A group of Baldur’s Gate 3 modders are working on a massive mod for the game that effectively turns Baldur’s Gate 3 into the game that started it all: 1998’s Baldur’s Gate.
The team of modders–who collectively go by the name Deathbringer’s Reign–are led by project organizer 786r786, who previously created a Baldur’s Gate 3 mod that recreates Candlekeep, the opening location from the original Baldur’s Gate. Players went wild for the Candlekeep mod, which led to more interest in its creator, and eventually player requests for a full Baldur’s Gate mod.
“I received a lot of requests from fans of the original games to turn it into a full campaign, along with offers from some incredibly talented modders who volunteered to help,” 786r786 explained (via Rock Paper Shotgun). “Making an isolated custom campaign is actually a bit easier than making an extension to the base game; you don’t have to account for the incredibly vast amount of scenarios present in vanilla BG3, and you have full control over the player’s environment.”
786r786 says that all content featured in the Baldur’s Gate Enhance Edition will be included in the mod, with the exception of the Siege of Dragonspear expansion, which may be released at a later date via an update. According to 786r786, the biggest challenge so far has been recreating the sprawling titular city of Baldur’s Gate.
“Without a doubt, the most significant challenge will be translating the city of Baldur’s Gate itself into a fully 3D environment,” 786r786 explained. “The sheer scale is daunting; the original game has over 100 interiors within the city, whereas BG3 features about 40 buildings in the Lower City. We have to figure out how to capture that content density while adjusting the layout to suit BG3’s modern gameplay and presentation.”
Thankfully, 786r786 and the Deathbringer’s Reign team found a solution.
“To solve this, we already plan to split the city into three different levels,” they said. “This makes the workload much more manageable and ensures the final product won’t tank performance, since only one section will be loaded at a time. It also helps that Larian already created the majority of the art assets we need for the Lower City, and since it’s the final area of the game, we will be able to tackle it with all the experience we’ve gained developing the rest of the campaign.”
But the team is facing one major roadblock: lip-syncing animations.
“During BG3’s development, Larian used a proprietary program called FaceFX to automatically generate lip-syncing animations from audio files,” 786r786 said. “Because that license is extremely expensive, we don’t have access to it, so we are currently exploring a few complex alternatives.”
While they’re exploring those alternatives, 786r786 is also looking for more volunteers to join Deathbringer’s Reign. The group invites anyone familiar with using Baldur’s Gate 3’s unlocked mod toolkit to join their Discord server, where interested parties can apply to contribute to the mod. The team is currently in search of combat designers, level designers, concept artists, modelers, animators, Osiris scripters, and writers to join the project.
786r786 hasn’t shared any official release date for Deathbringer’s Reign, but a demo is currently available on Nexus Mods, where players can take the mod’s opening moments for a spin.