The first version of Astarion looked a bit strange.
At the Game Developers Conference, Larian Studios founder Sven Vincke and his colleagues presented a report entitled “Secrets of Baldur's Gate 3.” The main news of the exhibition was the refusal to continue Baldur's Gate 3, but during the report the developers revealed other secrets.
It turned out, for example, that Astarion looked different at first: the character was a tiefling and looked rather boring. The writers planned to make Astarion an ordinary guy infected with a parasite that makes him a little better.
During the presentation, the developers did not say why Astarion eventually changed his race and turned into a vampire. However, the first version of Astarion emphasized so much that he was a simple tiefling that it seems as if he could have been a vampire from the very beginning.
Another interesting point: the developers did not intend for Baldur's Gate 3 to become a major commercial hit. Before the release, Larian expected that the game would, at best, pay for itself—even that would be an excellent result.
Sven Vincke explains that the developers had a different interest. Working on the Baldur's Gate series and partnering with Wizards of the Coast could take the studio to a new level: if the game was successful, Larian would first receive reputation.
As a result, the studio was able to immediately gain both reputation and money: the excellent sales of Baldur's Gate 3 were a pleasant surprise for the developers.
At the same time, it turned out that initially Baldur's Gate 3 was planned to have several dungeon masters, . Perhaps the player could choose a narrator according to his taste – Vincke did not describe the functionality in detail.
One of the masters could be actor Matthew Mercer, who created several role-playing projects in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. But in the end, the idea of multiple masters was abandoned and Amelia Tyler became the voice of Baldur's Gate 3. However, Mercer still appeared in the game, voicing Minsk.
As Vincke explains, it was a matter of money: it turned out that adding several dungeon masters would be very expensive.
And here's another story
An interesting point: the decision to record cutscenes with the participation of actors was made only after the idea with dungeon masters was abandoned.
At first, the developers planned that only the dungeon master would be in the frame, and the actors voicing the characters would only be voices. After a test recording, it turned out that this was not a very good solution.
As a result, it was decided to record animations for all dialogues. The initial idea was only partially realized: the developers recorded animations of movements, but failed to make a decent recording of facial animations – as a result, facial expressions were animated manually
In addition, the developers demonstrated one of the cut locations. At one point, it was planned that players would be able to explore a coastal dwarven village.
Judging by the concept, it was a complex, multi-level location that could take a lot of time to explore. Most likely, we only see part of the level and the cave on the right side of the art is deeper than it seems at first glance.
Larian Studios is currently working on its next big game. We don’t yet know what we are talking about: it is clear that this is a role-playing project, but information about the setting, the plot of the game or its release window is currently missing.