Larian CEO Sven Vincke spoke about his initial worries that Baldur’s Gate 3 would not be long enough. According to him, in the end, a lot of content and locations were cut from the game.
The game is not small, but according to Vincke, it could have been much bigger. He says that a lot of tempting content was cut from the game and cites the second Moonrise Tower, the lair of the Cult of the Absolute from the second act, as an example.
«The Moonrise Tower used to be two towers. For a long time, there were actually ruins of the second tower. The reason we removed the extra tower was purely production: there were just too many stakes in the game, and so we had to cut that out. You’d be surprised to know that we actually had a lot more regions that we planned to create — I was afraid at first that the game would be too short, but as you know, I’ve always been bad at estimating the length of our games», — says Vincke.
The words of Larian’s head coincide with some other stories about the game’s production that journalists have heard before. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 was once planned to feature the Candlekeep library from the original game, as well as a place called the Red Military College where the player could recruit Will.
«People will check the data that is in the game, but there is a reason why we did not publish it ourselves. We felt they were distracting. Adding more could make it worse», — explained Baldur’s Gate 3’s lead writer Adam Smith.
The second Moonrise Tower may actually help explain the slight discrepancy in the game’s timeline In the emperor’s memories of his earthly life, he visited the Tower and was transformed into an illithid hundreds of years ago, but the Tower’s architect’s account says that it was a relatively new structure. The second destroyed tower indicates that there were several buildings on the same site over the centuries.
Sven Vincke also spoke about his favorite games, in particular, he praised Ultima 7. He says that this game inspired almost everything Larian has created. «I don’t play it anymore because I don’t want to spoil my memory». He also mentioned Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity.
Source: PC Gamer