At the heart of an unforgettable Dungeons & Dragons campaign is a great dungeon master. They are responsible for guiding the player on an adventure and ensuring that the world reacts to their actions in a way that feels natural and unplanned.
For developer Larian Studios, to capture that D&D essence in Baldur’s Gate 3, it had to evoke the same sense of freedom and immersion. It’s cooperative storytelling between the player and the story. Every choice, action, reaction, and consequence must feel truly important, no matter how big or small.
But somewhere in the making of Baldur’s Gate 3, the game’s dungeon master, Swen Vincke, made a small decision that sent its development into a complicated spiral of problems that was already a challenge. Big problem to solve. And it’s all about the player getting a very specific item: the Mysterious Artefact and it belongs to a character named Shadowheart. In an effort to make the player receive this item as elegantly and naturally as possible, as if it were their own decision, has resulted in the creation of hundreds of possibilities that hinder the development of the game. .
This is the story of how the Mystery Object broke Baldur’s Gate 3.
