Developers from Larian Studios have been making the interview rounds recently to discuss the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, and they’ve been using the opportunity to shut down persistent rumors regarding Karlach and cut content.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one hell of a game. Not only did it captivate millions of gamers worldwide, but it is also one of the best-selling games of all time, selling well over 22 million copies. Winning Game of the Year also didn’t hurt and has pretty much solidified Larian Studios as one of the greatest video game companies in existence.
At the same time, fans have expressed anger over accusations of cut content—a practice historically forced by corporate greed. Fans were especially pissed that the alleged cut content featured fan-favorite Karlach, a loveable character whom the devs affectionately dubbed “the labrador of the party.”
But in an interview with IGN’s Kat Bailey, director Swen Vincke and lead writer Adam Smith shut down rumors that they withheld chunks of her story. According to them, that content never existed to begin with. From IGN:
Swen Vincke, Director: It was never cut.
Adam Smith, Lead Writer: No.
SV: It was never there.
It was just never there.
SV: Yeah. No, she was a character that came late in development.
AS: Early access, she’s the only one who wasn’t recruitable of the Origin gang.
SV: But well-spotted because we did add several extra moments for her during the game.
AS: Yeah. Well, the big thing for Karlach was when she first showed up in early access, she didn’t have the infernal engine. It didn’t exist yet because we haven’t made it up yet. So her quest was, “I’m an escapee from hell and devils are trying to send me back.” That’s what we had. And we knew that we wanted to be the labrador of the party. As everyone says, “She’s happy go lucky.” She has the very awful backstory, but she’s like, “I’m having the best day of my life.” Everyone else is having the worst day of their life.
This seems like conclusive evidence that Karlach is a complete character, as far as content goes. It’s honestly shocking, given that Karlach is such a fully fleshed-out character, that she came so late in development. Character writing takes a long time to flesh out.
Misplaced concerns over cut content
We’ve talked about cut content rumors before, along with how unsubstantiated a lot of these claims are. News got around that BG3 had datamined cut content within the game, and players got upset about that. But this anger is misplaced and a huge misunderstanding of how game development works.
Every single game created and shipped to the market has cut content. Sometimes these are failed ideas or just things developers don’t have time to make. In BG3‘s case, Larian devs felt that certain ideas didn’t fit their overall vision, so they left them on the cutting room floor. That doesn’t automatically translate to a worse player experience.
These rumors surrounding Karlach have gotten so bad that even the character’s voice actress, Samantha Beart, had to step in to shut them down. She discussed this, along with other problems like mental health issues, in an interview with Roll Together.
Let’s just accept the fact that Karlach is pretty good as she exists. We even got a better ending for her in a patch a while ago. Hopefully, the ‘cut content’ rumors die down once and for all now.
(featured image: Larian Studios)
