När Larian Studios förra veckan visade upp gameplay från Baldur's Gate 3 var de flesta väldigt nöjda, samtidigt som en del tyckte att det såg alldeles för likt Divinity: Original Sin 2 ut. I ett blogginlägg på Steam försäkrar utvecklarna att majoriteten av spelmotorn är byggd från grunden för att tillgodose behoven för det nya rollspelet. De skriver också att de växt från 120 till 250 anställda, plus att de har ytterligare ett hundratal kontrakterade frilansare.
Let’s look at how we’ve evolved since the release of Divinity: Original Sin 2 in 2017. Firstly, we finished Divinity: Original Sin 2 with 120 people. DOS2 was shipped on the second version of the Divinity engine (we still haven’t found a cool name for it yet), and our Producer David Walgrave said recently in an interview with TechRaptor that in BG3 "there’s about 20-30% of the Original Sin engine left and we rewrote so many systems and so many things." We’ve been colloquially calling this 4.0 engine the “Baldur’s Gate Engine”, and it’s designed from the ground up for Baldur’s Gate.
But how does this happen? Between 2017 and the announcement of BG3 we’ve grown to 250 people + we have over 100 outsourcers working on this. Still independent. Funded entirely by yourselves who dived so eagerly into Divinity: Original Sin 2. We were quiet since the announcement just before E3 of the previous year. But internally, kinetic energy has propelled us forward with new systems, pipelines, and people who when not playing D&D were all helping us to put together what you saw at PAX East, 2020. There’s quite the adventure ahead.
Vidare i inlägget skriver de om hur den nya motorn är byggd för att verkligen simulera Dungeons & Dragons-spelande och att det ska vara minst lika intressant att misslyckas som att lyckas. Och vikten av att erbjuda mörka och ljusa alternativ, samt allt däremellan.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is on course to be a ‘Mature’ game, which is publishing language for “if you go any further the ratings board is going to be extremely annoying”. We want to push the limits of every theme within the game, which should allow you to play exactly how you’d like to play. Astarion may be a Vampire Spawn, but that doesn’t mean he has to be evil - if hungry. Though you saw one path at PAX East, there were many possibilities for good, and evil -- note also, everything in between. It has always been Larian’s plan to create games that allow you to play however you wish. This larger team, and this new engine, allow us to push this further than ever before. Much further than Divinity: Original Sin 2.
