Baldur's Gate 2 co-lead designer turned down Baldur's Gate 4 — says he'd fail trying to follow BG3

James Ohlen, co-lead designer of Baldur's Gate 2 and former head of Archetype Entertainment, was personally called by Hasbro boss Chris Cox and asked to make Baldur's Gate 4. He said no — telling Cox directly that he "would fail." His reasoning: he simply couldn't compete with Baldur's Gate 3.

Ohlen told PC Gamer that building a credible follow-up would require starting from scratch. Larian has walked away from Dungeons & Dragons and taken its engine with it, meaning any new developer would need at least half a decade just to build the tech foundation. He called the prospect "insanity." Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast and therefore the D&D license, has stated it intends to make Baldur's Gate 4 — but finding someone willing and capable is proving harder than expected. Larian CEO Swen Vincke previously explained at GDC 2024 that the studio briefly explored BG3 DLC and even considered Baldur's Gate 4 before dropping both, saying the team was "going through the motions" and that it "wasn't really coming from the heart."

The difficulty here isn't just about budget or studio size. Baldur's Gate 3 was built on years of RPG engine work from the Divinity: Original Sin games, then spent years in Steam Early Access absorbing player feedback before its full 2023 launch. That combination — a battle-tested proprietary engine, a long feedback loop, and a team of writers and quest designers widely considered among the best in the industry — produced something that no other studio is currently set up to replicate. Rockstar is perhaps the only comparable example of a developer given the time, resources, and creative freedom to build on that scale, and even that comparison has limits. Most AAA studios are operating under tightening budgets and publisher pressure that makes a multi-year open-development approach essentially impossible.

The result is a genuine problem for Hasbro: it holds one of gaming's most valuable licenses and a game that redefined the RPG genre sitting at the top of it, but the developer who made it has moved on and the veterans who came before aren't willing to try. Until Hasbro finds a studio that can credibly answer the question of how you follow Baldur's Gate 3, the project looks likely to stay in limbo.