So Polish GOL - gaming journalism site released a new interview with Sven, interview is on Polish ofc I’ve launched it through deepl translator since I’m too lazy to translate it all myself, so bare in mind that there could be some strange translations in it. Text goes in turns journalist - Sven
GOL: The Baldur's Gate series has a long history. What was the key aspect of the world that you wanted to include in your game?
Swen Vincke: I think there were several things like that.... First of all, it was the first adaptation of a Dungeons and Dragons game at that time. So I think we wanted to make a similar breakthrough with the translation of the fifth edition of D&D into the game. We also wanted to preserve the team-based nature of the game. Another important issue was the "there's a monster growing inside me, what should I do with it?" theme. We start by being infected by the parasite and then getting the ability to take control of it or resist it. This is present in many origin stories, but especially in the main storyline - this dilemma of what are you going to do about it. We also wanted to bring the feeling of being in a city from the second Baldur's Gate to the actual Baldur's Gate [in "two" we didn't visit the title city, only Athkatla - editor's note]. This was another ambition of ours.
What do you think was the hardest thing to grasp after all these years?
Let's call it a sequel, although I would say it's more of a continuation of the world. Yes, it's a continuation of the world, not a direct sequel. So the world is influenced by what happened in BG1 and 2, so you will see more than you expect, you will see the dramatic consequences of all the things that happened (especially with Sarevok). I think it's capturing the feeling of adventure and connection with the characters, known from the previous games, that was the most difficult for us, and also the most important.
And what was your target audience? Who were you thinking about when you decided: OK, we're doing Baldur's Gate 3. Were they Divinity fans, Baldur's Gate fans, or just RPG fans?
The latter. We always thought - maybe we were wrong at one point, maybe we're wrong now - but we think that if we like it, RPG fans will like it too, because we're all RPG players. It's a game from RPG players for RPG players.
What has been the reaction of fans to the fact that you are working on a brand like Baldur's Gate? Have they been very positive about what you've done with the world? Or do they need convincing that it's worth investing their time in?
Opinions are divided. So there are fans of the original games who wanted it to be an exact continuation of that storyline - this is not the case and some are disappointed. Others, however, changed their minds after trying the game. We had testers and there was one particular girl among them. She came from the other end of Ireland, so she had to travel for several hours before she got to the office and tested the game.... She said: "I signed up because I wanted to tell you: how dare you!". She left, thanking us and saying: "I was very happy with what you guys did with the city. I was so happy, going in there. I was afraid, but you really did the series justice, because for the first time we can see it all in 3D." So that was a very big compliment. When it comes to nostalgia and older gamers, there will always be people who are not happy with how it was handled. The same goes for everything else - from Star Wars to anything else you can imagine. But if you let that get in your way, nothing will happen anymore. Those things I mentioned at the beginning, the ones we aspired to, the ones we wanted to pay respect to - I think we succeeded. The vast majority of players say yes, some say no, and that's fine."
And if you were trying to convince someone that it's worth the time and money, how would you sum up your game to convince a fan of this world?
Well, I would say: if you like Dungeons and Dragons, you'll like Baldur's Gate 3.
And that's it?
Yes, I think you will. We've put a lot of work into making the rules approachable, we've done a lot of work to make sure that your decisions, your identity, who you are, what you do - that all of that will be reflected in the story, in what happens in the story. It will be presented to you as if you have your own Game of Thrones written for you, because the script of the game adapts to you as you play it. Based on the things you do, using a set of rules.... Honestly, I don't think a game like this has been made before - where the systems, multiplayer mode, narrative layer and cinematic interludes all come together into a cohesive whole. Something like a multi-ingredient cocktail, a sip of which you take and conclude - everything fits together here.
It's amazing that even today, playing for only a few hours, I had three different scenarios in which I lost the same companion. And not just during normal combat, but simply by making decisions, such as "hey, she's leaving the party to talk to people; oh, I'll just check what's around the corner." You come back and she's gone. It's amazing to see how the world reacts to the player's decisions.
Yes. It's a sacred principle, it's not touched: the player's causality above all else. It's really wonderful.
Did you change any aspect of the previous games, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, that you thought was a bit outdated?
