Larian details Combat & Stealth of Baldur’s Gate 3

Larian Studios has shared juicy new details about the highly-anticipated RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. This time, the developer is focusing on the combat and stealth mechanics of the game in preparation for the Early Access launch on Steam next month.

Belgian game developer Larian has cemented itself as the kings of RPG gaming goodness with the outstanding Divinity Original Sin duology. And as such hardcore genre fans were thrilled when they learned that the team was tackling the impossible. Reviving one of the most beloved RPG franchises ever. Baldur’s Gate.

It has been a long two decades since the last main entry in the isometric fantasy-RPG series but the love by the gaming community has kept the game a must-play to this date. Remasters, add-on campaigns, and the modding community have done their best to not let the franchise die.

But it’s finally time for a proper sequel. Baldur’s Gate 3 is projecting to come out on Steam Early Access sometime this August and Larian Studios has shown a lot of in-depth gameplay footage about their game already. Make sure to check out the recent massive 90-minute gameplay demo if you have the time to spare.

If you watched the gameplay stream, one thing many of you have noticed is how fluid combat in BG3 now feels. Despite being turn-based, which allows you to have an authentic D&D experience and really deliberate over your moves as a team, Baldur’s Gate 3’s combat is much faster than DOS2. But how? Magic? A rift in the space-time continuum? Currently, neither of those things. In fact a lot of it is down to how animations are both created and processed. We invested heavily into what drives our animation pipeline, and specifically made tweaks to improve the feel and motion in combat. The increased brevity and flow is down to many, many changes shaving off microseconds (and sometimes entire seconds). For example, another character’s turn will begin – behind the scenes – as the previous character is ending their animation. Even things as simple as combining move animations with the hit of a melee strike shaves seconds off combat.

Since it’s likely not everyone can watch that, the developers have shared a more digestible blog post about core gameplay mechanics of Baldur’s Gate 3. As a turn-based tactical-RPG, players have an immense arsenal of attacks and skills to chose among, and it truly is up to them how to tackle each combat scenario. The choice of party members, positioning, timing, all play a vital role in achieving success.

The developer already has a rock-solid foundation on that front thanks to their work on the Divinity Original Sin games but they managed to make combat faster and more fluid thanks to improvements to the animation system. But it’s not always about clashing head-on. Stealth is going to be a major mechanic. Not only can you position your characters perfectly before striking but you can circumvent some enemies entirely.