At a gaming conference held earlier this year in Sofia, Bulgaria, Larian gameplay scripter Mihail Kostov gave a presentation outlining the philosophy and strategies the studio employs to keep games like “Baldur's Gate 3” playable even when players actively destroy them. Kostov gave a presentation outlining the philosophy and strategy employed by the studio to keep games such as “Baldur's Gate 3” playable even when players actively destroy them. In Kostov's talk, which was recently published on YouTube (via GamesRadar), he explains how Larian addresses “edge cases,” or cases where “player behavior may push the system to its limits,” with solutions that reward, rather than stifle, creativity. Explained.

We have previously noted that “Baldur's Gate 3” has contingency plans that run deep to the point of absurdity to deal with player confusion. Every developer designs with edge cases in mind, but Larian, says Kostov, “is better off drawing a line in the sand.”

The reason Larian goes to such lengths to accommodate edge cases, Kostov says, is because the studio wants to “stimulate and reward” players' creativity. According to Larian's philosophy, players will experiment more if they feel they can not only complete the game after vaporizing the quest NPCs, but also see how the game and story react to their disruption. In short, “Larian believes that player creativity is a wonderful thing.”

To demonstrate the studio's design theory, Kostov presented Larian's “Edge Case Implementation Checklist.” This is what game designers must consider when scripting quests and events to keep “Baldur's Gate 3” a satisfying place for players to set the world on fire:

Importantly, BG3 designers must ensure that the game is completeable and important to note that BG3 designers had to juggle all of these criteria while ensuring that the game was complete, complete, complete, and that the storyline was coherent. Simple, right?"

Kostov calls the implementation of edge cases ‘one of the more complex parts of the game script,’ but also ”one of the most fun parts.

Kostov then describes the many edge case problems that emerged and how the development team addressed them. For example, making security checkpoints work even though a player might have lured a wayward bear to kill a guard, setting up layers of the aforementioned reserve NPCs and having them take the place of plot characters after a spate of murders, and one incident involving a silver sword.

When explaining that players can obtain the legendary sword early by using Heat Metal on the NPC who is supposed to hand over the weapon at the end of the Act 3 quest line for Lae'zel in Act 1, Kostov notes that Larian simply makes that NPC could have been an invalid target for the spell, he admits. But since that is exactly the kind of player behavior the studio loves, they instead supported it and wrote and recorded additional Lae'zel dialogue if the player got the weapon early. 'Let the player keep the cool weapons. 'They've found a way to exploit the game. It's great.'