Baldur’s Gate III will feature numerous NPCs that can be interacted with in a number of different ways, but players likely won’t hear all of the dialogue in the game and that’s simply due to the sheer number of variables that are involved when it comes to character interaction. Baldur’s Gate III was announced during the Google Stadia reveal, with Larian Studios of Divinity: Original Sin fame developing the game.
Fans finally learned more information about Baldur’s Gate III at PAX East. The game will use the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rules and it’s set a century after the events of Throne of Bhaal. A lot has changed in the Forgotten Realms since then, especially in regards to the Bhaalspawn crisis that defined the first two games, as Bhaal has been restored to his position as the god of murder. The story of Baldur’s Gate III involves mind flayers attacking the city of Baldur’s Gate, which results in the protagonist getting a worm stuck in their head and only having seven days to find a cure before they turn into a mind flayer.
The Forgotten Realms is a big place and it’s full of people to interact with. Screen Rant recently interviewed Baldur’s Gate III lead writer Adam Smith and he talked about the sheer number of dialogue options present in the game. There is a ton of dialogue in Baldur’s Gate III that most players likely won’t see, as things like race, character class, and previous actions will determine how NPCs react to them.
The sheer amount of dialogue in Baldur’s Gate III requires the aid of development tools in order to make the process easier on the part of the writers.
“No, because it will usually open up something else. There’s an exchange. If somebody goes up to a character and kills them, I’m like, okay, what opportunities did that open up? And you can use Speak with Dead. Some of my favorite lines are in the Speak with Deads. They’re very short, they’re quite cryptic, but you find seeds and hints about who these people were when they were alive. I want players to feel a sense of guilt when they see a bandit on the road and think, “He’s a nasty bandit,” and then kill him… But then I want them to go talk to him, find out what was going on with him. Then maybe you won’t feel so good about your five experience points! (Laughs)
“So, there’s that, but genuinely, my favorite bits are really really hidden. It’s writing a really cool branch of dialogue, or even just a specific line, knowing that so few people are going to see it. Players will have to be this race, this class, and have done this one specific thing. But when they get it, they’ll feel really rewarded. The stuff most people see is great, but it’s those bits that feel really special. Sometimes I’ll write something that I think is really good and seven people are going to see it, but that’s good because those seven people are going to be, like, “Holy s***!” I really enjoy that side of it.”
Baldur’s Gate and its sequel were notable for offering a number of different approaches to situations, based on things like character class and choice of alignment. Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel are similar to Baldur’s Gate in this regard, so Larian Studios may have been the perfect choice to develop Baldur’s Gate III. The ability to craft a distinct character is central to the Dungeons & Dragons experience, as well as being able to interact with people and solve problems in ways that feel unique to the character. Larian Studios finally gave the world its first proper look at Baldur’s Gate III at PAX East and it seems like it may live up to the reputation of its forebears.
“Pretty much every tool we have has been built on from the Divinity Original Sin 2… The screen with all the writing looks a lot like a conspiracy board. The dialogue is written in all these inter-connected boxes. And the way it works is, you can have a dialogue that’s enormous that fills this entire wall, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to talk for an hour.
“Instead, you’re going to talk and get a little tiny corner of that. And somebody else is going to get the corner that was written for that character in that situation. Sometimes those things overlap because some characters won’t react to things they don’t know or care about, or they might not care about your race or your class. But, on the whole, there’s going to be a little bit of specificity. There’s a constant flow of information. We handle it, partly by having really clever people who help us to organize it all and make tools for that. It’s a side of development that doesn’t get talked about enough because people don’t find it interesting, but it’s fascinating that the people who make the tools, the coders, they let us do our jobs.
“They make sure we have things that let us organize information better and let us identify what is a flow problem. None of it happens without the people who make it easy for us… Or, well, for me. I’m really dumb when it comes to that stuff. I don’t understand how to code! I understand design, but when it comes to, “can you make this thing do that?” They do it, and I go, “Why are you magic?””
Next: Baldur’s Gate 3 Releasing On Steam Early Access Later This Year
Baldur’s Gate III is currently in development for Google Stadia and PC.
