Baldur's Gate 3 devs feared it was "going to break down" at launch

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By Cat Bussell
published

Baldur's hate

Karlach speaks to Tav about murder
(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Despite Baldur's Gate 3's resounding success with critics and fans alike, the game's creative director, Sven Vincke, revealed in a recent interview that the folks at Larian Studios weren't initially confident that the RPG would be a hit. 

In an interview on the official Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel Vincke spoke about his team's anxieties surrounding potential bugs. 

"We were worried it was going to score 6/10, 7/10, there's going to be a bug, something's going to happen, it's going to break down, everyone's going to hate it," said Vincke. "So that was literally our mentality going in, knowing that the content was good."

Though it's easily one of the best RPGs of recent years, Baldur's Gate 3 did have plenty of bugs at launch, including one that made your party companions far more romantically forward than intended, this didn't prevent the game's imaginative storytelling, emphasis on player choice, and stellar voice acting from shining through. 

Elaborating on his fears going into launch, Vincke said "It's a very big game, and so we know that stuff can go wrong. Although the game usually has a way of settling back on its feet. So we didn't expect it to go this well, we didn't expect that players were going to react so strongly to it."

The party explore the underdark

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Though none of the game's bugs was egregious enough to dampen Baldur's Gate 3's success, Larian Studios has been rolling out a steady stream of patches and hotfixes since release in order to get the game running more smoothly. 

Speaking on how the team had been able to roll out updates so quickly, Vincke had much to say. "We set up our studio so it can work 24 hours. We have our studio in Malaysia, our studio in Europe and then we have our Canadian studio, so we can basically pass on work... this means that, if somebody in Europe made a feature, by the next day they'll know if it worked or not because it went through QA [somewhere else]."

Thanks to this efficient system for distributing workload, Larian Studios has been able to offer regular updates at speed, ensuring that, when a bug is reported, the studio can promptly react. "That allows us to be very reactive to what we're seeing in the community", concluded Vincke - a quality that has likely done wonders for the RPG's continuing popularity.

Want to get more from Larian's hit RPG? Our guides to how to respec in Baldur's Gate 3 and the best Baldur's Gate 3 classes have you covered.

Cat Bussell
Cat Bussell
Staff Writer

Cat Bussell is a Staff Writer at TechRadar Gaming. Hailing from the crooked spires of London, Cat is an experienced writer and journalist. As seen on Wargamer.com, TheGamer.com, and Superjumpmagazine.com, Cat is here to bring you coverage from all corners of the video game world. An inveterate RPG maven and strategy game enjoyer, Cat is known for her love of rich narratives; both story-driven and emergent. 


Before migrating to the green pastures of games journalism, Cat worked as a political advisor and academic. She has three degrees and has studied and worked at Cambridge University, University College London, and Queen Mary University of London. She's also been an art gallery curator, an ice cream maker, and a cocktail mixologist. This crash course in NPC lifestyles uniquely qualifies her to pick apart only the juiciest video games for your reading pleasure. 


Cat cut her teeth on MMOs in the heyday of World of Warcraft before giving in to her love of JRPGs and becoming embedded in Final Fantasy XIV. When she's not doing that, you might find her running a tabletop RPG or two, perhaps even voluntarily.