“Yeah, well, I’m clearly not very good at this game,” Larian boss Swen Vincke tells GLHF during a preview for Baldur’s Gate 3 patch 7, Absolute Frenzy. “I will quit my day job today.”
It’s not that Vincke isn’t good at the game — on the contrary, his innovative approach to solving problems makes my own rather egregious ‘hit and hope’ tactic seem boorish by comparison. The problem is twofold: Vincke is getting unlucky, and the build is not cooperating with him.
These are not bad things. On every occasion I have been fortunate enough to see what Baldur’s Gate 3 has in store early, things have gone wrong. This time is no different: The music isn’t working, and I’m told to “imagine the sounds” — I agree to pretend I can hear a distinctly Baldur’s Gate-sy score. That’s what matters here: from previous experience, I can envision how everything is supposed to work and have full faith in the fact it will.
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Vincke asks me about that experience. I played the original build twice, but finished the latest patch after coming home from the pub — my memory of that is a little foggy. All of this is interconnected — the lack of luck, the minor issues, the vague recollections — because it forms the basis of what Baldur’s Gate 3 is ultimately about: spinning unique, inimitable stories in a world that rewards absurdity. It’s no surprise that Vincke says getting people into Dungeons & Dragons is one of the team’s “secret goals.”
So what’s the deal with patch 7? On top of introducing the Barbarian class — and by extension the Wildheart and Berserker subclasses — Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting a total UI overhaul and receiving a bunch of new magical weapons. It’s also getting a new ‘improvised weapon’ mechanic, which, in Vincke’s words, allows you to “smack goblins with goblins, which is fun.”
The biggest element of the patch, however, is the Barbarian class. The core gimmick here is an ability called Rage, which allows you to dole out extra damage while only taking half as much. The setback is that this condition can only be maintained if you either deal or receive damage every turn, and is also limited by finite Rage Charges that can only be replenished by taking long rests. Strategically, this opens up novel opportunities like attacking your own characters if enemies aren’t in range, subverting slow and measured play for something much more risky and aggressive.
Of the two Barbarian subclasses, Wildheart is the more intriguing. While the Berserker’s Frenzy ability is cool — it allows you to attack twice in one turn, which, when combined with the new improvised weapon feature, lets you throw Goblin A into Goblin B and then Goblin B back into Goblin A — the versatility afforded to you by Wildheart is… well, pretty wild.
Barbarian Wildhearts have piercings that correspond to the bestial heart they decide to use. While Animal Speak is inherent to all five hearts, each one comes with its own unique ability. Eagle Heart, for example, opens up new opportunities for traversing the battlefield and allows you to knock enemies prone by using the Diving Strike ability from above. This is what Vincke intends to use for our preview.
A Barbarian with the Bear Heart designation, meanwhile, can use Unrelenting Ferocity to make themselves sturdier and help heal their fellow party members. Elk Heart lets you move faster and gives you access to Primal Stampede, a rush attack. Tiger Heart grants you access to Tiger’s Bloodlust, which lets you attack and inflict bleed damage on three enemies at once. Wolf Heart — our favorite of the bunch — comes with Inciting Howl, an ability that lets your allies move an extra three meters while simultaneously gaining advantage on attack rolls, which dramatically expands the breadth of combo options at your disposal. The possibilities!
After selecting Eagle Heart for his Barbarian, Vincke’s party approaches a group of three ogres in a dilapidated building — existing Baldur’s Gate 3 players will likely be familiar with the philosophizing chief of this ragtag trio. The planning that goes into the imminent fight is impressive; Vincke transforms his Druid into a “ninja bear” perched on top of a column, while his Barbarian intimidates a bunch of nearby goblins to keep them from intervening. For context, these ogres have kicked my ass over five times, so it’s extremely interesting to watch someone else prepare for them with such tact.
Vincke instigates the fight and everything goes wrong. The column holding the ninja bear crumbles and leaves Vincke’s Druid prone and vulnerable. Apparently, this is something he only saw for the first time during his previous session an hour beforehand — because of how frequently and procedurally the systems interact with one another, it’s impossible to predict every outcome.
“I really enjoyed the fact that it’s actually in the game,” Vincke says. “I think the core element of what we’re trying to do is that the player’s imagination should be their only constraint, not the game. When it comes to playing an RPG, that basically means that if you can think of it, you should be able to do it.
“The other ground rule is if we put in a feature, it needs to be systemic. That means it needs to be across the entire game. There’s no gimmick like you enter a certain level, and in this level this is a very special thing, but you can only do it here. No. You should be able to do it everywhere.”
It’s refreshing to see how widespread these principles are, for better and for worse. Unfortunately for Vincke, the chair he throws at the ogre only does three damage and he loses his ninja bear before getting a critical miss with his Diving Strike — it turns out things can go so wrong in Baldur’s Gate 3 that even Larian’s boss can find himself in trouble. “I’m gonna have to be really clever here,” he says. “This is not going very well.” After a series of smart plays, Vincke ultimately prevails and elaborates on what happened near the start of the fight.
“I haven’t seen it,” he explains, referring to his poor ninja bear falling through the column. “I mean, it’s a very big game. The combat designers iterate and modify things. I know there’s stuff that can break, and I know there were breakables in there. But I have never actually seen that if you stand on top of it, it collapses and then you fall down. It was new for me.
