With Baldur's Gate 3 officially out in the open, developer Larian Studios has launched a new series of community update videos that will document the process of creating what founder Swen Vincke said will be "the bestest and biggest RPG" that Larian has ever made. The first video starts things off with a bang, as Swen reveals the "secret sauce of Dungeons and Dragons," and how he came upon it: During a tour of Wizards of the Coast, he killed a guy and stole his soul.
(It's possible that he just knocked him out and transmogrified his physical essence into the bottle and then stole away with it to Belgium, but that just sounds too tame.)
It's silly and fun, and perfectly in keeping with Larian, but there's also some interesting background about the deeply disturbing announcement video the studio released yesterday, in which a member of the Flaming Fist mercenary company undergoes a horrific transformation into a mind flayer. The change occurred as a result of ceremorphosis, a process that occurs when an illithid tadpole enters a host, eats its brain, and then forces the agonizing change into a full illithid.
It's almost purely a hype video but it's fun to watch, and the focus on the mind flayers opens up the possibility for some interesting callbacks to Baldur's Gate 2. A big chunk of that game was spent roaming the Underdark, which naturally included some less-than-pleasant interactions with the squid-faced horrors. I was very happy to finally get out of the Underdark in BG2, but I sure wouldn't mind going back for game three.
