Earlier today, there was a rumour about Larian Studios – better known for developing the critically acclaimed Divinity: Original Sin series – acquiring the Baldur’s Gate IP. Anyone who enjoyed BioWare’s series, either back in the day or recently with the Enhanced Editions, would realize that that is a pretty big deal.

Though the source was an RPG Codex user claiming his new colleague to be a former Larian employee, inXile Entertainment founder Brian Fargo further added fuel to the fire. Fargo said on Twitter that he happens “to know who is working on BG3“.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be. When WCCFTech reached out to Larian Studios, it denied the rumour, stating it hadn’t purchased any IP. Furthermore, the studio continues to work on the Divinity franchise and its upcoming Project Gustav. The latter will be announced when the right time comes.

While we haven’t given up hope yet, it is good to hear that the studio has enough going on. We already know that Larian Studios is thinking of how to top Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Project Gustav. Time will tell just how good it actually is.

Larian Studios is already hard at work on its next title after the critically and commercially acclaimed Divinity: Original Sin 2. In a recent documentary by Gameumentary, CEO Swen Vincke revealed that the project is codenamed “Project Gustav“.

Vincke remarked that the project “blends the same things that we’ve been exploring all the time”. “It’s going to be narrative, systems, multiplayer, new things, new ideas,” he added. On the surface then, it doesn’t sound too fundamentally different from what the Divinity: Original Sin series achieves.

He does note that perhaps the “biggest stress” right now is “how can we make something that’s better than Divinity: Original Sin 2? How do we make sure that we don’t lose what was good and how do we know that we innovate on the things that people would not want to do again because they did it once and it was cool but they won’t do it twice, which is typically a trap that sequels fall into. But it’s fun. This is why you do this, right? You make new things, you explore new avenues of gameplay.”

Divinity: Original Sin 2 first launched for PC in September 2017 and quickly garnered acclaim for its combat, world design, quests, writing, and overall aesthetic. Larian Studios had been working to bring the title to Xbox One and PS4, which culminated in the Definitive Edition releasing for consoles in August 2018.

This update also arrived on PC for free and made several improvements to the writing, combat, character progression, and various other systems. Larian Studios hadn’t really hinted at another sequel or follow-up to the Original Sin series till now, so it should be interesting to see where Project Gustav goes.