Baldur’s Gate 3 Final Q&A – Larian on Origin vs Custom Characters, Rule Changes, Crossplay and More
If this article were a meme, it would begin with the notorious Titanic-based animated image to lament that fans have been waiting an incredibly long time for Baldur's Gate 3. The expansion to the second installment, Throne of Bhaal, landed on June 22nd, 2001. In the ensuing twenty-two years, gamers only received more or less middling spin-offs.
At last, just ahead of E3 2019, Larian Studios appeared at Google Stadia's event to confirm earlier rumors that the studio behind Divinity had finally convinced Wizards of the Coast to give the green light for their Baldur's Gate 3 project.
The game debuted on Steam Early Access in October 2020. Over time, Larian added more classes, features and systems, but if you're like this author and didn't even want to spoil character creation before the 1.0 release, it has been an excruciatingly long wait.
Thankfully, the full launch of Baldur's Gate 3 is now just four days away, at least on PC (PlayStation 5 users will have to wait for September 6th). With the game poised to make a big splash at release, having topped Steam's best-selling chart for the past ten days or so, I've contacted Larian to dive into some of the very last outstanding topics. Enjoy!
You once said you planned to make custom characters as interesting as Origin characters in Baldur's Gate 3, unlike Divinity: Original Sin 2. How did you go about doing that in the final version of the game?
As a custom character in Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s a lot more reactivity based on the identity you’ve built than there was in Divinity: Original Sin 2.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game of perspectives, so you can look at the story through the lens of a character you’ve created yourself with an identity and appearance of your choosing, but we also give you some preset characters who come with identities and appearances (which we call Origin characters). With the Dark Urge, we’ve provided an Origin character who you can also customize the identity of. It’s really down to how you’d prefer to play and interact with the characters and the world around you.
It was recently confirmed that it is possible to respec a companion's class. How will that affect their personal storylines, though? For example, I imagine Wyll won't have to deal with Mizora anymore if he's not a Warlock.
The set narrative of the Origin’s story will be the same, even if you respec. Using Wyll as an example, if you make him into a wizard or even a paladin, in his background he’ll always be a Warlock who made a pact with a demon.
The difference narratively is that Wyll would gain the reactivity of the class he’s respecced into – so if he’s a wizard now and you get into a conversation as Wyll, he’ll have dialogue options that reflect that he’s a wizard.
The interview with Multiplayer.it raised some questions with regard to the changes you're making compared to the core ruleset. For example, can you clarify the tweaks applied to multiclassing caster classes? Some fans are worried they might lead to overpowered characters unless martial classes are also allowed to stack extra attacks when multiclassing.
When multiclassing, the levels of your classes and subclasses that normally have access to spell slots are added together in a weighted formula, and then the overall spellcasting level is used to determine how many and which levels of spell slots you will receive.
Warlocks are an exception here in that they only get their fixed-level spell slots.
Can you share the new racial bonuses? The community is freaking out a bit, especially about the human one. On that note, could you please implement the beloved human variant ()?
For half-elves and humans, we added extra proficiency bonuses because we didn’t want to lock you in on a specific race if you wanted to play with a specific class, which is something you would ordinarily have to do if you really wanted to maximize your character’s effectiveness. We saw in playtesting that people actually preferred the extra proficiency bonuses, so we went that route.
Were you even slightly prepared for the amount of resonance that Druid bear scene got?
We expected it to resonate some, but not this much.
Is there any way to select the character you want talking in dialogues? If not, why, and could it be added later?
The way it works is that the person who initiates the conversation (regardless of whether or not it’s on purpose) is the one who hosts the conversation, but your multiplayer partner can “listen in” and vote on your responses. It’s meant to feel organic, in that way. Like for example if you went into a room and triggered a conversation as part of a cutscene, it’s meant to catch you off guard. Letting you pick who talks at times like these would ruin the surprise, the pacing. But in many cases, you can back out of a conversation, select another player to control, and enter it with them. So there’s plenty of choice in most cases, apart from if triggered by a cutscene, then it’s whoever triggers it.
I meant mostly for single player. Some fans were a bit miffed they couldn't seemingly choose the character that is best equipped for conversation.
You can, by clicking the character you want to control and then starting the conversation. But you can’t if the conversation comes at you as a surprise as the result of an expected cutscene or something. As mentioned, in these cases picking the person for a conversation you didn’t know you were about to have wouldn’t work.
Fair enough! In a recent interview, you said you don't want to release without the split-screen co-op feature working on Xbox Series S. In the instance that you can't make it work on Xbox Series S, would Baldur's Gate 3 be held back indefinitely - possibly for good - on Xbox Series X, too, or do you plan to ask Microsoft for an exception to release the game just on Series S?
Our team is still working on optimization, so we’ll see where we land.
Did you take advantage of any of the DualSense features (adaptive triggers, haptic feedback)? If yes, are they available on PC as well when connecting the controller? If not, is there any chance of you adding support for them later?
We have rumble and lighting effects on the DualSense controller on PS5, and they’ll be added to DualSense on PC post-launch.
Will there be crossplay functionality for co-op multiplayer between PC and PS5?
We’re shipping BG3 with cross-saves between PC and PS5, and we’ll see about crossplay post-launch.
What does post-launch support look like for Baldur's Gate 3? You said you originally wanted to add all subclasses. Is there a chance to get more of those in the future?
We’re not ready to make any announcements for post-launch just yet.
Thank you for your time.
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