The official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel published over 45 minutes of video interview with Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke, with Baldur’s Gate 3 (now out on PS5, too) as the complete focus of the conversation.
One of the most exciting topics was undoubtedly the potential DLC. As you may recall, Vincke wasn’t too keen on the idea last month due to the inherent problems of high-level balancing. However, the astounding success enjoyed by Baldur’s Gate 3 appears to have slightly changed his mind, as his response was far more open to the possibility this time around.
You could do different things. It doesn’t have to be necessarily at the end of the game. There’s different ways that you can do that.
You could make a level 12 to 20 game. It’s a different game; you would approach it completely differently. Different stakes, different environments, most likely, different protagonists and antagonists, but not undoable. Just different.
Later in the interview, Vincke also explained why Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t include the Dispel Magic spell. According to the Larian CEO, it would have doubled the work required to complete the game.
We wanted to do Dispel Magic. For a long time it was on the table, but then it became too much because there’s so much magic in the game. It was always ‘What happens if I come in and do Dispel Magic?’ My head was exploding. That’s why you don’t have Dispel Magic in the game. There’s actually still traces within where they actually foresaw that and they wanted to do it, we wanted to do it, it was just too much. Literally, it would have doubled the size of the game just to support that one spell properly.
For now, Larian is focused on delivering cross-play (a feature they confirmed in a pre-launch interview with Wccftech) and, most of all, launching Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series S and X before the end of the year. Still, given the magnitude of the game’s success, it would be weird if there was no DLC or expansion.
