Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound
Black Isle's cancelled third Baldur's Gate, lost in 2003 with Interplay's D&D licence.
Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound was a role-playing game that Black Isle Studios was developing for Interplay Entertainment on Windows before its cancellation. First announced in 2002, it carried the codenames FR6 and Project Jefferson and was planned as the series' third main entry, built on the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons ruleset with the developer's own proprietary 3D graphics engine instead of the Infinity Engine of the earlier games.
When Interplay lost the rights to develop further Dungeons & Dragons games for the PC in 2003, The Black Hound was cancelled.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Black Isle Studios
- Publisher
- Interplay Entertainment
- Designer
- Josh Sawyer; Damien Foletto
- Released
- Cancelled
- Series
- Baldur's Gate
- Genre
- Role-playing
- Modes
- Single-player
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows
Facts from the source article.
Background
Black Isle moved on to a Fallout sequel codenamed Van Buren, which was itself cancelled late in 2003, and to the spin-off Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, before Interplay shut the studio down on 8 December 2003. Larian Studios announced an unrelated Baldur's Gate 3 in 2019 and released it in 2023.
Interviews, most prominently with Winterwind Productions, shed light on the gameplay: pausable realtime play on the fundamentals of the previous Baldur's Gate games, updated for the 3rd Edition ruleset, and a diverse selection of weapons drawn from a wide variety of D&D source books, with no single weapon better than the others, as in Fallout 2. Players were originally to advance only to level 5, later changed to level 8, so that sequels could go higher and players would rely more on strategy; the low level cap meant leaving out prestige classes.
The game was described as truly non-linear, with the freedom to visit any location and repercussions for every action, and failed or incomplete quests carrying consequences as the game progressed. Players could switch between alignments depending on their actions. CNPCs would only join the party if they agreed with the player's actions; acting against their philosophies could make them leave, attack the player character or voice their discontent, a risk a high enough charisma could mitigate.
Elsewhere in Baldur's Gate 3
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