Todd Howard has some kind and elucidating things to say about last year’s consensus Game of the Year, Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.
Todd was in an interview in Kinda Funny Games, when their CEO, Greg Miller, asked him about his opinion on the title. Baldur’s Gate 3 emerged out of that tall tetrominoes pile of AAA gaming powerhouses from 2023. That pile included surefire hits like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Wonder, and Bethesda’s own Starfield.
Well, don’t be surprised about this, but Todd answered this like an adult. He was very gracious about Larian’s success too. He said:
“Deserve it, great studio. They’ve done great work for a long time.
There’s some people in the industry who look at them and say, oh look at this overnight success. Like have you played their previous games?
I think they did a tremendous job, in what they delivered as a product. But as a studio, how they go about their work, how they talk about it, I think it’s fantastic.”
Greg then asked him about getting ideas or inspiration from Baldur’s Gate 3, since it’s clear from Todd’s answer that he’s played it himself. Todd is a little more reticent on this one, but perhaps we should have expected him to be. He said:
“You know, I think we look at all games. I don’t want to pinpoint particularly that one. We’re big gamers, we see things in all games. We say, that’s actually a better way of doing something that we’re trying to do.
I don’t want to call out specifics right now, but I’d say, across the gaming spectrum, how we’re engaging with games and things we like, you see that filter into the games we have in development now, patches and things that we’re doing to our own games.”
So if you were hoping Todd was going to express something even remotely close to returning to the old role playing game style from Fallout and Fallout 2, Todd didn’t do that. If you think about it, this is very similar to what a Nintendo staffer would say when they were asked about getting inspiration from other games.
Now, some people take that to mean that they don’t want to acknowledge other game companies, but there’s a factor here that’s unique to video games. Video game ideas like Monolith’s Nemesis system can literally be copyrighted and trademarked, and that’s literally what WB Games did. In this way, even studios who can replicate the system on their own, won’t be allowed to do so, unless they go through the trouble of fitting IP law rules to make a substantially different kind of game system.
So maybe, unfortunately, it’s things like that that still make developers reticent about talking about their work in general. But it seems safe to assume that Todd and Bethesda have a lot of love for Larian Studios. And if you knew their history of success and failure, even if you didn’t play any of their games, you might find yourselves rooting for them too. We should all be glad that Larian has seen this success, and hope to see them continue working at their best in the future.
