Skip to main content

Baldur's Gate 3 devs feared it was "going to break down" at launch

Despite Baldur's Gate 3's resounding success with critics and fans alike, the game's creative director, Sven Vincke, revealed in a recent interview that the folks at Larian Studios weren't initially confident that the RPG would be a hit. 

In an interview on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel Vincke spoke about his team's anxieties surrounding potential bugs. 

"We were worried it was going to score 6/10, 7/10, there's going to be a bug, something's going to happen, it's going to break down, everyone's going to hate it," said Vincke. "So that was literally our mentality going in, knowing that the content was good."

Though it's easily one of the best RPGs of recent years, Baldur's Gate 3 did have plenty of bugs at launch, including one that made your party companions far more romantically forward than intended, this didn't prevent the game's imaginative storytelling, emphasis on player choice, and stellar voice acting from shining through. 

Elaborating on his fears going into launch, Vincke said "It's a very big game, and so we know that stuff can go wrong. Although the game usually has a way of settling back on its feet. So we didn't expect it to go this well, we didn't expect that players were going to react so strongly to it."

The party explore the underdark

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Though none of the game's bugs was egregious enough to dampen Baldur's Gate 3's success, Larian Studios has been rolling out a steady stream of patches and hotfixes since release in order to get the game running more smoothly. 

Speaking on how the team had been able to roll out updates so quickly, Vincke had much to say. "We set up our studio so it can work 24 hours. We have our studio in Malaysia, our studio in Europe and then we have our Canadian studio, so we can basically pass on work... this means that, if somebody in Europe made a feature, by the next day they'll know if it worked or not because it went through QA [somewhere else]."

Thanks to this efficient system for distributing workload, Larian Studios has been able to offer regular updates at speed, ensuring that, when a bug is reported, the studio can promptly react. "That allows us to be very reactive to what we're seeing in the community", concluded Vincke - a quality that has likely done wonders for the RPG's continuing popularity.

Want to get more from Larian's hit RPG? Our guides to how to respec in Baldur's Gate 3 and the best Baldur's Gate 3 classes have you covered.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TechRadar's Year in Review: AI revolution, smartphone evolution, and visions of the future

If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc. Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal. Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months. Of course we also saw plenty ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft and Sony enter "binding agreement" to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft has announced that it has reached a "binding agreement" with Sony, pledging to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.  With Microsoft having won its anti-trust case with the US Federal Trade Commission , its planned acquisition of Call of Duty developers Activision Blizzard has taken a big step closer to becoming a reality. In order to alleviate the concerns of monopoly-building that got Microsoft in legal hot water to begin with, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced yesterday via Tweet that it has entered into an "agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."  This agreement will no doubt come as a relief to fans concerned that Microsoft's acquisition plans might result in Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, following in the footsteps of future Bethesda releases. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda caused the studio to break its tradition of offering titles cross-platform for upcomi...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Stardew Valley-like farming sim plays at the bottom of your screen so you work and play at the same time

Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are among some of the best choices out there if you're looking for a game to get swept up in for hours at a time. But, if you're a fan of management sims and a multitasker as well, this upcoming farming sim will likely pique your interest.  Developed by Mister Morris Games, Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulation game that runs at the bottom of your gaming monitor, allowing you to focus on other tasks like working while you tend to your crops. Set to release in Q1 2024 on Steam , the idle sim puts you in the shoes of a wholesome robot as you grow crops and use them to produce clean and energy-efficient biofuel. Having gathered this "vital robot power source," you'll then need to sell your harvest to the other machine inhabitants of your settlement. This, in turn, will let you reinvest the money into expanding your farm. If you're a terrible procrastinator (like me) this might not sound like your cup of tea...
Post a Comment
Read more