Baldur’s Gate 3: The Power of the People

While Baldur’s Gate III officially launches in August 2023, the game has actually been out in early access since October 2020. One of the benefits to giving players the chance to test out a portion of your new gaming project early is that the feedback from those players can make for a far better experience once the full game launches. To get an idea of what’s changed over these past few years, we spoke to Baldur’s Gate III’s director of publishing Michael Douse.

“Those with a good memory might remember their party members being quite aggressive with them, or difficult to make friends with. We toned that down,” Douse gave us as an example. “We also introduced ‘Loaded Dice’ as an option for players who don’t want to have a strict RNG [randomized] experience. Loaded dice basically notices you’re failing a lot of rolls, and skews rolls to your favor dynamically.”

On another level, Douse explained that there was a lot of “more mundane” feedback that came in over the course of early access through telemetry data—details like which races were most popular, which Origin Characters players recruited the most, how best to distribute loot, or where players were most often dying or least often exploring.

“[That data] helps you start polishing things a lot earlier than you would otherwise,” Douse said. “You wouldn’t throw kids onto a roller coaster without making sure it all does what the planning and math said it would first.”