Larian Studios unveiled Baldur’s Gate 3 at PAX East 2020 with a story set 100 years after the second game and featuring a new threat in the form of Liches. The RPG will be going into early access later this year but the developer recently posted on Steam about the journey till now and what’s coming up. It noted how the fans were the final, missing ingredient in the development pipeline, reflecting recent comments about taking fan feedback into account with early access.
It noted that the Divinity 4.0 Engine was colloquially called the “Baldur’s Gate Engine” and had been designed ” from the ground up for Baldur’s Gate.” From 2017 till the game’s announcement, the development team has grown past 250 people but there are also 100 outsourcers working on the project. Everything is, “funded entirely by yourselves who dived so eagerly into Divinity: Original Sin 2.”
Larian noted that past games in the series have been dark and that “Baldur’s Gate 3 is no exception, though in 2020 we’re able to take the gamut of emotion and experience and stretch it further due to systems, simulation, and of course also our cinematics team.” One aspect of this wasn’t showcased in the reveal but the live audience at PAX East managed to see vampire spawn Astarion feeding on party member Shadowheart. Like many decisions in the game, this was based on dice rolls and choices from the audience.
It also resulted in Astarion coming off happy and Shadowheart winding up dead. The overall experience is going to be a Mature title and Larian wants “to push the limits of every theme within the game, which should allow you to play exactly how you’d like to play. Astarion may be a Vampire Spawn, but that doesn’t mean he has to be evil – if hungry. Though you saw one path at PAX East, there were many possibilities for good, and evil — note also, everything in between. It has always been Larian’s plan to create games that allow you to play however you wish. This larger team, and this new engine, allow us to push this further than ever before. Much further than Divinity: Original Sin 2.”
“As you delve into an epic adventure that subverts the binary morality found in many RPGs, and explore Baldur’s Gate with new and existing characters, 100 years after the story of the first two games, dice roll by dice roll, we hope that together we can reignite that great sense of discovery you felt as you dived for the first time into Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, bringing the experience of an open-ended D&D game to photo-realistic realization, albeit with 5e rules in place of 2nd edition rules. Things have come a long way in 20 years, but what’s important to us is that you’re along for the ride.”
To further address any questions from fans, there will be a Reddit AMA on March 12th at 11 AM PT with the developers, including creative director and Larian CEO Swen Vincke. Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t currently have a date for its early access launch but will arrive in the next few months. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.