Baldur's Gate 3 we lost: Sven Vincke talks about the cut content

Larian's CEO, Swen Vincke, shared his initial concerns that Baldur's Gate 3 might be too short. According to him, a significant amount of content and locations were ultimately cut from the game.

Nevertheless, the game is quite substantial; however, Vincke argues it could have been even larger. He mentions that a lot of enticing content was removed, using the second Moonrise Tower, the lair of the Absolute Cult in the second act, as an example.

“The Moonrise Tower used to be two towers. For a long time, there were actually ruins of the second tower. The reason we removed the extra tower was purely a production decision: the stakes in the game were just too high, so we had to cut it. You would be surprised to learn that we actually planned to create many more regions — initially, I feared the game would be too short, but as you know, I've always been terrible at estimating the length of our games,” Vincke explains.

Vincke's comments align with other production stories about the game that journalists have previously heard. For instance, at one point, Baldur's Gate 3 was set to include the Candlekeep library from the original game, as well as a location called the Red Military College, where players could recruit Will.

“People will be checking the data available in the game, but there's a reason we didn't publish it ourselves. We felt that it distracted attention. Adding more could make it worse,” explained Baldur's Gate 3's lead writer, Adam Smith.

The second Moonrise Tower may actually help explain a slight discrepancy in the game's timeline In the emperor's memories of his earthly life, he visited the Tower and was transformed into an illithid hundreds of years ago, but the Tower’s architect states that it is a relatively new structure. The second ruined tower suggests that multiple buildings have existed at the same location over the centuries.

Swen Vincke also discussed his favorite games, particularly praising Ultima 7. He states that this game inspired almost everything Larian has created. “I don’t play it anymore because I don’t want to tarnish the memory.” He also reminisced about Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity.

Source: PC Gamer