You only have to take a short stroll around inBaldur’s Gate 3to realize how much work and dedication theLariantitle has packed into it. From complex characters to intricate designs and mechanics, the RPG Fantasy game is bursting at the seams with life.
Not only does the game look amazing, but there’s also the critical thinking that needs to go into it when incorporating the player into its world and what they may run into. Something Larian’s gameplay scripter, Mihail Kostov, knows a thing or two about. Kostov talks about a term called “edge cases” where a player’s action may push a system to the extreme, but the studio actually encourages players to do this.
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“You have to work with the players on making your game better, otherwise you shouldn’t be doing it.”
First spotted byGamesRadar, Kostov outlined the work and thinking that goes into an RPG as freeform in Baldur’s Gate 3 in a new presentation forSofia Game Jam. In the speech, Kostov discusses edge cases, which, in its simplest terms, are rare and unexpected scenarios that venture outside the boundaries envisaged by devs that can make or break a game. Kostov states that the studio’s priority is to “ensure that the game is always completable from start to finish” but, as many players of the game will have seen, there are ways to break the game that include loopholes.
Some of the challenges for developers that Kostov mentions include things like any dialog can fail to start for many reasons, NPCs may be moved around by crimes or other disturbances, most triggers/spotting areas can be sneaked past and quests can be completed in any order, but despite this fearful undertaking for Larian, they still want to “fuel and reward player creativity,” and to ensure “players' choices have consequences.” says Kostov.
An example of this is related to Lae’zel and her Githyanki questline where Voss gives her a legendary sword in Act 3, but players figured out a way to get it in Act 1 by casting the Heat Metal spell. Hostov explains this particular loophole in his talk, “The easy thing would be to block players from using Heat Metal on Voss, but we don’t like that at Larian. We love this sort of stuff, so let’s fully support it. Let players keep the cool weapon.” he continues, “They found a way to exploit the game, let them have it, it’s awesome. And rewrite Laezel’s dialog to ensure it works in Act 1. This might mean recording new lines, it might mean hiding some of the lines, but supporting the player’s creativity is awesome. We found out later there’s actually a wiki page for this exploit. It’s super long too. That’s awesome.”
If you were looking forward to the start date of Baldur’s Gate Patch 7 closed beta, the wait may now be a little longer than expected. It seems as though an annoying bug has been found that stops passive dice rolls from working properly. Larianhas confirmedthat they will be pushing the closed beta until sometime later this week.
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