Baldur’s Gate 3 boss was worried game would end up being ‘too short’

Luckily, we all know how it panned out.

The Half-Elf Druid Jaheira looks over her shoulder within a camp in the darkness of BG3.
Image via Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3 was arguably the greatest game of 2023, allowing thousands of players to dive into a unique fantasy world for hundreds of hours. But originally, Larian Studios’ CEO Swen Vincke was afraid it wasn’t long enough.

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In an Aug. 16 interview with BAFTA, Vincke took a dive into the development of Baldur’s Gate 3. Hearing about the developers’ fears about certain aspects before releasing a game is nothing new. However, in Vincke’s case, he thought the game would end up being “too short.”

“You would be surprised to know that we actually had many more regions that we planned to make. I was afraid the game was going to be too short originally,” Vincke said. Although, he admitted it ended up being “a very big game,” and that he has a talent for misjudging the studio’s game lengths.

In that same interview, Vincke revealed Larian cut a lot of content from the game, essentially. “The game was getting too big, and so we had to cut [another level in the second act] out,” he said.

Baldur’s Gate 3 consists of three acts, with the second one being the longest. While on paper it may not seem like much, those who played the title know how much stuff there is to do. Each playthrough can take more than a hundred hours if players truly dive into the all the side content that Larian Studios’ standout game has to offer.

That’s also without trying to complete the game differently. In true Dungeons & Dragons fashion, each quest and character has a couple different endings. So if someone wants to fully experience the depth of Baldur’s Gate 3, even 200 hours probably isn’t enough.

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Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.