Secret to Baldur’s Gate 3’s excellent performances revealed
Baldur's Gate 3 has gone all out on everything from character customisation to the game's cast, the latest insight into the games production shows just how much effort the developer's put into making everything as realistic as possible.
27th Aug 2023 19:19
Images via Larian Studios
Secret to Baldur’s Gate 3’s excellent performances revealed
Baldur's Gate 3 has gone all out on everything from character customisation to the game's cast, the latest insight into the games production shows just how much effort the developer's put into making everything as realistic as possible.
27th Aug 2023 19:19
Images via Larian Studios
The secret to why exactly it is that Baldur's Gate 3's characters are so unique and realistic may have been revealed.
Baldur's Gate 3 has gone all out on everything from character customisation to the game's cast, the latest insight into the production of the game shows just how much effort the developers put into making everything as realistic as possible.
Baldur's Gate 3's voice actors all played a big part
The RPG's performance director took to Twitter this week to share a bit of behind-the-scenes information about how the characters were recorded, and it turns out the voice actors did more than we previously thought.
Aliona Baranova said: "For almost ALL the dialogue we recorded we ALSO captured the actors' mocap data.
"That means all 248 actors, ALL the NPCs and not just the companions put on a mocap suit and their movements, gestures and physical choices were recorded & sent along with the audio files for the animators to use in game, which is why the performances feel so *alive*.
"The iconic head wiggles Jen did as Shadowheart WERE Jen’s actual head wiggles. The militaristic and alien-like movements of Lae were Devora Wilde's physical choices for the character. Neil Newbon’s theatrical flare as Astarion are all part of the actor's choices. There’s countless others I could mention but we’d be here all day."
Baranova's thread is quite long and goes in-depth into how the departments worked together to make the acting feel so alive, as well as sharing some footage of the dialogue and movement recording in action.
She said: "At the very least we wanted all the physical performances to look alive & be interesting to watch."
Baldur's Gate 3 players have praised the game for how alive it feels
Several players have praised Larian for the work they have put in, and hope that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 will encourage other developers to focus more on animation and character realism.
One Twitter user wrote: "I sincerely hope Baldur's Gate 3 pressures all game dev companies to level up their facial animation, character emotion, dialogue/scene writing. so masterful."
With Baldur's Gate 3 having achieved a metacritic score of 96% and countless positive reviews for its plot and fully realised characters, it is safe to say that the amount of work put into the game by the development team has paid off.
About The Author
Megan Cooke
Megan is GGRecon's Evening & Weekend News Writer. She has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and is working towards finishing her masters in Journalism. When she isn’t writing about games she can be found reading romance novels or playing cosy games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, APICO, and Disney Dreamlight Valley.