“It’s actually the funniest part. There’s always emergent behavior that you don’t expect. When I do these presentations, I start and I say, ‘Okay, well, we’re gonna do this little adventure here’. My ambition was actually to go and get a book that’s hidden beneath the dungeon we’re heading to — I’m never gonna manage now.”
Luckily, Vincke has more tricks up his sleeve. The next place we’re headed is a sort of cavern, complete with skeleton caskets and a dungeon holding a precious gem we need to activate the book we’re after. As we move further into the cave, Vincke shows me the improvements made to night vision — while his Githyanki can’t see anything without a torch, his Dwarven Barbarian has Darkvision and can see a cone of light in front of her. As well as clarifying the way forward, this opens up unique opportunities for stealthy play, allowing her to obscure herself while also being able to see her opponents.
But again, Vincke is running out of time. Instead of braving the dungeon, he needs to improvise. To start, he throws a few crates around — Gale, a wizard, can barely throw his half a meter, but the Githyanki Barbarian might as well be aiming for Mars with his effort. At this stage, an idea comes to Vincke.
His Druid is able to transform into a cat, which is sufficiently light for the Barbarian to chuck over a wall after drinking a Potion of Hill Giant Strength. The problem is that the cat only has 2 HP and will die on impact with the ground. If he uses the Feather Fall spell, however, the cat will land on its feet on the other side of the wall — which, conveniently, is the final room of the dungeon. He catburgles the gem and makes his may onward, bounty in tow.
At this point, we haven’t got an enormous amount of time left, although Vincke is careful to ensure I get a good look at the new UI. In particular, the inventory management system has been separated into multiple distinct categories, helping to prevent clutter and make it easier to find what you’re looking for. You can also apply filters to search for weapons you’re proficient in, armor that is not currently being worn by anyone, and so on.
This might seem minor, ordinary, or overly technical, but this, more so than anything else, is what cements Baldur’s Gate 3’s decision to launch in Early Access as the correct one. Ever since this game came out, its improvements have been so granular that they are almost invisible — this patch alone slightly enhances the visual fidelity of over 700 individual cutscenes.
But with every single update, the moment-to-moment play of this game is revolutionized. The UI overhaul changes the entire economics of item management — who has health potions? Who doesn’t? Ability decks for spells and bonus actions ramp up the pace of combat. Vincke wants to show me even more of the combos the UI permits but is out of time — doesn’t that say it all? Doesn’t that show how intricately this game is being developed?
“The bit that puts all of this together — these systems should interlock so you can start thinking of crazy combinatorial things you can do,” Vincke says. “We did that already with our previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and for Baldur’s Gate 3 what we added on top is cinematic visual fidelity. We want it to be accessible to players that don’t necessarily try to play this type of game, because we noticed with our previous game that there were actually a lot of players that had never played a turn-based RPG.
“Once somebody showed them how to do it, they were really hooked on it. And we said well, there’s probably a much wider market that wants to play our type of game than people realize, if we make it triple-A visual fidelity and we make it accessible to them. When we launched in Early Access, the UI was fairly primitive, and we knew this. It wasn’t necessarily the most accessible part. But we’ve never made it a secret that we want to make it accessible without giving up any of the depth that’s present in the game.”
This goes to show how valuable ostensibly small changes are. People don’t often give it much thought, but well-designed, functional UI is often the difference between a game being exclusive to PC or coming to other platforms. As Vincke says, it should be approachable to anyone as soon as they recognize, “Hey, it’s my turn — I can do a bunch of ****.” You learn the rest of the rules as you progress through the game.
“Once you have that throw button you start trying it out with everything, and then you start discovering things,” Vincke says. “You say, ‘Hey, hold on a minute, if I throw a poison bottle, poison starts leaking from it — that’s interesting’. If I throw a poison bottle at somebody’s face, they’re poisoned. That’s interesting. A flask with oil in it — what happens when I put fire on it? Holy **** they’re on fire! What happens if I make them walk in the oil? We get a chain reaction. It’s the kind of thing we put in Divinity: Original Sin 2, but to a more extensive degree.”
Speaking of Divinity: Original Sin 2 — and going back to our previous comment on the difference between PC and other platforms — we thought it was worth asking Vincke about whether Baldur’s Gate 3 is destined to live on Steam or if it will join its predecessor on other marketplaces, too.
“For people that have a low-end PC — under minimum specs, you can always play on Stadia,” Vincke says. “It actually runs really well there. At the end of the day, you can now play Divinity: Original Sin 2 on iPad and Switch. We want to make sure everybody can play it once we figure everything out. But each platform has their own things, so it takes us time to figure those things out. Right now our focus is really on mouse and keyboard.
“I really think with the new UI, we have taken a major major leap forward. We still need to figure out the onboarding — how do I get drawn into it? When does the game explain to me ‘Hey, by the way, it looks like you don’t know this?’ And preferably, how does the game not have to tell me this so I just figure it out myself? That’s still a very active field of research and development right now, but we’re getting closer and closer. And I think by the time we’re going to release, we will have figured out many of these things. It’s the benefit of being this long in Early Access — we see a lot of people play and we learn from it.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 patch 7 is available to download on Steam now.
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
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