Baldur’s Gate 3 impresses with its variety of gameplay options and equipment choices. In an interview with PC Gamer, Alena Dubrovina, Art Director at Larian Studios, discussed the challenges of armor design, barbarian armors, and her key learnings.
Who is Alena Dubrovina? Alena Dubrovina is recently the Art Director at Larian Studios. During the development of Baldur’s Gate 3, she worked as Lead Character Artist on the game. Previously, she contributed designs for Divinity: Original Sin 2, among others.
In her portfolio on Artstation.com, she explains which characters she worked on and what she designed: Among other things, she contributed the head models and corresponding textures for Karlach, Raphael, and Ketheric Thorm. The starter outfit of Astarion also comes from her.
On X.com (formerly Twitter), she also mentioned that she is responsible for some of the underwear designs in Baldur’s Gate 3:
Style over practicality
What did the designer learn? Especially at the beginning of development, Alena Dubrovina repeatedly pointed out that certain designs simply weren’t practical or realistic:
I realized that [practicality and realism] were not the goal. The main thing is that [the armor] looks cool, fits into the game environment, and tells the story it needs to tell.
Dubrovina is also pleased that they have not yet received any complaints from the community about the armor design.
One of the biggest challenges was perspective
What were the challenges in development? In conversation with PC Gamer, Alena Dubrovina shares her experiences as a designer for Baldur’s Gate 3. Specifically, armor designs were a group task that she tackled together with other artists and writers.
One of the biggest challenges was that the armors and outfits in Baldur’s Gate 3, unlike in Divinity: Original Sin 2, had to look good not only in top-down perspective but especially in cutscenes.
Specifically, the designs and corresponding patterns were difficult to implement. There were several designs that looked unique and very good up close, but from a distance appeared very similar.
Many armor designs also had to be discarded if they were too wild or extravagant when the technical animators vetoed: some designs were simply not practical for animated characters in a game world.
Nonetheless, the team had the chance to be very creative: Sometimes we came up with something we hadn’t done before. Then we did a small test, and if everyone was satisfied, we realized it.
Barbarians don’t get shoulder pads
Which class posed particular problems? Specifically, the team probably brainstormed longer about the armor of the barbarian class, as here guidelines from Dungeons & Dragons had to be followed:
“Technically, their outfit is not considered protection. That was a big challenge for people who had never designed such armor before! The briefing says ‘armor’ because it occupies the armor slot as equipment. So you constantly want to add shoulder pads. Or you want to add some sort of protective belt or breastplate. And whenever we received the sketches, we said: ‘No, no, that shouldn’t be armor, that’s too protective!’ We had to stick to the design behind it.”
Why don’t barbarians wear traditional armor?
Barbarians in Baldur’s Gate 3 as well as Dungeons & Dragons fundamentally do not wear armor that could increase their armor class. They start at level 1 with the ability Unarmored Defense
. As long as a barbarian is not wearing armor, their armor class is 10 plus their Dexterity and Constitution modifier.
You can read more about the specifics of barbarians here: Best Barbarian Build – How to play Karlach correctly
Moreover, the Art Director talks about the fact that trends from the real world are also important for video game armor designs. It is important not to isolate oneself in the process and be the one person working quietly in a corner – always in the same style: I believe Baldur’s Gate 3 is also so successful because we made it as diverse as possible.
Indeed, Baldur’s Gate 3 shines through variety: No run is ever the same, the different classes allow you the most diverse approaches to the problems posed in the game, and you can choose from 10 different developed romances. However, some players are asking for even more.
