‘Baldur’s Gate 3’s highest difficulty level will humble players says Larian Studios

Larian Studios has shown off the highest difficulty level on the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3, which will put even the most experienced Dungeons & Dragons players through their paces.

Tactician is the most intense experience of the role-playing game, according to senior combat designer Matt Holland, who was describing the difficulty level in a live show with fellow Larian Studios developers.

This will utilise legacy features from Divinity: Original Sin 2‘s Tactician difficulty level, like more aggressive artificial intelligence and stronger enemy stats, and will also add “little bits of spice” to escalate the enemy encounters.

“We have it in two layers: there’s the base layer that all the characters in the game are gonna get ⁠— that’s the basics like just increasing HP or making it easier to hit you,” said Holland (via PC Gamer). “Then there’s the local layer. We’ve gone through every single combat in our game and we’ve added little bits of spice to make that combat shine just a little bit hotter and be that much harder.”

“We want to make it feel like you’re going up against a DM that’s trying to push you to your limits,” he added when demonstrating the difference between a Balanced battle and a Tactician battle with two Monks versus a group of goblins. The second scenario involved goblins sending fire arrows over to the characters while the main entrance to the town was blocked with explosive barrels, leading to the two monks being brought to their knees in one turn.

Creative director Swen Vincke continued to explain that in Tactician, enemies will prioritise casters when they’re completing multi-turn “concentration” spells to disrupt the player’s strategy. “You’re gonna start playing on Tactician because ‘you can handle it,’ then you’re going to start crying,” joked Vincke. “You’re going to say our game is bad⁠ — it’s not our fault! It’s you!”

Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released for PC on August 3 and will arrive for PS5 on September 6. In other gaming news, Square Enix revealed that Final Fantasy 16 is getting made into a musical to be performed by the all-female Takarazuka Revue theatre troupe.