The next patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 is around the corner and promises several fixes and performance improvements. It will also mark the beginning of Larian Studios expanding on the epilogues of its Origin Characters, with Karlach receiving a new ending. However, another fix is on the way to address Minthara, a character in Act 1 who can become a companion based on your choices.
Unfortunately, she suffers from a “very, very stupid bug,” as director Swen Vincke calls it, that resulted in about “1500 lines” not showing up. Speaking to IGN, he said, “The game is super reactive, and there were a couple of bugs that caused some of the companions to not react as they should. And so, it felt like the content was not showing up. So you weren’t seeing it specifically with Minthara.
“So [lead writer Adam Smith] told me there are about 1500 lines of Minthara that weren’t showing up as a result of a very, very stupid bug that we now isolated. So we’re solving it.” While the lines functioned in previous versions of the RPG, “something else caused them to not work anymore.”
Vincke also revealed that Minthara had “a few iterations” during developments. “She’s there to serve another character that you meet later in the game, one of the antagonists. So, she was supposed to bring a different light on that antagonist in there.”
“It doesn’t help that some of her lines are not triggering. So that doesn’t do her justice. But she never had an actual quest — an origin quest… what you have for some of the others inside Act 3. So people that were looking for that, it’s just not there.”
“There was a variation they discovered of Minthara that we removed because it became too complicated. Then we didn’t have the real estate across the game anymore to tell that story. So, they found some fragments of it. But I mean, every single companion you’ve been playing has gone through those multiple iterations. So, it’s not that it’s something like we massively cut something there. It’s just that Minthara also serves the power fantasy of going for evil.”
For now, Larian will fix the issue blocking Minthara’s content and depending on how that lands, it will see if it can “do something extra for her.” “I mean, the feedback to the game has been phenomenal and overwhelming for us. So, it’s much more than we expected. So, we’re taking it all in, and then we’re…filtering through it. And so we’ll see where it goes.
“We made this game for the players, for them to enjoy it. If there are things that don’t land, I think you can rest assured that we’ll probably do something about it at some point, except that we can’t do miracles. We’re still a limited team with a limited amount of people that have been working very, very hard on making this.”
Of course, new features are in the works, like the ability to remove co-op characters from your campaign and change appearance midway through a playthrough. The former is coming soon, while the latter doesn’t have a release window. Further performance improvements are also expected sometime in September.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for PC, exiting Steam Early Access after three years in development (with an additional three years spent beforehand). It’s out on September 6th for PS5, though Digital Deluxe owners gain early access on September 2nd. Xbox Series X/S players can expect it later this year, sometime between September and November. Stay tuned for more details, and check out our review of the PC version.
