Larian boss Swen Vincke cruelly hints at a 2029 release for the studio's next game, only to yoink it away: 'It was just a joke'
Following on the runaway success of Baldur's Gate 3, which is somehow still earning awards despite having launched well over a year ago, Larian Studios has not just one but two games in the works,which of course we're all very eager to get our hands on. They're still a long way off, of course, but... maybe not that long?
As reported by IGN, Larian boss Swen Vincke very gently teased a possible 2029 release for the game during an acceptance speech for a Special Recognition Awards at the SEA Game Awards—Larian opened a studio in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, in 2019. "We need to work hard on the next game so we can be back here in five years," Vincke said.
Five years, eh? A quick trip to Google tells me that puts Larian's next game, which is acknowledged but entirely unannounced, in 2029. That's quite some time, yes, but it at least leaves open the possibility that we could be playing it before The Elder Scrolls 6. Right?
Well, no—or at least, don't count on it. "I knew you’d pick up on that," Larian told IGN after his speech. "It was just a joke. I don’t know, we’ll release it when it’s ready. They’re big games and it takes time, so don’t hold us to a date."
Was he really joking, though? Or was this a slip of the tongue—an unintentional look behind the curtain at Larian's super-secret plan? Or, third possibility, did he just pull a number out of the air because he needed one, and "five" seemed like a reasonable middle-ground pick? That's probably where I'd put my money.
Which isn't to say Larian's next game won't be out in 2029, just don't count on it. Because one thing Vincke isn't joking about is that Larian makes big games. You'll already know this if you've played any of the studio's games, and Vincke told us that specifically in a recent interview. "The machine is meant to make large games," he said in August. "We were made for making large, ambitious RPGs and to try new stuff.
"We actually know what we want from our gameplay systems, how to evolve them, how to do new things … and they're all big."
Remember too that it took four years from the first announcement of Baldur's Gate until it finally hit a 1.0 release. On a similar timeline, a 2029 release for Larian's next big game means the reveal will have to come next year. Possible? Sure. But likely? That I'm a whole lot less confident about.