Swen Vincke says Baldur's Gate 3 devs created Karlach's new epilogue after post-launch feedback, with actress recording new lines 'within the week'
In a recent interview on the Dungeons & Dragons official channel, founder and CEO of Larian Studios Swen Vincke dove into the nuts and bolts of how the team's been turning around patch fixes so quickly, especially as a response to community critique.
For context, the first major patch for Baldur's Gate 3 dropped August 25, with promises that the second patch would be «right around the corner». I don't think I was alone in thinking that probably meant 'early next month if they're quick'. August 31, the second patch dropped—that's less than a week, which is blisteringly fast.
«We set up our studio so that it can work 24 hours [a day], so we have studios in Malaysia, we have them in Europe, we have our Canadian studio—so we can basically pass on work … that means if somebody in Europe made a feature, by the next day they'll know if it worked or not because it went through QA, or vice-versa.»
Vincke also highlighted the automated testing programs Larian's been developing alongside its games: «We have systems that tell you before you even made the change: 'You broke it! Go and fix it again', so that helps also … that allows us to be very reactive to what we're seeing in the community.»
There have also been some criticisms—ones I've shared—on Karlach's epilogue. I won't go deep into spoilers here, but it did genuinely feel underwritten, wrapping up the threads of my favourite characters without so much as a goodbye. I was pretty pleased with the changes to her ending, especially since I wasn't expecting a whole new scene to be written, voice acted, animated, and released within a month.
«Within the week [Samantha Béart], the actress, was called back … first the scene was written, but that went fast, then that was recorded
Read more on pcgamer.com
