Larian Lead Writer Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Owes Its Success To BioWare

Baldur’s Gate 3 was released to an overwhelmingly successful launch two weeks ago. To no one’s surprise, it was evident to anyone familiar with Larian Studios’ work on Divinity, that the game was hugely inspired by it. But the game also showed glimpses of BioWare’s version of Baldur’s Gate and now the title’s lead writer, Adam Smith, admitted that they “owe a huge debt” to BioWare. 

He was talking on the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast. Just like most of the kids of the nineties into strategy and Dungeons and Dragons style games, Adam was also a big fan of BioWare D&D series including Baldur’s Gate. So hearing other people familiar with the first Baldur’s Gate games praise their work gives him huge satisfaction and pleasure. He further says,

It means a lot whenever I see anybody who was even vaguely associated with the original games being pleased because we owe them a huge debt and we hope we did them proud. If in 20 years’ time somebody picks up our characters and does something with them, it will be amazing. It does feel like a wonderful thing to have them live that long.”

Adam further admitted it was no easy task to build on the original BioWare Baldur’s Gate games because of their popularity among D&D game enthusiasts. They felt a strange kind of nervousness and anxiety because of the sheer immenseness of the shoes they had to fill. Talking about it he said,

It’s easy to forget because the game’s out there now, but when we first started working on [Baldur’s Gate 3], it was ‘shoulders of giants’ stuff. [Baldur’s Gate] was such a big shadow. We were like, ‘Do we ever look okay in this shadow?’ There was anxiety about it.”

Furthermore, Adam acknowledged that Baldur’s Gate 3 has many elements of Larian’s other works, as many have pointed out. The D&D title gets inspiration from Divinity: Original Sin 2 and 3 to the point that some called it Divinity: Original Sin 3, not Baldur’s Gate 3, especially during the game’s early access.

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But Adam insists that Baldur’s Gate 3 stays true to the original works of the 90s because of the fondness and nostalgia they have for those games. Talking about their approach to the game he said,

We were like, ‘No, we love Baldur’s Gate. We want to make Baldur’s Gate 3.’ And there was a reason for that because so many of us did [grow] up with it.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 was released more than two weeks ago on August 3. The game has received huge critical acclamation and praise. It even surpassed Tears of the Kingdom on Metacritic becoming the 15th highest-rated game of all time. As of August 4, it sold 2.5m copies on Steam surpassing the studio’s early assessments.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for PC. Its macOS and PlayStation 5 release is scheduled for September with the Xbox Series X release yet to be decided.