Baldur’s Gate 3 will receive official mod support in an upcoming patch, which Larian CEO Swen Vincke said will be a porting moment for players.
Speaking at BAFTA’s An Evening with Baldur’s Gate 3 after the game won multiple awards this year, Vincke discussed the game’s development and Larian’s long-term support.
“One of the big things for us, and what we’re really working towards now, is the ability for players to modify [Baldur’s Gate 3] themselves, because then they can make their own things,” Vincke said. “And I think that’s going to be the point where we’re going to say, ‘OK, now it’s completely yours.'”
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He admitted that the team has not yet completed development of mod support and that it has been “difficult to make that work.” However, the release of the update doesn’t mean the end of support completely, but “you’ll see the level of support reduced to really critical bug fixes” and for now “we’re still working as if the game just came out.” “.
When asked whether he was looking forward to this ‘last transfer moment’, Vincke answered with an emphatic ‘yes’.
“We’re working on our new thing, we’re super excited about the new games,” he continued. “We are also creative minds, we don’t want to keep doing the same thing, we really want to move forward and do new things.”
We already know that it’s likely that Larian’s next game will also be released in early access, as publishing director Michael Douse previously said.
Vincke further spoke at BAFTA about the importance of early access for the development of Baldur’s Gate 3.
“The most important thing that came out was that this allowed us to correct course,” Vincke said. “There were mistakes we made and the players said to us: ‘This is a mistake, you shouldn’t do this.’
“We try to listen and do as much as we can where we think it makes a lot of sense. So I think that has played a major role in the success of BG3.”
But how do developers know which feedback is actually useful? “A lot of it is based on gut feeling,” says Vincke, admitting that some elements can be analyzed through data. “At the end of the day, it’s about how I feel about the game as a player. I think if you do it any other way, you just become paralyzed and you can’t do anything. If you do that, if you start trying to do it by committee, then they just become the most mediocre things you can have. You have to follow your gut and say, ‘what game do you want to play?’ And then it’s actually very easy, you just have to hope that this is the game that other people also want to play.”
He added: “You also have to take into account that there are a lot of people in the universe with a lot of opinions. So it is impossible to accommodate everyone. You don’t necessarily always have to listen to the majority if you really believe in what’s in the game.”
Is early access the future of game development? At the very least, Vincke said he would “highly recommend it” but admitted that four years of early access was “actually quite a long time” as players can get tired in that time.
He continued: “You really shouldn’t approach it with the attitude ‘oh, it’s just early access’. There are players playing this who care. So you have to treat them with respect.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 won five awards at this year’s BAFTAs, including Best Game. A recording of An Evening with Baldur’s Gate 3 will soon appear on the BAFTA YouTube channel.
Larian recently opened a new studio in Poland as development of his next project continues.