Baldur's Gate 3 Dev Explained Why It Supports Two APIs

At Graphics Programming Conference, Larian Studios' Senior Graphics Programmer Wannes Vanderstappen explained why the game supports two APIs, Vulkan and DirectX 11.

For PC, Baldur's Gate 3 was shipped with both of the APIs. The dev explained why the creators used Vulcan on PC when they also needed to support DX 11 anyway for the Xbox series. He said that there's a "simple answer for that," and one of the reasons was the requirements of Google's Stadia, a cloud gaming service that was shut down last year: "Baldur's Gate was shipped in early access on PC and Google Stadia, which needed Vulcan." The second reason is that they shipped the game in Early Access, which meant a shorter release time frame, and they went for Vulcan as the main API.

It might entail the question of why the devs still use DX 11. Wannes Vanderstappen explained that the problem was that Baldur's Gate 3 was already in full production. "The engine code team only moved to BG3 after pre-production happened because we were still working on the Definitive Edition of Original Sin 2."

Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.