They are currently building their capacity to do multiple games in parallel.
I suspect not wanting to do BG4 is at the end of the day a negotiation tactic. There’s an amount of money and consideration that will make them put it back in the queue. But it’s likely at least five years out before they start on such a thing.
They’ll want to avoid the Torchlight trap, where the team got sick of doing Diablo clones and the company kind of cratered afterward.
The path to BG3 existing involved people at WotC playing D:OS 2 and then convincing their bosses that they should partner with Larian. Everyone involved in that on the WotC/Hasbro side subsequently left the company while BG3 was in production, and their replacements are much less favored towards Larian.
BG4 will almost certainly happen, but by some other studio.
I suspect all the awards and giant piles of money may change that opinion back.
You can classify a vendor as a pain in your ass but if they get results, it’s time to look in the mirror and think about why you kept telling them to go right when they went left, and everybody loves the results.
Though it’s also true that a lot of key people have now left WotC and we are slowly working toward a situation where a Darrington Press game is more likely than a WotC game.
I suspect not wanting to do BG4 is at the end of the day a negotiation tactic. There’s an amount of money and consideration that will make them put it back in the queue. But it’s likely at least five years out before they start on such a thing.
They’ll want to avoid the Torchlight trap, where the team got sick of doing Diablo clones and the company kind of cratered afterward.