Baldur's Gate 3 Creative Director Says An Expansion Would Be "Very Hard" To Make

08.08.2023 - 01:21 / thegamer.com / Swen Vincke

Despite having only been in the hands of players for the best part of a week, talk is already moving on to whether or not Baldur's Gate 3 will possibly get any expansions in the near future. Baldur's Gate and its sequel both got pretty hefty expansions following their release on PC back in 1998 and 2000 respectively, though it seems like it may not be the same case for Baldur's Gate 3.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Larian co-founder and Baldur's Gate 3 creative director Swen Vincke has claimed that the team hasn't "started on an expansion", and high level D&D rules make the likelihood of one happening very slim. For those unfaimilar with the Dungeons & Dragon universe in which Baldur's Gate 3 is set, once players get past level 12 (the level cap for the game), they start to receive some pretty godlike skills, such as the ability to make enemies immediately die and see into the future.

Related: I'm Worried Baldur's Gate 3's Level Cap is Too Low

To make an adventure worth playing with that kind of skillset, you'd need a villain with a powerful set of abilities to match, something that would likely require a whole lot more time in the oven than a simple expansion would allow.

"[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," says Vincke. "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."

That being said, Vincke doesn't rule out the possibility of Larian making an expansion at some point, though it sounds like one isn't even being thought about right now. Larian has stated that it would like to move onto one of its smaller projects, and that a return to the Divinity: Original Sin series is desired, but Vincke definitely keeps a possible expansion on the table.

"I've learned in the past you need to be careful announcing things before they're ready, because sometimes you have to cancel them because they don't work out. We could work on an expansion and it could be boring, and we should stop working on it," says Vincke. "So we have to have the freedom to experiment and do our stuff. And then when we're ready to announce it we will."

In any case, I'm sure the base game has plenty of stuff for players to be getting on with at the moment, and those patiently waiting for the PS5 release will also be able to join in on the fun when the game launches on September 6.

Next: Baldur's Gate 3 Turned Me Into A Save Scummer