“Baldur’s Gate 3” director Swen Vincke just hosted an explosive “Baldur’s Gate 3” presentation at GDC 2023, lifting the curtain on the development process of the GDCA Game of the Year winner. One of the secrets he revealed was that at one point during early development, the team wanted multiple Dungeon Masters to narrate the game…including Matt Mercer.
The news comes amid anecdotes about the game’s early ambitions, which include a desire to make cutscenes a major part of the Baldur’s Gate 3 experience.
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“You’ll notice that there was a narrator in Divinity: Original Sin 2 – this Dungeon Master. We said, you know what, we should have a narrator like that in Baldur’s Gate 3 as well.” Sven said in front of a live GDC audience. He went on to show a very early film of Minsk, with the narrator making running comments about his actions, even adding “he barked” after Minsk’s line.
“More importantly, we actually wanted to have multiple Dungeon Masters narrated by multiple people. So we had Matt Mercer in mind at the time. But we said, you know, this might not work.”
Mercer, known for his work as a voice actor in video game projects and for his main role in the popular D&D series Critical Role, will continue to play a major role in Baldur’s Gate 3, fully voicing Minsc. release.
Vincke’s talk delves into the development challenges and talks about the sheer amount of work behind writing, dubbing, moving, and adding all of the text to the game. Given the amount of narration already in Baldur’s Gate 3, one wonders how difficult it would be to add additional voices. Even if they say the exact same thing!