The developers of Baldur’s Gate 3 planned regions that ultimately never made it into the game because the boss feared the RPG might be too short.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is many things, but it is certainly not a game that offers too little playing time. The title has various endings as well as numerous dialogues and cutscenes, some of which you only see if you give certain answers or make decisions. One ending is so rare that only 34 people are said to have seen it.
Just the choice of whether you play a Dark Urge or a righteous Paladin, for example, changes your experience significantly. If you want to experience everything and dare to play multiple times, you can spend countless hours playing – even a single playthrough with the main story and side quests takes around 112 hours, according to the website HowLongToBeat.
Nevertheless, Swen Vincke, CEO of BG3 developer Larian Studios, originally feared that the 2023 Game of the Year might be too short.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is 1 year old and to celebrate the makers share their dirty secrets
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What exactly does the BG3 boss say? In a video interview on the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) YouTube channel, Vincke revealed that the Towers of Moonrise were actually once two towers.
Balsdur’s Gate 3 was ultimately released with only one Moonrise Tower, but for a long time the ruins of the second tower were in the game. The developers eventually decided to remove the second tower because the game was getting too big.
Vincke then explains that he was actually afraid that the gigantic role-playing game might be too short and that they had therefore planned many more regions that never made it into the game:
You’d be surprised to know that we actually had a lot more regions planned. Originally I was worried that the game would be too short, but I’ve always been really bad at judging the length of our games.
Swen Vincke in an interview with BAFTA (via YouTube)
Again and again, Swen Vincke tells us through little stories how much bigger Baldur’s Gate 3 could have been if Larian Studios had held on to many ideas and regions that ultimately didn’t make it into the game.
For example, Vincke reported back in 2023 that the developers wanted to have the Dispel Magic spell in the game for a long time. Ultimately, they had to decide against it because the spell would have “doubled the size of the game”: a single spell would have made Baldur’s Gate 3 almost twice as big