Developer Larian showcased the depth of the Baldur’s Gate 3 character creator on Friday, ahead of the game’s upcoming PC launch on August 3. New features that weren’t present in the game’s Early Access build include the Half-Orc and Dragonborn DnD races, additional DnD subclasses, huge visual customization, and an edgy new character with its own narrative.
The new Dark Urge character for Baldur’s Gate 3 can be fully customised in appearance, class, and race, but has its own narrative delivered in cutscenes and dialogue interactions. As well as being parasitized by an Illithid, they’re dealing with a powerful urge for carnage.
A live stream of the game showed some of the new interactions, with an albino Dragonborn DnD Monk encountering a potential companion character sticking their hand through a portal and asking for help – and choosing to hack the hand off. Later, when camping, the Dark Urge falls asleep thinking about “Blood, blood, blood, blood, blood”, which reminds us of British horror comedy Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place.
Although the Dark Urge’s stats and appearance are a blank slate, its tailored narrative means Larian calls it an “Origin” character. Many of the Companion characters already available in the Early Access build can be picked as Origin characters, and Larian says that you’ll get first-person access to the narrative beats they might not ever reveal to the player when chosen as a Companion.
The game will launch with 46 subclasses. Most of the DnD classes will have “about three” subclasses in Baldur’s Gate 3, but the Cleric 5e will have seven and the DnD Wizard eight. Larian promises that your choice of “class, race, and pronouns” will be “honored” and will influence the responses of other characters.
Apparently there is about 33% more dialogue in Act One now compared to what was present when the game entered early access, to offer greater reactivity to player choice.
Cosmetic options for characters are very deep, including adding wrinkles, freckles, vitiligo, changing the color of horns, scars, considerably more hair choices, a new body type I can only describe as “swole”, piercings, and heterochromia.
Larian describes the new Dragonborn as the “most technically challenging race”, as it’s a scaly reptile rather than a humanoid, with options for metallic and even pearlescent skin.