The Road to Baldur’s Gate
After announcing the game almost precisely one year ago now, we’re finally on the road to Baldur’s Gate. It’s been a lot of work getting there. Recent disruptions caused by Covid-19 slowed us down, but today is special because we’ve finally locked down the content we’ll be releasing as the foundation of the initial Early Access version. We’ll share this with you soon, but for now, let’s focus a little on the past, before we go full steam ahead towards AUGUST, 2020.
We announced Baldur’s Gate 3 just prior to E3 2019 with the first part of our CGI trailer, the first time you folks really got a sense of the mood and themes we were shooting for with the game. Shortly after, we shared with you our adventures at the Wizards of the Coast HQ, as we infiltrated the building and brought back with us the secret source of Dungeons and Dragons. Of course, it was all in jest. We’ve been working on this for far longer than the announcement; it’s coming close to about four years now, all things considered.
In the last Community Update we talked about the world-wide gameplay reveal of Baldur’s Gate 3, presented to an auditorium full to the brim of eager fans, curious to see where the game would take them. This followed the press-tour, where journalists sat through a 3 hour presentation of Baldur’s Gate 3, which was really the first time we saw people react live to the game. They laughed as we fumbled our rolls, and we laughed at the choices they shouted out at us that defined our journey. It went off script. There were bugs. But this is Early Access, and above all else Early Access is about interaction. It’s a long journey, but it’s one that’s supposed to be fun. We’re having fun, and we hope you are too.
In that update we talked about the tone, theme, and how Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place 100 years after Baldur’s Gate 2. We can’t go into too much detail about how they’re connected, because spoilers - we want you to discover these things when you play it. Between that press-tour, seeing your reactions as we played inside our awesome castle booth at PAX, and the live-stream, we’ve been collecting that energy and channeling it into the development, which admittedly in recent months has been problematic due to Covid-19, with an inability to record cinematics with actors. Work continued on though, changes were made, and you’ll explore some of these changes at the next live-showing of Baldur’s Gate 3 which is right around the corner. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Since then, we also did a Reddit AMA to answer a lot of your questions and the community has kindly and conveniently compiled that into an easy FAQ that you can read over on Reddit. Within that are certain teases that tie Baldur’s Gate 3 to Baldur’s Gate 2 and talks about many of the topics raised since the PAX Live Showcase.
We’re really excited to show you how the game is continuing to shape up. There are many improvements between what you saw at PAX and what you’ll see later in June. The narration in BG3 has been totally overhauled, the impact of your choices is becoming impressive, Origin characters have been adjusted, many visual improvements are already implemented, and the game’s UI continues to be tweaked and shifted around with a new UI style in development (But not ready for prime time yet). We started refining how the DnD fifth edition ruleset is integrated and are having loads of fun seeing the emerging gameplay that comes from so many systems working together. Combat is starting to be really fun with many tweaks getting implemented and we have a new initiative system which adds a lot of depth to the gameplay. We also have the new, official key-art nearly ready to be revealed. And we haven’t even started Early Access yet!
That pretty much covers where we’ve been, but where are we going? SO MANY PLACES. Today we’ve released the first official trailer for BG3 featuring the latest up-to-date visuals and mood we’re targeting. This trailer, functionally to announce the release window, comes with the caveat of a MAYBE. MAYBE is a real thing, because the world of development is a complex one with a lot of challenges, especially in the face of a global pandemic, and we wanted to be 100% honest with you. Secretly, all release dates are targets. Games are ready to be released when they’re ready to be played, and that’s true for Early Access games too. Though we’re back in the office, equipped with hand sanitizer and face-masks, and performance capture can continue with a two meter distance, we’re still playing catchup on the last three months. But that’s okay, because on June 18 we’ll be kicking off D&D Live with another massive chunk of live Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay, and we’re incorporating that community spirit that’s inspired us ever since that initial press tour.
We’ve never created vertical slices or “press builds” of the game, it’s always been the latest we had. While we have a good idea of what we want to show you, we’ll try to let the game do the talking and that probably means we’ll go off script. It instills horror into the hearts of our QA team but we like doing it because it’s super fun when people shout out directions, laugh at our mistakes, and cheer on our successes. That’s the way of the dice, right? So during D&D Live you’ll be able to choose - live - if we delve deep into The Underdark, or take on the nefarious Dror Ragzlin. Maybe.
Between the initial announcement and today, we’ve had an ongoing game of spot-the-difference, and that’ll continue towards August as we roll into Early Access. We can’t wait to start getting that feedback when you start playing the game for yourselves. It’s a huge game, much deeper than anything we’ve ever done before. The visual and systemic target is also much higher than anything we’ve done before.
We hope that today’s Announcement Trailer gives you strong mood-vibes, and sets the tone for the live session we’re hosting with our friends at Wizards of the Coast on June 18th. We haven’t gone into a huge amount of detail on what’s changed in BG3 over the course of the year, because it’s fun when you find it. We enjoy that engagement. Expect many more changes, improvements, and announcements of content the closer we get to August. And after.
The road to Baldur’s Gate is paved in friendship, and the adventure defined by the party. 2020 is a weird year. We’re used to seeing you in person at PAX and elsewhere, and we hope that at least this live-stream and today’s announcement will bring us a little closer. We’re very eager to see you again, and to share some more memories and talk about Baldur’s Gate 3 before we really start the journey together in August.