BioWare is famous for their RPGs. Before they let loose upon the world great titles such as Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, they had a four-game series called Baldur’s Gate.
The main story arc completed in that series’ final expansion, Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, and fans obviously wondered if a sequel would ever come. In August of 2008, Interplay won a legal battle against Atari, which gave the publisher rights to the D&D license (since Baldur’s Gate was based on Dungeons & Dragons, publishing rights to this IP was also acquired). Greg Zeschuk, Vice President of Entertainment and Miscellaneous at BioWare as well as Vice President at Electronic Arts, described their upcoming game Dragon Age: Origins as a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate:
“The Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons and Dragons property is of course controlled by Atari, and owned originally by Hasbro, so it’s a complicated, convoluted way of getting there. For us it’s more a function of… because we weren’t in a position to do Baldur’s Gate… hey well let’s create our own! That’s effectively what this is. It’s funny, we took a page from Fallout, not Fallout 3 but Fallout 1. Fallout 1 was basically a game called Wasteland – that was the spiritual successor to Wasteland.”
Regarding the possibility of creating a sequel now, Zeschuk had this to say:
“There are a lot of video games that – like the original Wasteland – never had a sequel, but there are a lot of games that never actually end. Whatever happens, they’re left hanging and fans are like, ah I wish I’d finished it. But because we were able to finish the sequence of games in Baldur’s Gate: Throne of Bhaal… it’s funny, we were satisfied that we were able to deliver that entire arc. Go ‘there it is and that’s the story of Baldur’s Gate’. We feel like we finished our work at that time.”
So it sounds like they are happy with the way things turned out. Anyone here want to see a true sequel to the Baldur’s Gate series, or is it better left alone? Let us know in the comment section below.
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