Baldur's Gate 3 - the sequel to the legendary RPG (Topic)

The first public demonstration of the gameplay of Baldur's Gate 3 - the sequel to the legendary RPG from the masters of the genre from Larian Studios, who gave us the Divinity series - has finally taken place. It would seem that the first gameplay looks amazing, but the developers still have questions about whether Baldurs Gate 3, with all its riot of colors and turn-based battles, will be another Divinity: Original Sin? And what about consoles? These and many other questions are answered by Larian CEO David Walgrave in an interview with Eurogamer, but we will translate the main points of the article.

First of all, we were talking about the first stream with the gameplay of Baldur's Gate 3, which turned out to be somewhat "chaotic", according to the interviewer. And even if it may not seem so at first glance, Larian Studios had a ready-made script for the first gameplay demonstration of what they want to show the players and what to stay away from. However, all plans were confused by the founder of Larian Sven Wilke, who decided to broadcast the gameplay in real time instead of a pre-recorded version of the gameplay and, testing the game for strength, experimented with mechanics, which sometimes unpleasantly surprised the developers.

In many ways, this approach is correct, because only with the help of versatile experiments it is possible to show all the variety of mechanics and game features that Larian projects are famous for. The main problem, David says, is that it is still difficult to predict which elements of the game will behave equally well during real gameplay. For example, work on the script and dialogues is far from being finished.

In the next question, Eurogamer inquired about the growth of the development staff in Larian since the release of Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's safe to say that the studio has been growing exponentially in recent years. Today, the studio employs about 250 people, another 50 are outsourced and the main reason for the increased staff is the very fact of the development of Baldur's Gate 3. The developers simply cannot approach the creation of the legendary trickle of the series as "another game", a leap in the quality and quantity of content is needed. to satisfy all players, not just fans of Divinity: Original Sin 2.

As a result, Larian began to grow and acquire corporate positions, such as accountants, deputy accountants, a lawyer and other specialists, without which it is difficult to imagine large gaming companies. It got to the point that many developers have ceased to be universal developers, since the studio has employees who are responsible only for working out the hair of the characters and other highly specialized game nuances. All this became possible after the significant success of Original Sin 2. According to David Walgrave, Larian has the money and Baldur's Gate 3 is nothing more than a true isometric AAA game.

Additional funding for the developers came from Google, whose streaming platform Stadia the game will be released. Under the terms of the agreement, the developers must implement several features for Stadia in their RPG, but at the same time, Larian received additional investments to help make Baldur's Gate 3 as big and better as possible. This also applies to dialogues along with the capture of facial expressions and movement of actors. Everything that we saw in terms of animation in the first video is far from complete and will definitely improve in the future. The developers even hired a former Telltale cinematic director and producer to work with the actors and cut scenes.

Other developers, including scriptwriters, have also come from Telltale to the studio. At the moment, there are 10 people in the scriptwriting team for Baldur's Gate 3. These are mostly veterans of the writing craft, although there are also very young guys. By the way, this time Larian decided not to invite Chris Avellone to work on the script. Larian reads that their writers will be able to cope with tasks, the main of which is to add personality to the characters and write cool dialogues, concentrating on working out the characters of the individuals and their relationships with other characters.

Separately, the topic of the complexity of the future game was touched upon. the impressive interactivity of the world, the abundance of possibilities, the DnD system and the presence of the factor of randomness with constant dice rolls will clearly cause problems for some players. In response to this observation, David Walgrave agrees that yes - Baldur's Gate 3 is a difficult game. And even though there is a "story mode" for beginners, which will allow you to focus mainly on the plot and dialogue, the developers will continue to adhere to a paradigm similar to Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 - use whatever you have.

Testing the player's abilities, making him improvise and pushing him out of the comfort zone in every possible way is the main desire of Larian. Even the moment in the presentation of Baldur's Gate 3, when the hero of Sven Winke threw his boot at the enemy, was like a signal for the players that they can collect whatever they see and use any available opportunities to win. All is fair in war.

"You fight with all your might against every enemy - that's what we want, because it's always a challenge. We don't want battles that you start with the thoughts" Oh, this will be like a light breeze! ", then click -click-click and everyone's dead. This is an example of a bad combat system. We don't do that. " - Contributed by David Walgrave.

The conversation about the combat system smoothly flowed into a logical question why the developers abandoned the real-time combat from the first parts of Baldur's Gate, preferring turn-based ones. As it turned out, everything is pretty simple. There are two reasons. First, for developers, DnD rules are associated primarily with turn-based battles. Second, turn-based combat is what Larian Studios is really good at. Of course, they could do real-time battles, as in classic games, but in the absence of experience, the final result would hardly suit the developers themselves and therefore would most likely not find positive feedback from the players.

The Baldur's Gate series, although it did not hesitate to defuse the atmosphere with humor, was still a darker and more serious work than the Divinity: Original Sin dilogy. David Walgrave agrees with this statement, noting that the Forgotten Realms universe is full of frightening images. One of them is the penetrators, larvae that penetrate the host's body and then subject his body to mutations, turning into a full-fledged illithid. Gloomy? Still, that's why the developers could not resist the idea of infecting the body of the protagonist with a larva.

Even in spite of the colorful picture of Baldur's Gate 3, Larian adhere to the lore of the universe and want to make the game truly dark. David also noted that trying to give the game a "Larian" interpretation, make it frivolous and a little more fun would not fit well with the established canons of Forgotten Realms.

As you know, a new Larian game can be expected before the end of this year on Stadia and Steam as part of Early Access. But what about the release of Baldur's Gate 3 on PS4 and Xbox One, or even on consoles, maybe next-generation consoles? The developer admitted that he was not ready for this question. Of course, the release of the game on consoles opens up access to it for a larger number of players, which will not be superfluous for developers, given the project's AAA budget. But, according to David, he doubts that the current generation consoles will be able to pull Baldur's Gate 3, given all the innovations they have added to the engine.

Alternatively, you can degrade the quality of textures and make a number of other simplifications, but the developers at the moment do not even think about the console versions. The main goal is to release Baldur's Gate 3 on PC and Stadia in Early Access before the end of the year, the next step is to bring the game to a full-fledged release version and only then start thinking about other gaming platforms.

In addition to Baldur's Gate III on PC in 2020, there are a few more significant games that are worth watching. We wrote about the most anticipated of them in our special material.

The Topic of Article: Baldur's Gate 3 - the sequel to the legendary RPG.
Author: Jake Pinkman