Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: What races have you played in the full release?

As a non-gaming software engineer, it should be fairly simple as long as it's planned properly. Basically, you'd have your Actual Race, set at the start of the game, and your Apparent Race, which is normally the same as your actual race but can be changed by Disguise Self, etc. Anything that changes based on how you present yourself (e.g. appearance, dialogue options) would look at your Apparent Race; anything that doesn't change (not sure if we're certain that anything doesn't change, but I'll say racial stats for an example) uses your Actual Race.

Anyway, that way you get all the changes you'd expect, with very little extra work. They could have any number of different Apparent Races, e.g. if one spell changed your appearance but not the dialogue, or another spell let you talk like a drow while looking like a gnome, or whatever.

It would be an added complexity/check on dialog, but I think you are right in that it's not that hard. Depending on how things are set up ofcourse. Others spaghetti code are always a nightmare to work with.

A dialogue file may be a lot of code, with many answer possibilities depending upon the real and effective race of the player, and depending upon the classes of the player, but structurally and algorithmically its extremely simple, and thus easy to read, understand, and if necessary bugfix, and thus its not spagetti code.

Namely if you are for example a Halfling using Disguise Self into a Drow, you will get both Halfling and Drow answer options, if they are both available.

Likewise if you are for example a multiclass Cleric and Wizard, you will get both Cleric and Wizard answer options.

If both race and class answer options are available, they will both be listed.

Etc.

To be honest, I haven't really given it too much thought how the code would look like at their end so I'm absolutely sure you are correct.