When asked about post-launch expansion plans for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studio’s senior product manager, Tom Butler, said the team “want to do more” with the hit RPG, but what that looks like is still uncertain.
10.08.2023 - 22:19 / pcgamer.com / Swen Vincke
It took me a few hours with Baldur's Gate 3 to fully come to a realization that is pretty dang obvious in hindsight—if you're playing in four-player co-op like I am, there's absolutely no room for more companions in your life.
The first two hours of Baldur's Gate 3 are a flurry of meet-and-greets with other weirdos who got tadpoles shoved in their eyeballs, and pretty soon we'd stacked up companion quests with Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, Wyll, and Gale with interesting stories splintering off in all directions. But with a party full of custom characters we couldn't have any of our new friends tag along with us, so they just sat back at camp, and I kept running into quest objectives that I couldn't make any progress on without one of those companions tagging along.
It felt wrong to ignore those quests—I mean, they're right there in my journal, begging to be completed! Like many RPG players, I have trouble leaving any quest unsolved, and chatting with my companions every time I came back to camp felt like a half-measure. So in an interview on Monday with Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke, I asked for advice on how best to interact with companions in a four-player game.
His advice? Eh, maybe don't.
«Personally, and this will be different for different people, I would keep them for a singleplayer playthrough or a co-op playthrough with just two players, where you take some companions with you,» Vincke said. «A large part of the storytelling of these characters is when they're with you in the world.»
Vincke elaborated that if your companions are stuck at camp, any conversation you have with them will be based on a «hearsay» conversation system. In other words, they'll be able to react to what you tell them, but they won't really know what happened because they weren't there, so you'll be missing out on the reactions you'd get if the companions were in your party. You'll also miss out on unique interactions with the many NPCs in the world who already know your companions.
«Your connection to these characters is going to be much shallower than if you had them with you,» he said. «I would probably advise if you're playing in multiplayer, focus on your party—as you do in singleplayer, actually, just focus on your party and enjoy it and roleplay it to the full extent. You can have any number of companions in camp, but it's not going to be the same thing. It's going to be much stronger if you're doing it in singleplayer.»
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Vincke's advice sure makes sense, even
When asked about post-launch expansion plans for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studio’s senior product manager, Tom Butler, said the team “want to do more” with the hit RPG, but what that looks like is still uncertain.
The question of when Baldur's Gate 3 would release on Xbox, if ever, was uncertain until this week, not because of messy console exclusivity politics, but because of console gaming's gradual transformation into a wonky kind of PC gaming.
Larian Studios head Swen Vincke has confirmed Baldur's Gate 3 will release on Xbox Series X|S later in 2023.
Amazing news for RPG fans on Xbox who’ve been patiently waiting for the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 — Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke has confirmed that the title will be launching on Xbox Series X|S this year.
Baldur's Gate III is arguably the game of the summer, and it isn't even out on consoles yet. Developer Larian Studios has taken a "it'll be out when it's ready" approach to releasing the game on various platforms. After becoming an instant hit on Windows when it came out of early access earlier this month, Baldur's Gate III will land on PlayStation 5 and macOS on September 6th. The exact Xbox release date is still unclear, but Larian has finally confirmed the massive RPG will come to Microsoft's consoles later this year.
Larian Studios has announced that it's found a way to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox Series X|S players and that the game will still be able to make it onto the platform this year.
Larian Studios will release Baldur’s Gate III for Xbox Series in 2023, the developer confirmed.
Larian's Swen Vincke says Baldur's Gate 3 will be coming to Xbox this year, having sat down with Phil Spencer at Gamescom to hash out a few details.
The hit D&D RPG Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to Xbox Series X and S "this year," as Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke has now confirmed.
A large content update & round of bug fixes are coming to Baldur’s Gate 3, as a new patch is in development that will add requested features and address glitches that have been reported to the developer Larian Studios. While Baldur’s Gate 3 is very much playable in its retail form, there are still many issues that need addressing with the game.
Larian boss Swen Vincke has revealed that the studio is currently working on a number of updates to critically-acclaimed RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. Among updates coming to the game, it is slated to get Hotfix 4, its first major patch with over 1,000 fixes and tweaks, and a second patch that will bring in some fan-requested features to the game.
I've struggled at times on Baldur's Gate 3's normal difficulty, so I can only imagine how it feels for players who are brand new to D&D or Larian RPGs. With very little explanation, it chucks hotbars full of terms like «bonus action,» «cantrip,» spell slot," and so much more at players. If it feels like you missed a tutorial, you're not the only one, but in an interview with PC Gamer last week, Larian founder Swen Vincke contested that there is a tutorial in Baldur's Gate 3, just not a traditional step-by-step guide. It's all of Act 1.