Baldur's Gate 3 Developers Explain Its Controversial Endings, Beloved Characters, and Making the Best RPG of 2023

15.12.2023 - 15:11 / ign.com / Adam Smith / Swen Vincke / Best

SPOILER WARNING: This interview contains major spoilers for the ending of Baldur's Gate 3!

The Emperor might be the most controversial character of 2023. Baldur's Gate 3's mysterious Mind Flayer embodies many of the choices in the game's ending, some of which were not particularly popular with fans. Some fans even wondered if The Emperor was meant to be a different character entirely. But to hear Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke tell it, The Emperor was "always the twist."

"One of the basic questions of the game was whether you would become a monster if it would save the world. So that's where you get that in that moment," Vincke explains. "And then the interesting bit was, well, if you're not going to do it, are you going to ask someone else to do it, or you just going to say, 'F*ck everybody?' That's essentially what that moment was."

Lead writer Adam Smith adds, "There was no way to save the city, save the world without giving up your own identity, and whether you did or not was an interesting question. We talked a healthy amount about whether becoming a Mind Flayer meant a loss of identity. What did it mean? What was that?"

Vincke, Smith, and fellow lead writer Chrystal Ding — who had a large hand in plotting out Baldur's Gate 3's endings and happens to be one of The Emperor's biggest fans — were on hand for The Game Awards, where Larian's RPG won Game of the Year. Just a few hours after our conversation, Vincke and his team would effectively be played off the stage while trying to pay tribute to lead cinematic animator Jim Southworth. Vincke would later post his full speech on X/Twitter, which made for a thoughtful epitaph for the games industry's troubled year.

Baldur's Gate 3 was one of gaming's handful of flashes of brilliances in the darkness during 2023, drawing a huge new audience to the otherwise niche PC RPG genre. Fans were especially drawn to Baldur's Gate 3's cast, populated as it was by fascinating figures like The Emperor and Raphael, as well as beloved party members like Karlach, Lae'zel, and Astarion. Indeed, Baldur's Gate 3 might have one of the greatest casts in RPG history.

In the course of an hour long conversation with Vincke, Smith, and Ding, I sought to dig into the creation of these characters. What I found was that the same thoughtfulness that went into Vincke's speech also went into the creation of Baldur's Gate 3's cast, which might offer some insight into why they resonated so much with fans. I also talked about the path forward (Larian still plans to support Baldur's Gate 3), the possibility of a Game Pass release, and more. Read on my complete interview with Larian Studios, and make sure to check out the rest of the best RPGs of 2023.

So I think I'll just start with