The three-act structure to narrative fiction has existed since time immemorial, since the days of Aristotle through to modern-day movies and videogames. But there are few game developers that have embraced an Act-style structure so voraciously as Larian. You look at their games from Divinity: Original Sin back in 2014 through Baldur’s Gate 3, and you can identify the same fundamental structure in all their games (Divinity: Original Sin 2 actually had four acts, though acts 3-4, The Nameless Isle and Arx, were on the weak side, and perhaps their efforts would’ve been better served simply making Arx more fleshed-out).

Regardless, recent revelations from Larian have been suggesting that Larian is sticking to that act-based structure for its next game. Swen Vincke took to Twitter to say that he thinks he’s “cracked” the first Act of Larian’s next game (via PC Gamer), while Baldur’s Gate 3 Lead Designer Anna Guxens admitted to GameReactor that there were “tonal” issues with Act 3 of the game, which is to say nothing of its abrupt ending that had to be patched, somewhat shallow characterisation, and a general sense that what was supposed to be the triumphant final chapter taking place in the titular city ended up being somewhat rushed.

Final Act Follies

Larian fans will recall that it was a similar story with the final act, Arx, in Divinity: Original Sin 2, which was largely redesigned for the Definitive Edition of the game—from new quests, to revamped storytelling, and new areas—because neither the devs nor fans were particularly happy with how things panned out in the release version of the game. With that in mind, it’s quite possible that Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 may get similar treatment come the inevitable Definitive Edition.

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So it’s a bit of a recurrent bugbear for Larian, this final Act stuff. But even before Baldur’s Gate 3 came out, I was a tad disappointed that Larian chose to structure it so similarly to their previous game. In Original Sin 2, you fight your way off a ship and end up shipwrecked on a beach to start Act 1, In Baldur’s Gate 3 you fight your way off a nautiloid and end up, uhhh, nautiloidwrecked on a beach to start Act 1. The maps of Act 1 for both games feel tonally and aesthetically quite similar, then the games diverge a bit for their middle acts, before both culminating in the ‘Big City’ for the final act. That’s totally fine if Baldur’s Gate 3 was your first Larian game, but for me coming to it from Original Sin 2, there was a little bit too much deja vu in this structure, leaving me with a feeling of ‘Come on, guys. Can’t you try structuring your story a little, y’know, differently?’

After three very similarly-structured games, I’d love to see Larian to experiment with new storytelling structures, especially seeing as, great though Baldur’s Gate 3 is, they seem to struggle with nailing that final furlong in the final act.

I think back to Baldur’s Gate 2, and how, even going back to it today and even though it’s not an open-world game by today’s standards, it really felt like you had this vast chunk of the Sword Coast to explore, with different cities, villages, temples, and areas you could visit, each with their own architecture, biomes, and so on. Granted, it was all connected via an overworld map, but it had a sense of scale and non-linearity that, honestly, Baldur’s Gate 3 lacks. It showed confidence in the player by really letting us off the leash, while Baldur’s Gate 3 feels heavily designed around its core story, and always feels like it’s tugging you along. Fundamentally, you go through two different biomes (with detours into the Underdark and other dimensions) before arriving at the city itself, while in Baldur’s Gate 2 you could explore multiple biomes sprawled across a nation. It really felt like a true epic.

That Baldur’s Gate 3’s biomes are wonderfully designed, sizeable chunks of map with tons of nooks and crannies, goes without saying, but I’d love for this level design to be applied into an alternative overarching structure; not necessarily open-world, but a little less streamlined than Larian’s last three games, and perhaps taking a page out of the old-school cRPG book.

A Page From Dragon Age

For a more modern example, imagine Dragon Age: Inquisition’s diversity of biomes and how you get between them, but with Larian’s world design instead of the rather flat and empty maps that Bioware gave us back in 2014. I’m not saying this would be the ‘ultimate’ structure for an RPG, because there’s plenty of merit to what Larian has been doing, as well as more directly open-world RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Skyrim. But it does feel like maybe a little bit of a shake-up could spice up Larian’s next big project, which I can only imagine will be Divinity: Original Sin 3.

Clearly, there’s nothing ‘broke’ about Larian’s storytelling structure (Baldur’s Gate 3 is our 2023 Game of the Year, after all), but then there was nothing broke about how the beautiful structure of FromSoftware games before they decided to go full open-world on us with Elden Ring, and that turned out OK, didn’t it? And after three games of sticking to much the same structure, maybe it’s time for an ultra-talented studio like Larian to do something similarly radical.

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