Baldur’s Gate 3 director reveals major villain was originally a companion

The director of Larian Studios, the dev team behind Baldur’s Gate 3, revealed that a major villain was initially planned to be a companion.

Part of what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 such a crowd-pleaser is the way in which gamers can befriend, romance, and learn about the various companions they encounter throughout the game.

These characters aid them on quests, helping them complete certain story beats and completely altering the ending of the game in some cases. Given how important this aspect to the game is, it will likely come as no surprise to fans when the Larian Studios head, Swen Vincke, revealed that the team had created even more companion characters. 

Some of them were cut from the game altogether while others were repurposed and brought into the game in other ways. During an interview with IGN, Vincke revealed that the main villain of Act 2, Ketheric Thorm, was originally intended to be a companion for players to recruit.

Larian Studios

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“If you play the game and there’s a moment where you can convince him and you can see that a moment where he breaks, that moment led to recruitment normally,” Vincke began. 

“We cut that out when we were rescoped. It was part of the fixing of Act 2 when we were stuck on it. That was what happened in the rescoping. He was supposed to be in your camp while you were dealing with Gortash and with Orin. 

So he became a source of information on them, and he could trust, you could get him to his arc. You could then be convinced by him to go to his side. So it was a great story, but yeah.”

Vincke also discussed how the map was originally going to be much smaller in scope and that getting the size of area right was a major focus for the BG3 dev team at Larian Studios.