheart, Astarion, and the rest of the gang following Swen Vincke's confirmation that they're now owned by Wizards of the Coast, not Larian.

"Larian created a much loved cast of characters, who were even celebrated by their nominations, the voice actors behind them and the talent behind them was celebrated at the [BAFTAS]," he says. "And they are now essentially part of D&D canon."

So the question is, what happens to them from here?

"I think it's too early to express specifics and I think that there's a much bigger question about how we approach Baldur's Gate in the future," says Evans. "But I would like to think that all of those characters, for the sake of the fans, could potentially appear in future products."

These dopes own Archetype Studios. Unless Exodus becomes a smash hit, and thus a franchise, this is where they can stop looking for a BG4 dev.

 

[Rhobar121]

No normal person will accept the stink bomb that is the BG brand after BG3.
Expectations about the game will automatically rise to the level that no matter what they do, it will most likely be a disappointment.
The game must be at least as good and extensive as BG3.
There are not many studies that would be able to cope with this.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The Baldur’s Gate name before Baldur’s Gate 3 was basically meaningless. Everyone that thinks Baldur’s Gate was some big brand need to look at the sales numbers of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. The sales are not impressive in a general game sense, and are only big in comparison to the niche market of late ‘90s and early 2000s CRPGs those games occupied. More people probably played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance than either of the two BioWare Baldur’s Gate games they were making a follow-up to.

The same could be said of Fallout prior to Fallout 3. Sure, Fallout 3 also had "Bethesda" on the box, but Fallout and Fallout 2's sales weren't great, nor was Fallout Tactics. However, those names had several years of being floated around media with a favorable context before Fallout 3 finally landed on shelves. Same thing goes for Wasteland 2 and it's $3,000,000 kickstarter. Nostalgia isn't always a direct hands-on experience.

 

[scytheavatar]

No normal person will accept the stink bomb that is the BG brand after BG3.
Expectations about the game will automatically rise to the level that no matter what they do, it will most likely be a disappointment.
The game must be at least as good and extensive as BG3.
There are not many studies that would be able to cope with this.

There will be idiot devs/executives who think BG3 sold well despite being turn based shit, imagine how much more BG4 would have sold if it was an action game. And they would fight for the game because of that. In their mind it doesn't matter if they disappoint BG3 fans if they can attract the audience that brought Elden Ring.

 

[Swen]

I wouldn't say it was Divinity that made them famous, rather the brand-power of D&D and BG. With this choice they're either going back to being respectable developers in their niche, i.e. nobodies that make Divinity Games, or they're going to have to come up with an entirely new IP that has to be a banger from go because people will inevitably compare it to their last game.

I think you underestimate how popular Larian and their games have became. Divinity: Original Sin 2 sold 7.5M (for comparison - Baldur's Gate 3 sold 10M). Not bad for "nobodies" without a widely known IP.

Correction; BG3 sold atleast 15 million.

 

[Cologno]

So...what now for Larian? As was said, Bioware and Obsidian ditched what they were good at and started experimenting with dumb shit with results being what they are.

 

[Shrimp]

So...what now for Larian? As was said, Bioware and Obsidian ditched what they were good at and started experimenting with dumb shit with results being what they are.

I feel like the safe guess is to just assume they'll make another game with gameplay similar to the two D:OS games and BG3, but with a smaller scope

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The Baldur’s Gate name before Baldur’s Gate 3 was basically meaningless. Everyone that thinks Baldur’s Gate was some big brand need to look at the sales numbers of BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. The sales are not impressive in a general game sense, and are only big in comparison to the niche market of late ‘90s and early 2000s CRPGs those games occupied. More people probably played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance than either of the two BioWare Baldur’s Gate games they were making a follow-up to.

The same could be said of Fallout prior to Fallout 3. Sure, Fallout 3 also had "Bethesda" on the box, but Fallout and Fallout 2's sales weren't great, nor was Fallout Tactics. However, those names had several years of being floated around media with a favorable context before Fallout 3 finally landed on shelves. Same thing goes for Wasteland 2 and it's $3,000,000 kickstarter. Nostalgia isn't always a direct hands-on experience.

Yeah, the same could be said about Fallout before Fallout 3. And I wouldn’t argue against it... because it’d be right. Fallout 3 doing as well as it did had jack fucking shit to do with Fallout before Fallout 3, and had everything to do with it being Bethesda’s next game. I love Fallout, the first two Fallout games are a couple of my favorite games of all time, but I don’t let my love of it delude me into thinking it was more well known than it was pre Fallout 3. I was very much aware how unknown it before Fallout 3. Whenever I was in school I only knew one other person that had even heard of Fallout that was completely separate from my regular friend group. For whatever odd reason though it seems like people here delude themselves into thinking the BioWare Baldur's Gate games were vastly more well known than they were, despite there being actually sales figures that would speak to the contrary.

