Owlcat Would Embrace Making BG4 Despite Industry Fear — But Says Copying Larian Is a Guaranteed Failure
Key takeaways
- Owlcat Games co-founder Alexander Mishulin said his studio would view developing Baldur's Gate 4 as a 'great challenge,' unlike other developers who have reportedly declined.
- Mishulin warned that any studio trying to replicate Larian's BG3 formula is 'bound to fail,' arguing a successor must bring its own creative identity.
- Former Baldur's Gate 2 designer James Ohlen turned down a personal request from Hasbro's CEO to lead BG4, citing the impossibility of competing with Larian's legacy and engine.
The question of who could possibly make Baldur's Gate 4 has loomed over the RPG community ever since Larian Studios walked away from the franchise following the massive success of Baldur's Gate 3. While Hasbro — through its Dungeons & Dragons subsidiary Wizards of the Coast — has publicly committed to eventually delivering a fourth mainline entry, the reality behind the scenes is proving complicated: developers are reportedly turning the project down. Against that backdrop, Owlcat Games has emerged as one of the few studios willing to at least entertain the idea out loud.
Owlcat co-founder and creative director Alexander Mishulin was asked directly whether his studio would answer Hasbro's hypothetical call to make Baldur's Gate 4, and he didn't say no. 'We will consider it a great challenge,' Mishulin said, leaning into a running joke that Owlcat is 'a little bit masochistic' for consistently taking on beloved, demanding intellectual properties. The studio has built its reputation on ambitious licensed RPGs, most notably Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which earned widespread praise when it launched in 2023 and drew frequent comparisons to Baldur's Gate 3 for its rich storytelling, deep characters, and sprawling content. A follow-up, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, is already in the pipeline, further cementing Owlcat's standing among cRPG enthusiasts.
Critically, Mishulin's enthusiasm came with a sharp analytical caveat: any developer that tries to make a game that feels like Larian's BG3 is setting itself up for embarrassment. 'BG3 is very Larian formula,' he explained, pointing to the studio's unique approach to combat, cooperative play, and its decades of accumulated design philosophy stretching back to the original Divinity series. Larian spent roughly thirty years developing the creative DNA that makes its games feel the way they do, and that institutional knowledge cannot simply be transplanted into another studio's walls. The implication is clear — a worthy BG4 would need to be its own thing, with a different studio's fingerprints clearly on it.
This perspective stands in contrast to comments made by James Ohlen, co-lead designer of Baldur's Gate 2, who revealed that Hasbro CEO Chris Cox personally called him about making BG4 immediately after Larian's departure was confirmed. Ohlen flatly refused, telling Cox he 'would fail' and describing the prospect as 'insanity.' His reasoning was pragmatic: Larian has taken its proprietary engine with it, meaning any successor studio would need years just to build the foundational technology. Ohlen estimated at least half a decade of groundwork before development could meaningfully begin, a timeline that makes the project daunting for any studio not already deep in a comparable technical ecosystem.
The broader picture painted by multiple developers and industry insiders is one of genuine institutional anxiety around what is arguably the hardest sequel assignment in modern gaming. Baldur's Gate 3 released after years in early access, benefiting from continuous player feedback, and it arrived from a studio whose leadership — particularly CEO and director Swen Vincke — enjoys a rare level of creative control that most triple-A executives simply do not have. Whether Hasbro can find a studio with Owlcat's courage and the resources to match remains an open and urgent question for the future of one of gaming's most storied franchises.
The bigger picture
What makes Mishulin's comments so interesting is not the bravado — it's the clarity of the underlying diagnosis. He isn't just saying Owlcat could do it; he's articulating a philosophy about how licensed RPG sequels should work in the first place. The idea that each studio brings its own DNA and that attempting to clone a predecessor is the fastest route to failure is both obvious in retrospect and rarely stated this plainly by someone in a position to actually inherit a franchise. It signals that Owlcat understands the assignment in a way that many studios apparently do not, which may be precisely why Hasbro should be paying attention.
From a competitive standpoint, the cRPG space is healthier than it has been in two decades, but it remains thinly populated at the top. Owlcat, Larian, and a handful of others represent the studios with genuine pedigree in the genre. If Hasbro is serious about BG4, the pool of viable candidates is small, and Owlcat's willingness to engage publicly — while nearly everyone else retreats — changes the political calculus somewhat. Enthusiasm and competence are not the same thing, but studios that won't even consider the project cannot be considered for it.
The wildcard here is timing. Owlcat is actively developing Dark Heresy and expanding its Warhammer 40,000 relationship alongside a new The Expanse game, meaning any serious BG4 discussion would likely be years away regardless of intent. Meanwhile, Hasbro faces commercial and reputational pressure to keep Dungeons & Dragons relevant in gaming. The longer BG4 remains theoretical, the more that pressure compounds. Readers should watch whether Hasbro accelerates its search or attempts to develop BG4 in-house — a scenario that would raise entirely different questions about quality and creative independence.
We're covering this story at LagPing because the question of who makes Baldur's Gate 4 is, genuinely, one of the most consequential unanswered questions in RPG gaming right now. Baldur's Gate 3 didn't just sell well — it reset expectations for what a role-playing game can be, and the ripple effects are still being felt across the entire industry. When developers as experienced as James Ohlen are declining the project and calling it 'insanity,' that tells us something important about how difficult this assignment really is. Owlcat's willingness to engage with the idea honestly, and Mishulin's thoughtful framing of why copying Larian would be a mistake, adds real substance to a conversation that often stays at the level of fan speculation. We think our readers — many of whom have deep stakes in the future of cRPGs — deserve this kind of detailed, grounded analysis rather than hype cycles. This is a story we'll be watching closely.
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