Anna Guxens on Baldur's Gate III: "We never thought we could win any awards"

Baldur's Gate III was a true revolution in the current video game scene when its full version was released last summer. The Game of the Year at The Game Awards was the gateway to the Western turn-based RPG genre for many, and its powerful narrative and the weight of each player's decisions on their own game won the hearts of those who played it.

During the recent BIG Conference in December, Gamereactor had the opportunity to interview Anna Guxens, senior RPG designer at Larian Studios, where we were able to talk about her then recent award and what it has been like working on this titanic work.

"I remember when we were making the game sometimes we said no way this is going to win any awards, we have to improve things, so we tried harder to improve the things that we didn't think were so good, right? And that's one of the things that motivated us as well, to see that the players enjoyed it all."

Displaying a sincere humility, Guxens also talked about his own role in the game's design, in which he links the great storytelling and depth of the characters with the involvement and conjunction of the various development teams. "We RPG designers deal with whole regions of the game, so we're there from the beginning designing the narrative of the game, what happens there with what people we meet, what I can do there as a player, right? So we start designing all these moments that you can play with in general in the region and then we follow it through to the end and work with the teams to implement them, to bring them to life and to make sure they're good and fun when they're actually played in the end."

"So a big shout out to the Larian writing team, because they're the ones who are bringing all these characters to life and making them seem believable and grounded and interesting and silly and fun."

Precisely when we talked to him about how they approached the design of each character's storylines and backstories to fit into the main story, he made a key point about his system of working.

"Every writer owns the characters they write, so they know them best and can carry them through to the end. So it's usually the same person writing the same characters all the way through, so they keep the same voice, they stay true to themselves, and they have all these ideas about what makes sense for them to do and they bring all these great new ideas in terms of 'Okay, this would be so much more fun, right? Can we do this? Can we do this? Well yeah, let's go for it!'"

You can watch the full interview with Anna Guxens at the last BIG Conference below.