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Obsidian Worked On Baldur’s Gate 3 Back In 2008
If you're a fan of the classic Baldur's Gate RPG series then you'll probably be disappointed to know that developer Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth) cancelled work on the next entry of the series before it had even really started.
According to a recent post of Kotaku, Obsidian spent over a year negotiating a deal for Baldur’s Gate 3 before the whole thing fell apart.
Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart told Kotaku, "This was like the Cherokee Trail of Tears pitch," he said. "They asked in 2007 if we wanted to do Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm like 'Yes, if you guys are serious about it.' They were like, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'If you'll put a real budget behind it: it can't be $10 million, it needs to be $20 million, $25 million. If you really want to do this, then you need to put a real budget behind it. You need to give a budget that BioWare would have to do a Mass Effect or whatever. It has to be a real budget.'"
Atari was hesitant, but eventually said okay. However, after Obsidian worked on a pitch for about six months, Atari said they wanted to come into the office and look things over.
"And so they came into see us and they looked at things," Urquhart said. "And then about a week later they said you know we're concerned that you can't make the game. And then a week later all of Atari Europe was sold to Namco Bandai."
It's a sad story, but an interesting look behind the curtain of video game development. Dragon Age was a nice homage to the Baldur’s Gate series, but we'd love to see another proper entry in the series someday.
[Source: PC Gamer]
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