Baldur's Gate 3 is the game I have spent the most time on in 2023. Decency – and I suppose a bit of shame – prevent me from revealing the number of hours I have spent wandering the Sword Coast. Although I dare to say that I am not the only one and that Baldur's Gate 3 has equally fallen in love with hundreds of thousands of players around the world. A statement that gains weight with the title for best game of the year that it won a few days ago at The Game Awards, considered a kind of Oscar for video games. But what makes Baldur's Gate 3 so special? How do you create a game like this?
Anna Guxens, Senior RPG Designer at Larian Studios Barcelona, is one of those responsible for making Baldur's Gate 3 so special. We were able to talk to her during the Bilbao International Games Conference (BIG) and she revealed several of her secrets to us. As I already said in the analysis, back in September, sometimes the new thing from Larian Studios looks more like an immersive simulator than a role-playing game. The systems, the mechanics, flood and connect everything.
“That's one of the keys,” Anna responds. We are sitting in a pair of chairs around a round white wooden table, which reaches to the height of our knees. The chosen room is one of the enormous foyers of the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, where the BIG Conference 2023 takes place. “It is one of the big questions: How do we do it? But, actually, it's not that mysterious. We work a lot on the systems so that they are very robust and that they are maintained throughout the entire game,” she continues.
For a game to be immersive it has to be coherent. The story – and the world – of Baldur's Gate 3 is divided into three very different acts, both in terms of the areas and the themes it deals with. But they are seen as connected parts of the same world. “It is important that if, for example, you can become invisible at the beginning of the game, you can do it at all times. Even in the final battle against the most difficult boss,” says Anna.
The systems and mechanics of Baldur's Gate 3 work like the laws of physics, they are the natural structures that govern the reality of The Forgotten Realms. But Anna Guxens' work goes much further: “I have been in charge of designing entire areas of the game and then I contact the rest of the departments to create them.”
Take, for example, the githyanki creche from Act 2, a kind of sanctuary-refuge in the Mountain Pass. Anna was responsible for her design, her role was that of demiurge. “I knew where the story was going so I knew the main elements and what needed to happen, but I also had to research the lore of the Githyanki in the world of Dungeons and Dragons.”
Anna Guxens works in the Larian studio in Barcelona, but “it is not a secondary studio,” she says. Unlike other large video game companies, Larian Studios is not divided between main and secondary offices, although the headquarters is located in the city of Gant, in Belgium. “It has a fairly horizontal structure and all studies are equally important,” says Anna.
Apart from designing on paper or on the computer, it is also very important to play. Who was going to say it? To create video games you need to play video games. “At Larian we play a lot, we are the ones who play the most and from the beginning,” says Anna. This is how many of the options are born that are then transferred to the final version. “For example, I'm playing a game and I want to be able to tell a character to fuck off. If the option is not there, then I ask for it to be added and that's it, you can do it,” she continues.
The development team constantly tests the game, always keeping in mind its design philosophy, player freedom, and world coherence. “It's like playing LEGO, we give you the pieces and you assemble them how you want,” says Anna. And it is precisely this freedom that turns Baldur's Gate 3 into a story generator.
During the interview, I took the opportunity to tell Anna about my adventure on the Sword Coast: the story of a Paladin of revenge in love with a servant of the goddess of evil, a tragedy spiced with witches, worms in the skull and the legend of an alien chosen as the savior of the world. “This is what I like most about Baldur’s Gate 3, everyone tells me a different story,” says Anna.
For me this is the magic of Baldur's Gate, its ability to adapt and foresee the actions of each player. I also said it in my analysis, but it still surprises me: sometimes, to be truly immersive you don't need the best graphics or have mechanics that closely imitate reality. Baldur's Gate 3 is a top-down RPG with turn-based combat, but I believe it all the time. I feel my story as something real, my Paladin as part of the world.
