A "simple test" of Baldur's Gate 3's modding tools has "snowballed" into a full-blown remake of the first Baldur's Gate, and you can play the demo now

A team of modders is remaking the original Baldur's Gate using the Baldur's Gate 3 engine following the success of a "simple test" of the 2023 RPG's modding tools.

Project lead 786r786 tells Rock Paper Shotgun the idea for a Baldur's Gate remake sprouted when an unlocked version of Baldur's Gate 3's official modding tools showed up on NexusMods in September 2024. 786r786 never intended on remaking the whole game, but they wanted to test the limits of the unlocked toolkit and went forward with creating the Baldur's Gate starting location, Candlekeep, in Baldur's Gate 3.

According to 786r786, interest in that mod, which launched last August, has now "snowballed" to the extent that they've assembled a full team of modders under the banner Deathbringer's Reign to recreate the full game.

"I received a lot of requests from fans of the original games to turn it into a full campaign, along with offers from some incredibly talented modders who volunteered to help," says 786r786. "Making an isolated custom campaign is actually a bit easier than making an extension to the base game; you don't have to account for the incredibly vast amount of scenarios present in vanilla BG3, and you have full control over the player's environment."

The team at Deathbringer's Reign has now repurposed that same Candlekeep mod into a demo for the full remake project, and you can download it via Nexus Mods right here. In an email to GamesRadar+, the mod team says the next step in the plan is a second demo expanding the remake's world to include High Hedge, Beregost, the Friendly Arm Inn, and Shipwreck's Coast, including all of the companions from those regions in the original game.

The team is on the hunt for volunteers with experience using unlocked Baldur's Gate 3 modding tools to help reach that milestone. Specifically, they're looking for level designers, writers, modelers, animators, concept artists, and programmers to help with the mod.

"Without a doubt, the most significant challenge will be translating the city of Baldur's Gate itself into a fully 3D environment," 786r786 tells RPS. "The sheer scale is daunting; the original game has over 100 interiors within the city, whereas BG3 features about 40 buildings in the Lower City. We have to figure out how to capture that content density while adjusting the layout to suit BG3's modern gameplay and presentation."

Sounds like no easy task, but the idea is to give players a new version of Baldur's Gate that benefits from Baldur's Gate 3's mechanics like "enemies throwing objects, destroying the environment, and creating surfaces, to make those encounters feel entirely new and challenging."

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