LogInAdam Smith talked about the game's size and story.
Baldur's Gate 3 is almost here, and players can't wait to finally get their hands on the full version. The early access period began in 2020; it offers only one act out of three, but even this will eat a ton of your free time. It's scary to think how big the game truly is (its cutscenes last for over 170 hours!), but its lead writer Adam Smith uncovered some interesting details about its size and story.
Talking to Game Rant, he said that the team never expected the story to grow so much. Yes, it was supposed to be big, but now it gets compared to The Lord of the Rings.
"We knew the climax had to be earned. To go back to the D&D aspects for a second, if you take a level 1 adventurer and then you're going to end at level 12, the power curve is so big by that point. They're so insanely powerful compared to a normal person that we need to put them up against things of equal value or greater power to make the challenge bigger. We knew players couldn't be running around fighting goblins for 100 hours."
Speaking of The Lord of the Rings, Smith said you'd start as Frodo in the Shire and then get to decide how to develop your tale.
"Then, you can say I'm going to end up at the Prancing Pony, and I'm going to end up meeting with my Hobbit friends on the way.
But, when your Hobbit friends catch up, you can just kill them and then just carry on. When you meet with Gandalf, you can just say f*ck this quest. I don't care about that. You can wear The Ring too often and go mad. You know, we let you do that. So your Lord of the Rings story could be you are the guy who did walk into Mordor. You're probably going to get your ass kicked, but we let you do it."
The creators worked really hard on the complexity of the game, so all these hours are meaningful and develop your characters. You make decisions, and they matter. Collect (almost) all the companions, leave them, or get rid of them – the choice is yours.
Of course, so many storylines mean the team had to be very careful with them not to contradict one another, and Smith says everything works well thanks to Larian's great writers are designers. He himself had to play BG3 18 times to test all the branches of a single character's story.
"I mean, at one point, we were running through the origin characters, testing permutations with them, and saying, 'Have we seen this aspect? Have we seen this aspect?' I realized that for one of them, just to test every branch of this story, I needed to play the game 18 times."
Part of this is romance, of course. BG3 has a lot to offer in this regard, and it takes tons of time. Smith shared that every companion has their own writer, who also does other work.
"We don't have anyone who only does an origin, but they know them so well. At this point, they've been working with them for six years. So if I say to like Lae'zel's writer, 'hey, I need a line for when Lae'zel walks in on me having sex with a druid,' they just go okay and they just do it because they know the character. You know, that was probably too quick. They all have these characters in their heads."
Minsc, who first appeared in Baldur's Gate 1, is one of the characters you will see in the game. Turns out, integrating him was "quite complicated" because "Minsc, as a character on a screen in Baldur's Gate 1 where it's isometric, you don't really need to think about how weird he is." And then suddenly he needs to be realistic and high-definition. If you're worried if he has his hamster friend with him, he does.
The freedom provided by the developers means you can mess everything up. Smith advised players not to be discouraged and load the last save if it happens as this opens new paths for them:
"Don't be afraid to f*ck things up. Improvisation is part of tabletop, and it's part of our game as well. If it feels like things are going badly, try and survive. Surviving by the skin of your teeth will sometimes give you something that you didn't know you had, whether it's slightly different banters, slightly different recovery, or a completely different story. Don't be afraid to poke the edges of the world, and don't be afraid to experiment. We've got character builds, multiclassing, and origin characters. Experiment and see if you can use the thunderwave to get Gale across that chasm. The answer may often be no, but sometimes it works."
He talks about other characters in more detail, so make sure to read the full interview here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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