It’s no secret that Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot of dialogue. It launched with around 174 hours of cutscenes (all of which were voiced), and many more were added later. The script set a world record at approximately two million words and was only beaten this year by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which reportedly had 2.2 million.
Unlike Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, though, Baldur’s Gate 3 had a mind-boggling amount of branching dialogue, each littered with different possible outcomes, meaning documenting it all must have been a logistical nightmare for developer Larian.
Maggie Robertson Would Still Love To Return As Lady Dimitrescu, But She Has “Absolutely No Idea” Of Capcom’s Plans
“Would I like to return to her? Of course, the answer to that is always going to be yes,”
Now, in a new interview with TheGamer, Orin the Red actor Maggie Robertson has revealed the levels Larian went through to map it all out, saying it made her “immediately go cross-eyed.”
Baldur’s Gate 3’s Branching Dialogue Gave Maggie Robertson A Headache Because It Was So Complex
Discussing video games as a storytelling medium, Robertson told TheGamer, “Games have a lot more ability to delve into character and deepen character, especially in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, where that branching dialogue was infinite,” adding that she “got a headache looking at their whole Venn diagram of branches that they had behind the scenes to keep track of everything. That made me immediately go cross-eyed.”
She went on to detail that, “oftentimes we were saying the same lines but slightly differently, or maybe a word or two would change,” which, as an actor, offered “an infinite number of possibilities for how to act,” but was a nightmare to document.
When you zoomed out, it looked like a whole brain, all the nerve endings, synapses firing. It was crazy.
Every line of dialogue was carefully mapped out, with each outcome from the player’s choices recorded. “It was all digitalized, but they had a giant dialogue tree. It was like a bubble of this, then a branch, branch, branch, branch, branch, bubble, then a branch, branch, branch, branch, branch,” she said. “You could zoom out so you have the whole picture, or you zoom in to look at the specific thing you’re working on. But, yeah, when you zoomed out, it looked like a whole brain, all the nerve endings, synapses firing. It was crazy.”
The already mammoth script was undoubtedly made even longer when, as revealed to TheGamer last month, the cast was called back to record every relevant line with they/them pronouns.
Our full interview with Robertson is now live, in which the actress discusses her desire to return as Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu, her newfound appreciation for video games as a storytelling device, and the trajectory of her career. You can check it out here.
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
- Engine
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Divinity 4.0
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full cross-platform play.
