Baldur’s Gate 3 devs explain why it launched without game-changing feature

Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian Studios have explained why the game launched without the ability to view dialogue in the first person, a feature that while tested, was soon shot down.

Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 has been nothing but a triumph for the gaming industry. The huge open-world RPG won countless game of the year awards for its endless creativity and non-linear storytelling, letting players choose how they play and craft their own journey through the lands of Faerun.

Also part of the game’s success was its incredibly lengthy usage of cinematics and cutscenes, which helped enunciate and animate the story as you play through it. This lets you get even more immersed in the action at hand, keeping you constantly engaged in the plot.

However, the devs have revealed one game-changing feature that didn’t make the cut when the title launched, a feature that would’ve let you experience the game from a first-person perspective.

During a PAX West panel for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian CEO Swen Vincke revealed that they considered a more intimate camera style when creating the RPG. “There was a moment when we were actually thinking of making the dialogues first-person,” the dev explained. “So we tried that out. That quickly got shot down.”

In fact, in early access the devs “weren’t sure if cinematics were going to happen at all,” art director Alena Dubrovina elaborated. “We had a couple of proof of concepts and we were still like, OK are we doing it? Are we not doing it? Then we decided to do it.”

Vincke chimed in, stating that the cinematics for Baldur’s Gate 3 were the biggest challenge the studio faced. “We had no idea what we were doing, because we were about 120 people and we ended up with 400, and a lot of that was driven by the sheer amount of cinematics that we had to put inside of the game.”

This was a far cry from what the devs had done before, with other titles like Divinity Original Sin not being nearly as detailed. “That was quite a jump for us, and dealing with that was really, really, really complicated.”