Update, April 20: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the canceled Baldur's Gate 3 and Fallout 3 projects as having been in development at Obsidian rather than Interplay. While Chris Avellone misspoke on the date of his departure from these projects, that timeline does not line up with previously known facts of either game's development. We regret the error.
Original story, April 18: OG Fallout dev Black Isle Studios was once the developer heading Baldur's Gate 3, but the only reason that timeline didn't come to pass was apparently an accounting error.
That's according to veteran RPG developer Chris Avellone, who recently talked about what could've been with YouTube channel TKs-Mantis.
The Fallout, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale developer had been drafted to create the next entry in the Dungeons and Dragons RPG series in the 2000s when it "got canceled because of an accounting error." Avellone says it was "very suspicious on Interplay's part," Black Isle's parent company and the publisher of the first two Baldur's Gate games.
"I'm pretty sure a payment wasn't made to the right party," Avellone explains. As soon as the project met its end, the entire team was swiftly moved on to Van Buren, Obsidian's also ill-fated version of Fallout 3 that never saw the light of day.
"But the moment that Baldur's Gate 3 got cancelled, I knew that Van Buren wouldn't happen because regardless of the team's intentions, regardless of how much we'd love to get it done, how many hours we put in, it wouldn't matter because executive row would likely do something, which they eventually did," he adds, nodding his head to Van Buren's eventual cancelation.
Black Isle wouldn't be the only legendary RPG studio to take a crack at Baldur's Gate 3. Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart previously lifted the lid on the studio's Baldur's Gate project more than a decade ago. Urquhart apparently told the game's rights holders that if they really wanted Obsidian to tackle such a storied series, they'd "need to give a budget that BioWare would have to do a Mass Effect or whatever.'"
You might not need me to tell you that, yep, we eventually did get a Baldur's Gate 3 - one from Larian Studios that lit the gaming world on fire. While Black Isle is no more, Obsidian soon went on to tackle acclaimed projects in the Fallout and South Park series, and is now working on many of its own franchises: The Outer Worlds, the Pillars of Eternity universe, and Grounded.