I think those games were great in their time, but it's been 20 years, so everything has evolved. I don't think it's a thing that can be compared. At the time, these games were the pinnacle of what the RPG genre could do, and I think they've done very well, they're a testament to craftsmanship, a job well done, and they're still really good RPGs, if only because of the Enhanced Edition or the iPad version - I play them on the iPad, it's really great. BG2 in particular offered a lot of freedom and non-linearity. Some mechanics were really new to the genre. It's a trend setter. We're trying to make BG3 the same way, we're trying to push every boundary we can to try to move forward when it comes to the RPG genre.
It's very cool to hear that. Before that, I spent many hours with Divinity: Original Sin 2. Is there anything specific that you took from that game? A lesson you remembered that helped you when working on BG3?
Yes, those lessons were many. DOS1 was really about systems. DOS2 was about connecting the narrative to the systems, and BG3 is about how to connect the cinematic narrative to the systems while improving every aspect of the systems. I don't think we could have done BG3 without DOS2 and we couldn't have done DOS2 without DOS1. These were all incremental steps in our erepeg developer craft.
There is one thing about peaceful solutions to the quest approach that I had in mind. I felt that at the time Baldur's Gate was more focused on combat, comparing it to Planescape: Torment or Fallout. Do you retain this approach to clashes in BG3, or do you give people total freedom in how they can resolve potential conflicts?
You have absolute freedom. There are very few fights. You can even ally yourself with Gorthas. And that's literally ally, he keeps his word. So you don't have to fight him. There are many options of persuasion in this game. But there are some battles to be fought.
We've already touched on this topic to some extent, but I'd like to talk about it for a while longer. Of course there are many references, the game features characters from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. What was your approach to creating BG3? Did you feel it was necessary to continue the legacy of the series? Or did you want it to be more your own interpretation, your own perspective on this world?
We wanted to show that everything that happened in BG1 and 2 really happened. How it affected the world. But on that basis we wanted to build something of our own. And I think we did that. As you walk through this world, you'll see what the Iron Throne meant to Baldur's Gate. You'll meet characters like Jaheira, for example, who has a complicated history. You'll meet her children. Jaheira is now older and wondering: "Should I stop seeking adventure, is this lifestyle for me; who can bear it?". She had a friend who passed away. These things took root in the original Baldur's Gate and shaped today's city. But new developments are taking place in the game world. Things have also changed in Forgotten Realms. The gods have retreated, the city has evolved and you are about to enter it. Then, using a new set of rules, you will explore it in a new way. So it is a mixture of the old and the new. Tell me, please, from a game developer's perspective - you always give players a lot of freedom to experiment with both combat and quests and.... with basically everything.
How do you manage to do that? Do you have to consider all possibilities? Or are your systems designed to give freedom and see what happens?
It's more likely to be the latter. But there is also a bit of the former. We had to go through a lot of permutations, that's how we ended up with about 74 hours of videos, so.... it's literally pure voice acting and mocap. However, the systems are designed to be very robust. They will always work and mesh with each other. So a lot of effort has been put into making sure that all of this will work. Sometimes, when asked about something simple, system designers are trained to say, "Hmmmm, I don't know." When asked how difficult it might be, they'll list you a list of options, and only at the end of it a variant that won't work. Screenwriters are also trained this way. I'll explain it with the example of the genie we showed at the presentation. It was prepared by a screenwriter who is also a game master and who said: "We are going to do something funny." Well, so the genie is cheating. How can he cheat? Because he is a genie, he thinks about his character. He has a magic ring, which means that the player can steal the magic ring and we have to react to this fact. Because if the player is smart enough to steal the ring, we have to have different options for that character. We do this for every single situation, for every single NPC throughout the game. That's how things like this come about. It's crazy, but it's cool. You have to always assume that a character can be killed, you have to assume that if he's wearing something, players can take it off him and take it for themselves. So these are the basic rules, provided for every element we create. We have several of them, so it's hard work, but it's great for the player because the player learns to trust the game. He thinks: "Hey, if I saw something, I can take it. If I can't take it, then the developers didn't do their job. If I killed someone, I can talk to them, because I can talk to the dead. Which means that I can approach the situation in such a way that I can just kill everyone and start interrogating the corpse." Of course, there is a rule of thumb that says that if you have killed someone, he is unlikely to want to talk to his killer. On the other hand, if you meet an animal, you can talk to it. The same applies to quests. That's why we have to have so many cinematics. At the beginning of the game there is such a small temple, try to approach it in different ways, and you will see how differently the situation will develop.
