The developers of Baldur’s Gate 3 planned regions that ultimately never made it into the game, as the head feared that the RPG might be too short.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is many things, but certainly not a game that offers too little playtime. The title has various endings as well as numerous dialogues and cutscenes that you only see if you give certain responses or make specific decisions. One ending is so rare that only 34 people are said to have seen it at all.
The choice of whether to play, for example, a Dark Urge or a lawful Paladin greatly changes your experience. Those who want to experience everything and dare multiple playthroughs can let countless hours of play time pass – a single run with the main story and side quests already takes about 112 hours, according to the website HowLongToBeat.
Nonetheless, Swen Vincke, CEO of BG3 developer Larian Studios, initially feared that the Game of the Year 2023 might be too short.
What exactly does the BG3 head say? In a video interview on the BAFTA YouTube channel (short for: British Academy of Film and Television Arts), Vincke revealed that the Towers of Dawn used to actually be 2 towers.
Baldur’s Gate 3 ultimately released with only one Tower of Dawn, but for a long time, the ruins of the second tower were in the game. The developers ultimately decided to remove the second tower because the game became too large.
Vincke then states that he actually had the fear that the gigantic role-playing game might be too short, and that’s why they had planned many more regions that never made it into the game:
You would be surprised if you knew that we actually had many more regions planned. Originally, I was afraid that the game would be too short, but I have always been very bad at judging the length of our games.
Swen Vincke in an interview with BAFTA (via YouTube)
Again and again, we learn from Swen Vincke through little stories how much bigger Baldur’s Gate 3 could have been if Larian Studios had stuck to many ideas and regions that ultimately did not make it into the game.
In 2023, Vincke reported that the developers wanted to have the spell “Banish Magic” in the game for a long time. They eventually had to decide against it because the spell would have “doubled the size of the game”: One single spell would have made Baldur’s Gate 3 almost twice as large
