Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably not getting an expansion because of D&D’s level rules

Baldur’s Gate 3 is only a few days old (if you don’t count the Early Access journey), and some players are already thinking about the possible ways for an expansion to go. To be clear, developer Larian Studios did not reveal its intention to make an expansion to the its popular game.

However, seeing just how well it’s been doing in sales, player numbers – and being the only thing anyone wants to talk about in games right now, sorta opens the door to many ‘What’s next?’ questions.

Larian already said it wants to work on something smaller for its next project, you know, something that doesn’t take six years to make. But what about an expansion to Baldur’s Gate 3? Well, while the developer has not entirely ruled that out, there is a major concern that would kind of make it a non-starter.

“Honestly, we haven’t started on an expansion,” Larian boss Swen Vincke confirmed to PC Gamer. Vincke’s reasoning is that it would be very difficult to create an expansion that takes players beyond level 12 – the current level cap in Baldur’s Gate 3.

As to why that’s the case, it all has to do with Dungeons & Dragons’ rules – which the game is based on.

“[Level 12-20] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,” Vincke explained.

“Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort. A lot of D&D adventures are sub-level 12 for precisely that reason. So it sounds like neat, easy expansion material until you start thinking about it and it’s not as easy as one would imagine.”

So, while there might be a chance a potential expansion would not raise the level cap, it’s just not something the team is currently working on.

As Vincke also pointed out, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that offers players a range of choices practically every step of the way. Any future expansion would have to take into account all the different mutations of every possible choice – including the game’s over 1700 endings.

So what’s next for Larian? The studio head has a plan, but he’s not willing to share any details just yet.

“I’ve learned in the past you need to be careful announcing things before they’re ready, because sometimes you have to cancel them because they don’t work out,” he said.

“We could work on an expansion and it could be boring, and we should stop working on it. Because if we would continue on something that’s boring, we would then have to sell it to you, and then we’d have to say ‘here’s a boring thing, and we want you to buy it.’ That would not be cool. So we have to have the freedom to experiment and do our stuff. And then when we’re ready to announce it we will.”