Developer Larian Studios has confirmed that players will indeed be able to respec their characters in Baldur’s Gate 3. This will be reassuring for people worried that they might get stuck with unwitting choices made in the early hours of the game, filled with regret for the ensuing 75 to 100 hours it will take to beat Baldur’s Gate 3.
So far, it looks as though the game will perfectly fit the mold of what many people consider to be a classic, full-fledged RPG, with dozens of hours of side quests and story to get lost in. The devs at Larian Studios recently stated that Baldur’s Gate 3 will feature 174 hours of cutscenes in the final release, along with multiple races, classes, and branching narrative paths to choose from.
In preparation for the official launch of the game, which has already been available in early access since October 2020, Larian will be expanding the list of existing playable races and classes for Baldur’s Gate 3, bringing the total to 11 races and 12 classes with a whopping 46 subclasses. That leaves a lot of room for making less-than-ideal choices, but the studio confirmed in a recent YouTube livestream that there will be a special NPC in the game who will allow the player to “reset your class and reinvest all of the levels.”
Though slightly controversial from a D&D standpoint, the decision to allow players to respec is due to the fact that Baldur’s Gate 3 will feature multiclassing, or the ability for a character to embody more than one class at once, though it’s not yet clear how many exactly. While this could lead to some really powerful builds, like a Draconic Bloodline Warlock perhaps, some players might inadvertently create just the opposite: an underwhelming and underpowered plinker that makes the whole experience unpleasant. Larian wants players to be able to correct their missteps and also experiment with class combinations during their 100-hour playthrough if desired.
The highly anticipated Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG was originally slated for an August 31 launch, but the PC version of Baldur’s Gate 3 recently got a new release date of August 3. This will give players more time to get stuck in before Bethesda’s Starfield, whose early access begins on September 1, shoves its way onto the RPG stage and steals some of the spotlight. PS5 players, on the other hand, will have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on BG3, thanks to that platform’s new release date of September 6. Unfortunately, Xbox Series console owners will not be getting a chance to play the long-awaited RPG, at least not any time soon, due to the difficulties the developer experienced trying to optimize the game for Xbox Series S.
Baldur’s Gate 3 releases on August 3 for PC and September 6 for PS5.
Source: Larian Studios/YouTube
