Baldur's Gate 3 devs didn't want to include a core D&D rule in their RPG, but players proved them wrong: "We were afraid it was going to slow down the gameplay too much"

Baldur's Gate 3 almost left out a core piece of the D&D ruleset that was only saved thanks to the RPG's early access community.

In D&D, Reactions are a tool that allows players to respond to certain triggers, even when it's not their turn. Perhaps the most famous is Counterspell (which is prompted when a creature casts a spell, and can automatically stop that spell from casting), but there are dozens of other Reactions for all sorts of different situations. If it had been up to Larian, however, they might not have been in the game at all.

"We didn't want to have Reactions in Baldur's Gate 3," Vincke told Polygon. But mid-way through early access, the community "really, really wanted Reactions." Larian was worried that the tool would "slow down the gameplay too much," but it bowed to community pressure only to find "'well it's actually better. They have a point!' There was a lot of cursing, and we started plugging them into the entire game and it was a really good moment because it made the game better."

That kind of feedback is exactly why Vincke says he hopes Divinity will release in early access. In our big Divinity interview, he explained that early access had become "the blueprint" that had helped shape the two Divinity: Original Sin games as well as Baldur's Gate 3. The games improved massively through early access. Players being invested in it increases the pressure and their participation in it, so you get something really cool out of that process – even if it's painful for the developer. It causes extra development effort, but it leads to a better game, which is ultimately the goal of the entire exercise."

Speaking about Divinity in the wake of its announcement at The Game Awards, Vincke said that Larian was keen to move away from the rigid requirements of adapting a tabletop ruleset to a video game. Reactions weren't the only thing the studio was expecting to cut from those rules to keep the game running smoothly - Dispel Magic was removed from Baldur's Gate 3 completely because "it literally would have doubled the size of the game." According to Vincke, "the problem with BG3 was that we had to port an existing tabletop ruleset into a video game, which came with limitations."

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