Intro

Swen Vincke, the head of Larian Studios, announced that the most popular release of the past few years, Baldur’s Gate 3, will not get any DLC or expansions. Superficially, this sounds like an astounding and possibly bad move but when you check behind the scenes, it was probably the best thing that could happen to the studio.

No DLC or expansions for Baldur’s Gate 3

Vincke delivered the news during GDC 2024 where Baldur’s Gate 3 scored yet another GOTY award. With such success and rich legacy, the obvious move forward was to create DLC and Larian initially started working on it. In a talk with IGN, Vincke noted that he cleared his head during the holiday season and when he came back he let the studio know they won’t continue working on DLC.

While expecting negative sentiments about the announcement, Larian CEO was met with elated faces from the studio employees who were apparently just going through the motions because they figured DLC would be something that had to be done after the major success. Everyone turned out happy that they will return to the ideas they had before working on Baldur’s Gate 3 and we would hazard a guess this type of approach to projects is Larian’s secret sauce – make games based on your inspiration, not the biggest dollar sign.

What it means for BG3 future

Stories of Astarion, Karlach, Wyll and Gale will most likely remain open-ended. While zero DLC and expansions is something Larian usually foregoes, one thing the studio usually does now hangs in the air – the Definitive Edition. Both Divinity Original Sin and Divinity Original Sin 2 have such editions, with content that didn’t make into the original release on top of this being the more polished version of the game.

This edition was especially interesting for Baldur’s Gate 3 because there was speculation it would add Upper City in Act 3, which ended up being cut, resulting in what feels like an incomplete storyline for Karlach and a derpy entrance via the battlements to Cazador’s mansion. No one specifically said the Definitive Edition isn’t coming but it certainly feels like Larian and Wizards of the Coast are going separate ways in an accelerated fashion.