Not only is there no Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC in development, but Larian Studios may not ever make it.
Nowadays, major video games tend to already have DLC in the works long before the game ever launches. Some, like Starfield, outright incentivise pre-orders by including immediate access to DLC expansions as a bonus.
If not, then high sales figures would at least start conversations of capitalising on that success with new additions. So, with Baldur’s Gate 3 proving more popular than developer Larian Studios expected, you’d think a DLC expansion would be a given.
However, creative director Swen Vincke claims no such expansion is in development and it may be ‘too difficult’ to ever make.
Given how many different endings there are for Baldur’s Gate 3, crafting a new story that can follow on from every single one of them would naturally take a very long time to develop – as a reminder, Baldur’s Gate 3’s development took six years.
On top of that, Vincke points to Baldur’s Gate 3’s level cap and the ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons, which the game is based on.
While the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons let you go up to level 20, Baldur’s Gate 3 caps you at level 12 since, beyond that, the skills and spells you can unlock tend to be rather overpowered. Examples include the ability to see the future and a spell that literally lets you wish for whatever you want.
‘[Level 12-20] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,’ Vincke explained to PC Gamer.
‘Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort. A lot of D&D adventures are sub-level 12 for precisely that reason. So it sounds like neat, easy expansion material until you start thinking about it and it’s not as easy as one would imagine.’
You could argue that any such expansion can simply not raise the level cap and provide new side story material so as not to worry about whichever ending you receive.
However, Vincke has already expressed a desire to work on something smaller after Baldur’s Gate 3 and, while he doesn’t rule DLC out completely, he’s cautious about committing to anything too early.
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‘I’ve learned in the past you need to be careful announcing things before they’re ready, because sometimes you have to cancel them because they don’t work out,’ Vincke adds.
‘We could work on an expansion and it could be boring, and we should stop working on it. Because if we would continue on something that’s boring, we would then have to sell it to you, and then we’d have to say ‘here’s a boring thing, and we want you to buy it.’ That would not be cool.’
Although Vincke doesn’t mention it, it’s also worth remembering that Larian Studios is busy trying to get Baldur’s Gate 3 working on Xbox Series S as well, which is why the Xbox version lacks any sort of launch window.
They also didn’t release any major DLC expansions for either of the Divinity: Original Sin games, so it’s evidentially not something they’re drawn to.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for PC. The PlayStation 5 version launches on September 6.
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