Baldur’s Gate 3’s hardest difficulty is a brutal DM who’s going to make you cry, say Larian
Baldur’s Gate 3 devs Larian have gone into more detail about the upcoming D&D video game’s difficulty levels - and, honestly, it all sounds a bit intense. There’s a beginner-friendly mode, sure, and a default balance of challenge and fun. Then, there’s the game’s Tactician difficulty: a brutal bastard of a D&D DM who’s out to leave you in tears - and then say it’s your fault.
Larian’s recent Panel from Hell stream showed off a healthy slice of their official Dungeons & Dungeons follow-up to Divinity: Original Sin 2, showcasing various enemy encounters and the game’s tabletop RPG-like approach to solving its puzzley combat.
Senior combat designer Matt Holland explained that Baldur’s Gate 3’s three difficulty levels don’t just ramp up the base layers of the game, such as granting enemies more HP and upping their accuracy rolls. They also play around with enemy placement, environmental factors and AI to add “little bits of spice” to each and every of the game’s 300 encounters.
Where Explorer mode offers a fairly easy combat experience, allowing players to enjoy the story, and default Balanced is, well, balanced to present “challenge but not too much challenge” - that’s what you’ll be familiar with if you’ve already played in Early Access, by the way - the hardest difficulty of Tactician is explicitly aimed to be seriously nasty.
In Tactician mode, the AI is “cranked up” to a level that Holland and creative director Swen Vincke described as “brutal AI”.
"We want to make it feel like you're going against a DM that's, y’know, trying to push you to your limits," Holland said.
Combat encounters might be remixed for a more intense challenge, with more environmental dangers, enemies and different loadouts. Holland
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