Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New Larian interview (PC Gamer, March 2022)

For those interested, here it is.



My personal highlights and thought :


I didn't know Larian before BG3. But with the GDC talk on the making of D:OS2, and now this, I feel that if I was to summarise Larian in one phrase, it would be "we never expected development to happen this way. Nobody saw it coming". Which is quite sad.



Well, I've ordered my popcorn and I'm waiting for the next round of the Solasta vs BG3 debate. At this point, I might believe you if you told me that Swen really just wants to troll a good part of the community.



I'm now less hopeful than ever about the writing.

Larian's development philosophy seems to be "let's not spend time thinking ahead at the beginning, we'll just do a quick-and-dirty first draft now, implement it, and later we'll iterate over and over until we've got something good". The thing is, spending more time thinking ahead at the beginning can often save many iterations further down the line ...

....

I honestly don't know whether to derisively laugh out loud or just put my head in my hands and cry - though since I'm physically incapable of the former I guess it's an easy enough question. *sigh*



Despite the seeming disconnect with reality that the interviewee seems to have between what he imagines is being produced, and what we're actually seeing, I do find myself wondering if this means that in a future patch they'll actually do something about the gods-awful character creation UI, and if it will, indeed, include the ability to view in clear and legible ways what each class and subclass gives you at which levels - something you cannot, in fact, do right now.

Anyone knows if the GDC talk he gave about the game is going to be publicly available any time soon?

Swen gave a GDC talk about BG3 ? I've only watched the one about D:OS2, and I was firmly waiting for "The making of BG3" in a couple of years, to see whether it can be summarised in the exact same way. That is to say : "We didn't see that one coming. And that one either". But the PC Gamer interview has just confirmed me in the thinking that, yes, if/when such a "Making of BG3" talk happens, it will be the same.



I certainly hope for an improvement of the awful character creation UI, at some point ... ideally before release.

I also love how the quote sounds like "Look at all those options ! Such classes, much subclasses, wow". Clearly, that's a point where BG3 is very different from Solasta, Pathfinder : Wrath Of the Righteous, Eldent Ring, and basically every other CRPG out there.

@Tuco : ah, forget about my question. I just realised that Larian's Twitter account mentions a recent GDC talk, titled "The Many Challenges of Making Baldur's Gate 3". I think it takes quite some time before GDC publishes their talks on YouTube (or in the GDC Vault). Like, I wouldn't be surprised if we need to wait a couple of months.

Eh, nothing really new here. Quote about BG3 being "the benchmark incarnation of 5th Edition in a videogame" I am sure will be used against Larian many times in the future, but it's more or less what we had before - of course Larian believes (or claims) their changes make for a better game, and so it is the best 5e adaptation in a video game.


Again nothing new - impact of increased production value on ability to make rewrites and changes has been well documented across many projects - that's sort of obvious, the more time and money something takes to make, the harder will it be to get it scrapped and replaced. I wonder if EA might be working against Larian - one would assume that for Larian to be able to release EA they need to invest a lot of resources into creating and polishing assets that might benefit from changes later on. Then again, even without EA devs will make playable builds for events or for publishers to see, so it could be the usual, necessary "waste".

I would also like to see the GDC talk!

This only confirms what I knew and posted on here a year ago about Larian being in way over their head and understaffed. Swen all but confirms it here, which is why they did so much hiring for more staff.

The game when it was released in October 2020 was not fit or suitable for public consumption, especially at a $60 price point. I can only hope that, with the full staff, we start seeing flowing updates and changes being made to the game with some sort of reliable schedule.

Honestly, it still feels like the developers don't know what they're doing on this engine. I don't think we'll get another patch before the 2-year anniversary and that patch should be able to clue us in what they have planned with reactions, considering the game is going to come out in 2023 allegedly.

Lol.

Proven true.
As I have been saying since day 1, CINEMATIC DIALOGUES is what will kill this games development. EVERYTHING revolves around them. Its a huge hurdle to more content we could of had.
Frack cinematics; use the time and funds to give us party of 6, 10 more playable NPCs with quick ass amazing WRITTEN dialogue story, day/night cycle time, hardcore D&D, mix of tactical AND quicker combat options etc..etc...
Or just be done with it and make BG3 a tale tale game and remove all combat and RPG elements. I mean right? thats what everyone here who loves BG3 just wants, to make a boner inducing character and to see everyone naked dancing around a bondfire romancing and arguing for eternity.

People will tear Sven's words apart and misinterpret anything as long as it fits their narrative.

Uh huh.

If my experience has taught me anything, it is that there are no hills lacking defenders...dung-heaps included.

Sooo ...

Thats the excuse for having such limiting dialogue options?
That "it involves many people and much work to add another"?

If so its poor one.

And also dont tell me that in between all those 400 people nobody thinks that curent options are lacking some basic choices. :-/

Nobody thinks that we should have option to try harder save Arabella than just give single Perauation atempt ... and then just watch her die if we fail.
Nobody thinks that we should have option to at least beat those little thieves ... instead just accept that they steal for us and there is nothing we can do.
Nobody thinks that Astarion ambush should lead directly to combat?

All that and MUCH MUCH more despite the fact that we are litteraly begging for them for year and half??? :-/

Well in that case Larian obviously need to expand even futher.
And i would recomend to start hiring writers.

Guess what? This https://larian.com/careers/d39674d6-2b37-44fe-9705-0c2612a265bc
And it's hanging there for ages.

I laughed at the 5e incarnation remark. BG3 has a lot of work to do to be a faithful 5e adaption. Playing in two 5e pen & paper groups at the moment I can compare both versions directly and BG3 has a lot still missing.

And artwork and cinematics before story? That doesn't sound promising. Just get rid of all the cinematics and concentrate in story. I don't really need a cinematic for every pointless dialogue. Use them for some of the important stuff, but not everytime, a npc opens their mouth.

No mention of finishing off races, just classes and spells. I’m starting to think we might not be getting Dragonborn.

Larian : "Making video games is hard, so we scaled up our teams"
Everyone in this forum : "OOOOH MY GOD THE GAME IS DOOMED"

I'll grab some popcorn while you guys have a meltdown over nothing.

Yeah you never have enough talented people ...

Shame Dublin is so far tho ... would be worth a try.

Exactly!

They weren't aware of the potential difficulties from the beginning?


I haven't seen a single complaint from you; all I have seen is cheerleading. Even the people generally on board with this game have raised an objection or two (minor or otherwise).