Larian has set itself a complete list, which it has strictly adhered to during development, so that you will be rewarded for your creativity in one of the best (if not the best) game of 2023.

Earlier this year there was a game conference in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, where Mikhail Kostov, the scriptwriter of Larian’s gameplay, gave a presentation. He demonstrated the philosophies and strategies the studio uses to keep Baldur’s Gate 3 playable even when players are figuratively tearing it apart. To do this, Larian has created a “must do” list where a player’s actions in a system can result in death, but are rewarded, not restricted.

Larian’s philosophy is that players will experiment more if they feel they can still complete the game by destroying an NPC that gives them a mission, because they want to see how the game and the story react to the mischief they cause. Kostov says that Larian believes that player creativity is great. But what is this list that the Belgium-based team tried to stick to?

The game designers had to plan for the fact that most NPCs can be attacked and killed, but they can also be knocked out non-lethally. Items can always be attacked, moved, destroyed, or stolen, and important items can be dropped in areas that later become inaccessible (as we mentioned earlier). Most areas that trigger events or combat can be sneaked past. Any dialog can fail to start because “the player might be a bear or something”. Any dialog can be interrupted at any point. Quests can be completed. Party characters can be in different places. NPCs can be used in previous situations with multiple outcomes. Most combat can be fled. Multiple fights can be started separately and merged into one combat encounter, and NPCs can be displaced by disturbances and other events.

Kostov says that designing with extremes is both fun and challenging. For example, they created a security checkpoint feature where the player could kill guards with a bear so that the many backup NPCs could fill in for the main character, and even touched on a silver sword incident. In the first act, Lae’zel could get a legendary sword early by using Heat Metal on an NPC who would not give it to her until the third act, at the end of the quest line. Larian could have made the NPC a character that couldn’t be targeted with the spell, but the studio loves this behavior from players, so they even wrote special dialog for anyone who figured out this trick.

Others could really learn from that.

Source: PCGamer, GamesRadar