Baldur's Gate 3 Devs Don't Want to Spoil Anyone's Fun. Exploits in Games Are Their Nightmare, But Players Come First
The script designer for Baldur's Gate 3 described how difficult it is to stop players from finding vulnerabilities in video games, yet not all such exploits need to be removed.
Baldur's Gate 3 still amazes players with new secrets, despite the upcoming one-year anniversary of the official release of this exceptional RPG. Mihail Kostov, a script designer, described how challenging it is for developers to keep up with players who are "spoiling" the game. He also talked about how Larian Studios doesn't want to overly limit the creativity of players.
Even though the interview with the Sofia Game Jam channel was previously published (via GamesRadar), the dev's statement can now be linked to a recent discovery by a YouTuber. This discovery showed that the Larian studio took into account even the most "extreme cases," as Kostow put it.
Self-willed players
The developers consider such situations to be "any way that a player action may push a system to the extreme." Or, to put it simply, to ruin the game - for example: quests.
Attacking or incapacitating NPCs, manipulating objects, fleeing from combat, or merging multiple fights into one, making different dialogue choices, and intentionally or unintentionally skipping points that "activate" various events can all disrupt or entirely bypass a carefully programmed sequence in the game. And these are just some of the most obvious examples of players' "inventions."
These problems affect almost every title, but they are especially irritating in the case of games like Baldur's Gate 3 - a huge production with a strong narrative that gives players unparalleled freedom. What's worse, sometimes a domino effect can occur - problems with one quest, independent character, etc., can cause an object or NPC not to appear in another mission.
Protections against players
Developers need to be mindful of all these aspects, ensuring that in the event of absence (or death caused by the "accidental" actions of the player), another character will take their place (preferably by adding a substantial number of such replacements - after all, fans of role-playing games coined the evocative term "murder hobo" for a reason). Or by increasing the number of guards who will make it difficult to bypass the key point on the map.
Of course, not every task needs to have as many safeguards as main quests. The more "niche" a given quest is, the less "detailed" it can be. Kostow emphasizes, however, that "not all edge cases, if missed, can be fixed in the best way."
WARNING: In this part of the text you will find information related to the Baldur's Gate 3 plot. You are reading at your own responsibility!
Hot silver
Kostow also ventured to give a specific example of such a problematic quest, related to Lae'zel and the Githyanki. If we complete a key series of quests for Voss, a knight serving Queen Vlaakith, he will reward Lae’zel with a legendary silver sword - one of the best that this companion can acquire.
In theory, the weapon is a reward that is only obtained after completing the entire Voss storyline, i.e. in the third act of Baldur's Gate 3. However, gamers discovered an easy method to obtain this powerful weapon as early as Act I. The Heat Metal spell compels characters to release their metal weapon - such as a particular silver sword.
Larian loves creative players
There was only one problem: the dialogue associated with this sword revealed important information about the third act of BG 3. However, instead of fixing this exploit, Larian decided to tweak Voss' dialogue to reflect this not-at-all-theft of a valuable weapon.
Blocking the use of the spell on the Githyanki knight would be an easier solution than recording new lines... but Larian doesn't want to limit players' creativity in BG 3. After all, these unexpected solutions and interactions are one of the main appeals of paper-based role-playing games, and recreating them was one of the developer's ambitions.
The easy thing would be to block players from using Heat Metal on Voss. But we don't like that at Larian.
We love this sort of stuff so let's fully support it. Let players keep the cool weapon. They found a way to exploit the game, let them have it, it's awesome. And rewrite Laezel's dialog to make sure it works in Act 1. This might mean recording new lines, it might mean hiding some of the lines, but supporting the player's creativity is awesome.
We found out later there's actually a wiki page for this exploit. It's super long too. That's awesome.
Currently, Larian Studios is working on the last major update to Baldur's Gate 3, although the company had to delay the announced beta tests. The "Update" will introduce, among other things, official modding tools.