The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter had 61,290 backers. It wouldn’t exactly be a bolded statement to say even post the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter that Wasteland as a brand was basically meaningless. Wasteland 2 didn’t even happen on the back of people wanting another Wasteland game, it happened in the hope that it’d be something more along the lines of classic pre Bethesda Fallout. Wasteland was essentially a trivia question. It was seemingly seen to have so little worth that EA let the trademark lapse, and then just let the series go to Brian Fargo after he picked up the Wasteland trademark name from Konami in like 2003 or something.

 

[Roguey]

Sarcasm or for real? I always had the perception that Diablo II was wildly more successful compared to BGII due to far lower barrier to entry complexity-wise, very reliable multiplayer etc.

I'm talking about the first one. Diablo wasn't some niche title only known to RPG fans, it was huge. BG was also big. It turned Bioware from a fly-by-night studio into one with enough clout to move Neverwinter Nights from Interplay to Atari. They had so much clout that Obsidian was able to benefit from their success by getting royalties from KOTOR 2 and NWN 2 sales in their contracts (deals they never got again from future publishers).

Eventually. Those are lifetime sales numbers. It also feels like you’re missing some of your own post there.

It took Diablo 4 years to reach 2.5 million. BGs:

Worldwide, Baldur's Gate ultimately surpassed 2.2 million sales by early 2003

Baldur's Gate II alone reached almost 1.5 million sales by December 2002, and more than 2 million by November 2005

They're in the same bracket.

What point do you think that quote is making that you put there? Knights of the Old Republic came out in 2003. Making adjustments to how combat worked after an E3 2002 showing because people were seemingly having a hard time understanding what BioWare were trying to go for is not any indication that nobody liked the combat of Knights of the Old Republic on release, and that that’s something even BioWare knowns.

"What Went Wrong 1) Using a round-based system"

"The fundamental lesson learned, albeit in retrospect, is that the scale of player actions allowed by a combat system must match the scale of actions on which the system operates"

"In addition, we are actively applying the lessons on what worked well and what didn't work as well to the three new intellectual properties in development at BioWare, one of which, our recently announced Xbox-exclusive title Jade Empire, will be published by Microsoft."

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/3...pg-codex-forum/?do=findComment&comment=541679

I've had groin pulls that were more fun than KotOR combats

With further hindsight (that postmortem is from 2003) it can safely be said it was a stupid move for them to move away from what they’d done in Knights of the Old Republic with Jade Empire and Mass Effect, both of which would end up preforming worse. Final Fantasy 12 makes it all the weirder too, because there’s a game that has combat much like KotOR, and it sold over 5 million in a year. BioWare must have been aware of FF12 too, I mean they take that game’s Gambit system for Origins.

Why are you acting as if kotor was significantly bigger than their other games?

Total sales of the game's Xbox and computer releases surpassed 2 million copies by February 2005 and 2.5 million by May and reached nearly 3 million by March 2006. As of 2007, Knights of the Old Republic had sold 3.2 million units.

In April 2011, it was reported that both Mass Effect and its sequel have combined sold more than seven million units worldwide

Jade Empire was a misstep, that's why it didn't get a sequel. Mass Effect got a trilogy.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I wouldn't say it was Divinity that made them famous, rather the brand-power of D&D and BG. With this choice they're either going back to being respectable developers in their niche, i.e. nobodies that make Divinity Games, or they're going to have to come up with an entirely new IP that has to be a banger from go because people will inevitably compare it to their last game.

I think you underestimate how popular Larian and their games have became. Divinity: Original Sin 2 sold 7.5M (for comparison - Baldur's Gate 3 sold 10M). Not bad for "nobodies" without a widely known IP.

Correction; BG3 sold atleast 15 million.

It should probably be remembered that we don’t know how much Divinity Original Sin 2 sold. The 7.5 million figure isn’t an exact figure, it’s an estimate that comes from Swen Vincke saying:

“I want to say, but I'm not sure if it's true, that DOS2 sold three times DOS1. 'Many millions' is the real answer. Enough to sustain something like BG3 and allow us to develop it.”

There was an official sales number for DOS1, so someone took it and times it by three. The BG3 figure comes from something similar.

“It’s almost doubled Divinity: Original Sin 2 now, so it’s doing really well, as Divinity: Original Sin 2 was very successful. So it did beyond what we expected.”

The “almost” would imply less than 15 million. But DOS2 sales could’ve also been less than 7.5 million, it could’ve been 7 million or just about anything between those two numbers. If it was 7 million than the BG3 estimate could be a whole million off, and the “almost” would mean even more than that.

 

[Mortmal]

So...what now for Larian? As was said, Bioware and Obsidian ditched what they were good at and started experimenting with dumb shit with results being what they are.

I feel like the safe guess is to just assume they'll make another game with gameplay similar to the two D:OS games and BG3, but with a smaller scope

Yet sven recently said their next game will dwarf BG3. From gamespot interview:
"Prior to development on Baldur's Gate 3, Larian CEO Swen Vincke was already planning out the company's future, and this included what he calls "the very big RPG that will dwarf them all."