The thing that convinced me that I wanted to invest my time in this game was that when I started playing in Early Access and walked out of the launch area, one woman was already waiting to jump on me. I was able to kill her before she had time to interact with me. For me, it was like a signal that I could really intervene heavily in the scenario.... I loved it.
We removed that character because it was happening too often. And we needed her as a guide for the tutorial - because she's in the tutorial, right? That's the only part we streamlined, to our shame, but we had to. We had to teach people how to play, because I was very insistent that there was no way to die in the first turn, literally in the first room.... I said: "No, that's really not a good idea." Because then I saw the statistics of the death of testers and thought: "Holy shit." [Laughs]
Today ... when I got off the ship, I saw a mind scavenger under the rubble and I liked how hardcore this game could be. Then I tried to resist its control and just threw one point on the dice.
[Sighs and laughs]
And although I probably had a +4 from my companion, I felt that I hit the bottom and failed. Also, I didn't save the game before the conversation, because why would I?
You learned the F5 button very quickly. [Laughs]
Oh yes. [Laughs]
But now loading works very fast, so it's fine.
You've been making RPGs for a long time and they're very much appreciated by the community, but why are you one of the few studios that can and want to design classic isometric RPGs? Why do you think there aren't many other studios working in this area?
I don't know.
There are a lot of action RPGs, but not like these.
To be honest, I don't understand it. Because we proved with Original Sin that the demand is huge. It's up to other studios to decide what they think about it. I know why we do it. We enjoy it, we have a lot of fun with it. Apparently, we are able to finance our development because we sell enough copies, so.... as long as this cycle works, we are happy. Personally, I wish more people would develop similar games, because I could play them. Meanwhile, there aren't many games like ours, and I wish there were.
Who mainly are your players? Are they people who played these classic RPGs as children, or are you attracting even more, say, young players these days?
That's one of the surprising statistics, because we thought we were really competing with other developers for that archetypal classic RPG player - it turns out not at all. The market is more about the midcore RPG player. I think it's because of the systemic nature that such people like it. That was certainly the reason for the success of DOS2. I think it will be the same for BG3. We'll see. But it was surprising. We didn't expect it ourselves. We have always seen our games as "classics", competing with the works of Obsidian or inXile, but this is not the case.
Oh, this is very interesting. I should be wrapping up now, so it's time for some final questions. You mentioned more than 70 hours of in-game videos. But given that someone will only go through the game once, how much of all this will they be able to experience, assuming they probably won't want to do all the tasks to the max?
I answered one journalist 20-30% because I was pressed, but I think it's actually less. But I don't know, I didn't measure it. It depends on how you play. The journalist from Fextralife - he was really pushing the pace, trying to get to the second act as fast as possible, he did it in 5 hours. That's an extreme, but it's great that it can be done. Remember, though, that this is only a fraction of what's out there. An ordinary player will never get there in a similar amount of time. This is a really difficult question, so I refuse to answer it from now on. [Laughs]
[Laughs] No problem. Are you planning a well-deserved vacation after the release?
Yes. Do you think you've done enough? Yes. [Laughs]
GOL. I asked in a positive sense. You're ready for the launch, and I'm sure people will love the game because they love what's already in it. And then you take some time off and work on something else?
Every time you finish such a big game, you have to detoxify, so it affects the whole team. We need to refresh ourselves. We put a lot of creative ideas into it, so.... We need to refresh our creativity. This is very important.
Any plans to develop BG3 in the future?
bBesides updates, of course. I can say that we have many plans. But in reality, we need to see how it all turns out, and that will define what those plans will be. There are many for now.... after six years you have a lot of plans. But we need to find out how it will work. We're taking a break, doing our post mortem, looking at what went wrong, what went right, what we can do better and differently in the future, reviewing different ideas, that kind of thing. We certainly won't come up with something new in the next few months, that's for sure
