The companions who be a part of you on Baldur’s Gate 3’s epic journey alongside the Sword Coast are a wonderful bunch, however one character undoubtedly received the brief finish of the stick: Wyll. The Warlock was famously rewritten forward of the sport’s launch in 2023 when developer Larian determined his story within the early entry launch wasn’t fairly working. Some issues stayed the identical, similar to his character design, Warlock standing, and the place the participant would finally recruit him, however his story was fully revamped, his voice actor was modified, and he was given ties to different characters, similar to Tiefling get together member Karlach.
In an ongoing Reddit AMA, the crew at Larian supplied some perception into the method and likewise defined why Wyll has notably much less content material than different get together members in consequence. It seems Wyll’s story was lastly coming collectively proper when most different members of the participant’s touring get together had been being solidified, and a few storylines the crew deliberate on implementing him into ended up being lower. Senior author Kevin VanOrd additionally explains that he had well being points throughout a few of these iteration phases, which meant that he misplaced treasured time that was meant to be spent fleshing out Wyll’s position. General, it seems like VanOrd loves the character however needs he may have carried out extra with him.
As you most likely know, we weren’t connecting with Wyll’s Early Entry recruitment and preliminary questing, so we began over at a degree when many of the different companion tales had been pretty stable. Numerous choices got here later in improvement than was superb – and there was a key state of affairs close to Baldur’s Gate that I supposed to closely contain Wyll in (the Pink Conflict School) that received lower. That meant again to the drafting board once more. We finally tied him to Duke Ravengard and began to work on that component of his arc simply in time for me to get unexpectedly sick. I used to be out of the workplace for fairly some time, and once more after the epilogue’s launch.
I believe that Ansur’s lair was Swen’s concept – we did have the assets for a standalone dungeon, so we set to work on tying Wyll to the Wyrmway, however I couldn’t get greater than a dungeon boss out of it. As soon as the conditions had been in place, that was that – I needed to begin writing them.
Wyll’s content material is sparser than I’d have appreciated in consequence. He’s additionally break up into two tales, actually – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and which may have been a mistake in hindsight. I additionally want I may [have] given him a stronger endpoint – it all the time bugged me that he can find yourself simply as he began, because the Blade of Frontiers, with none significant distinction. All that mentioned, I like the Blade and I’m actually happy with him, his sincerity, his good nature, and his keen heroism. I’m really sorry I didn’t provide you with extra high quality time with him.
Within the years since Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian has patched in some new content material for Wyll and different companions, however he has all the time felt like he was a number of steps behind the remainder of the crew. However based mostly on VanOrd’s clarification, it sounds just like the character was principally a sufferer of circumstance, although that will not fulfill his diehards who’ve watched different characters get extra scenes, interactions, and love over the course of the sport.
