A New Lock on Baldur’s Gate
It looks like the perfect setup. Baldur’s Gate 3 ends its campaign with characters at level 12, in a system known for taking things up to level 20. But despite fan interest, if you’ve ever played in a D&D campaign and grown beyond level 12, you might have a clue as to why that may pose… difficulties.
Beyond those levels, the powers available to player characters start to get a bit… nuts. Multi-dimensional movement, the ability to reshape reality to your wish, high-level D&D gets wild sometimes.
Now imagine you have to program that into a game.
“[Level 12-20] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,” Larian Studios‘ founder said in an interview. “Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort. A lot of D&D adventures are sub-level 12 for precisely that reason. So it sounds like neat, easy expansion material until you start thinking about it and it’s not as easy as one would imagine.”
“Honestly, we haven’t started on an expansion.”
That said, nothing has been ruled out quite yet. The team apparently has a solid idea of where they’d like to go (Whether it’s Baldur’s Gate or something else entirely). Bet they’re hesitant to make definitive announcements at this stage.
The only point of certainty is that Larian’s work is not done. More experiences are coming. And lessons learned from Baldur’s Gate will see the light of day.