Hasbro SVP Teases Quick Updates on Baldur's Gate's Future

Baldur's Gate 3, now a year-and-a-half old, continues to captivate players with its rich content, prompting many of us to embark on our second, third, seventh, and even tenth playthroughs. However, with developer Larian Studios stepping away from the series, the future of Baldur's Gate now rests in the hands of Hasbro. Fortunately, it appears we won't have to wait long for news on what's next for this beloved franchise.

In a recent interview at the Game Developers Conference, Dan Ayoub, the Senior Vice President of Digital Games at Hasbro, shared that the company has received significant interest in Baldur's Gate since Larian's departure. "We're kind of working out our plans for the future and what we're going to be doing with that," Ayoub explained. "And actually, in pretty short order, we're going to have some stuff to talk about around that."

Ayoub remained tight-lipped on specifics, leaving it unclear whether the upcoming announcements would involve a new Baldur's Gate game or something akin to the previous crossovers, such as with Magic: The Gathering. He did, however, express a desire for a Baldur's Gate 4, acknowledging that creating such a game would be a time-consuming endeavor.

"It's somewhat of an unenviable position," he noted. "I mean, we're not in a hurry. Right? That's the thing, we're going to take a very measured approach... We've got a lot of plans, a lot of different ways to go about it. We're starting to think about, okay, yeah, we're ready to start dipping toes a little bit and talking about a few things. And I think, in really short order, like I said, again, not to over-tease that point, we're going to have some other things to talk about around that."

Ayoub also highlighted the immense pressure to deliver a worthy successor to Baldur's Gate, a pressure that extends to other Dungeons & Dragons-related projects, including a game announced by Hasbro last year.

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"I'm never one to shy down from a challenge," Ayoub stated. "And I think anything that forces us to raise our creative bar, and developers love to have a high bar to go after, and I think we've actually seen the team push some really interesting ideas that they're like, 'Okay, we need to raise our bar. We need to go bigger on this.' And things like that. So, I think that's our hope, right? We would keep raising the bar and everyone just tries to go a little higher."

During the interview, Ayoub also touched on other topics, including Magic: The Gathering, Hasbro's partnership with Saber Interactive, and the company's overall game strategy. Look out for our full interview next week for more insights.