The Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were the biggest setbacks in development of Baldur’s Gate 3, said CEO Swen Vincke.
Speaking to Edge magazine, Vincke discussed how Larian closed a studio in St Petersburg, Russia, and was “fighting with embassies” to relocate staff.
“I had already thought about what we were going to do if it actually happened,” said Vincke. “So the decision was instant: we can’t stay there. We needed to move people away because, as these things go, you can almost predict that eventually there’s going to be a mobilisation, and that meant that all my team was going to go to war.”
A joint task force of the developer’s studio operations, finance and legal teams was then set up to facilitate the move.
“They did an incredible job, worked day and night to be able to get every single person a tailored solution to get them out of there,” said Vincke. “I’m super-proud of them for doing that.”
As a result, over 90 percent of staff from the St Petersburg team were relocated to other Larian studios.
“That meant that we started fighting with embassies and consulates,” said Vincke. “It was really complicated.”
Though of course worthwhile, this did cause setbacks in development.
“In a machine as complicated as an RPG, where everything’s connected to everything, if you suddenly start ripping stuff out, the entire thing collapses,” said Vincke. “Because things that were supposed to be done are not being done. It’s not that they didn’t try, but it was really, really hard. You could see the ripple effect of that lasting all through the end of development.”
On a more positive note, the success of the game began to affect development due to all the award shows staff attended.
Baldur’s Gate 3 won a huge number of awards, including top honours at The Game Awards, the BAFTA Game Awards, and the DICE Awards.
“I think it’s great that you have a moment of celebration, but we still have award shows that we’re going to,” said Vincke. “Because they’re important, and we really appreciate it, but it would be cool if everybody could agree to do it all at the same time.”
And while Larian is of course grateful, Vincke said attending ongoing award shows “is surprisingly draining on the soul. I certainly didn’t expect that. I think we’ve all been more emotional because we can’t get closure. And you want to have closure at the end of a project.
“We sent rotating teams,” he said. “So different people went to different award shows. It affects development – there’s a lot of them.” He added, laughing: “This has been a real problem.”
Larian is adding modding tools to the game in September. At a BAFTA talk last month, Vincke stated this would be a final handover moment to players.
“One of the big things for us, and the one that we’re really working towards now, is the ability for players to mod [Baldur’s Gate 3] themselves, because then they will be able to make their own things,” said Vincke. “And I think that will be the point where we’re going to say ‘ok, now it’s yours fully’.”