They fired nearly everyone who worked with Larian. “In the works” doubtless means “contracted out according to who gave the best bribes.” Hasbro has been looking to “monetize D&D” since they hired their CEO whose whole thing is micro transactions. Look forward to a slurry of liquid shit.
I would like to remind people that this is corpo speak. This is likely counting mobile shovelware monopoly, my little pony, trivial pursuit, clue, etc stuff. Plus there’s Transformers and we don’t know if they count only their own games or do they count something like the Fortnite crossover as a video game project? Hell I can name 4 active magic the gathering video games off the top of my head. It’s entirely possible they count certain magic expansions as their own thing if they’re complex enough (MH3, Assassin’s Creed, Final Fantasy)
My point is that this doesn’t say anything of substance, don’t read it as a reaction to anything in particular
Yeah, that news is more concerning than anything. BG3 was great and they want to recreate that by letting EVERYONE make a D&D game, and I’d bet the developers are just as focused on the BG3 hype money, instead of actually making good games.
Worth noting that BG3 was Larian‘s effort through and through. They took the initiative and asked for permission from Bioware to make another Baldur‘s Gate game and as far as I know that wasn‘t even the first time they asked. So finally after they got permission, they also had to compensate Bioware and WotC generously for the use of their IPs. It‘s kind of a rights nightmare where Larian took several big risks while WotC could just lean back and watch. And of course after BG3’s massive success, Hasbro think they struck gold when their own official DnD game is the complete opposite of BG3 in terms of monetization, popularity and critical acclaim.
So, everything considered we shouldn‘t expect greatness from this. Honestly I would be surprised if we ever actually get official announcements with working titles from half of these games before they get shut down early in production and I would be more surprised to see even a quarter of them come to life.
I actually expect them to take the Warhammer approach. Saturate the market with so many titles that no matter what, the brand name will be on the homepage of everyone. Doesn’t matter if half those titles suck.
Would be a miracle if they even come close to that kind of success rate. While half those warhammer games do kinda suck. That other half, well, doesn’t haha.
20 good DnD games would be fantastic but I’m not even sure they know how to make one with the way they seem to be going at it (not counting BG3 as theirs, that was all Larian).
their own official DnD game is the complete opposite of BG3 in terms of monetization, popularity and critical acclaim
I don't follow. You buy a book and you play. Critical Role brings in more viewers than most primetime network TV shows ever could. They had a controversy around changing their monetization that didn't come to pass, is my understanding, but the complete opposite of BG3?
Dark Alliance was a bit of a mess from what I hear.
Critical Role does great, but for the most part Wizards has left its own setting to languish. Most of the lore from Faerun is now 100+ years out of date (in-game) with new sourcebooks rehashing versus moving the world forward. Unless you're a Drizzt fan, you're not getting a ton as far as... well, anything is concerned. Even Dark Alliance is a rehash of Salvatore's fiction.
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