The big focus of Larian's post on Baldur's Gate 3's upcoming Patch 7 was the game's expanded evil endings, but the studio also revealed that the first of Baldur's Gate 3's official mod tools are coming in this update.
In a conversation with me at this year's Game Developers Conference, Larian CEO Swen Vincke indicated that the tools won't be as expansive as Divinity Original Sin 2's, but rather will "focus on the things we know people want to mod and we're going to try to make that process easier."
The Patch 7 preview doesn't give a full breakdown of the tools, but their scope seems to line up with what Vincke previously indicated. "The next patch will also begin introducing our [[link]] official modding tools," the post reads, "letting you change up visuals, animations, sounds, stats, and more to overhaul Baldur's Gate 3 into the weird nightmare realm of your dreams."
We've seen a ton of custom armor, weapons, classes, companion appearances, and even dice over on the Baldur's Gate 3 Nexus so far, and the big focus here seems to be lowering barriers to entry and generally making things easier for mod authors.
I hope this helps streamline things a little bit on the user side too, though—I've been playing games with mods for over 15 years, including messing around with WeiDU stuff for the original Baldur's Gates, and the startup energy for getting custom dice working in my own game was just too much of a hassle for what I was getting. Guess I'll stick with the good old "Behir Blue."
A moment of silence, then, for my secret forbidden wish that Baldur's Gate 3 become the Neverwinter Nights of the 2020s—an endless well of custom fan campaigns based on a familiar D&D ruleset. That dream was probably dead from the start, though: a big part of that 2002 BioWare RPG's legendary mod scene was how easy its tools were to use, landing in this perfect sweet spot with a [[link]] low barrier to entry but a surprising depth and flexibility for the dedicated module-builder.
Other RPG campaign building tools, like those with Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 or Larian's in Divinity: Original Sin 2, proved too complex for most modders to justify learning—at a certain point, why not just make your [[link]] own indie RPG? Baldur's Gate 3 is even more complicated than any of those games, and the relatively tepid Original Sin 2 mod response makes me think this is a sound strategy.
While the studio is stepping away from Dungeons & Dragons to focus on two new projects under its own IP, there are still some more updates planned for Baldur's Gate 3: in the patch notes, Larian indicated that a photo mode and console crossplay are still in the works.