Baldur’s Gate 3: Launch Party - A Case Study
Following our first successful collaboration with video games developer Larian Studios – the Baldur’s Gate 3 animation titled The Greatest Foe – we began speaking to them about creating a follow-up to celebrate the game’s PlayStation 5 launch in September.
Like the first animated short in June, we chatted to people at Larian during the pre-production phase about things like the concept of the cartoon, the script, and the character designs. Then our team of animators got to work on bringing Gale, Karlach, Astarion and Shadowheart to life once more.
Now, since Spud Gun Studios officially launched, we’ve posted a few case studies on this website, but we wanted to do something a bit different this time. Today, we wanted to bring you the thoughts of someone that worked on the animation in question. So, let’s go back to that aforementioned scripting phase. We recently spoke to the writer of the toon, Larian Studios writer Emily Gera, about how Baldur’s Gate 3: Launch Party came together.
“When we first began brainstorming this to coincide with our PS5 launch, we knew that we wanted to showcase just how far the game has come since our days in Early Access,” Gera told us. “BG3 is a game where a lot can change between the first and final Act, and it's also a game that's experienced its own changes over the course of development. Fans who've been with us from the very beginning will recognise visual tweaks made to certain characters over the years, and many of our early animation bugs will remain burned forever in their subconscious, to be unlocked only through years of therapy. We wanted to celebrate all of this.”
“My personal goal – which was also very important to me – was that it didn't suck.”
It’s worth noting that, sometimes, when you’re creating branded content, you’re walking a fine line between entertainment and advertisement. Of course it depends on the brief, but that’s often the line we’re walking. Thankfully, Spud Gun Studios values and Larian Studios values are aligned: we both want to make things that are – first and foremost – good. “While the goal of the animation was to announce the launch of the game on PS5, my personal goal – which was also very important to me – was that it didn't suck. So for the script I leaned into what I felt would work, which was to make it a classic ensemble comedy somewhere in between Clone High and Guardians of the Galaxy”
Of course, the fantastically-funny, Gera-penned script, is a huge reason why “it didn’t suck.” Another reason is the fact that we once again had access to the cast of the game, which was such a boon for the short. As Gera mentioned to us, their talent is immeasurable. “They can literally go from performing a heart-wrenching death scene in the game to taking my script directions telling them to say "frog" with the exact inflection of Seinfeld hissing ‘Newman’.”
Baldur’s Gate 3: Launch Party was first published on the Mashed YouTube channel, on September 7th, and was then published on Larian Studios’ YouTube channel shortly afterwards.