In the years since Baldur’s Gate 3’s release, Larian has put a lot of time and energy into updating the game with tons of new content, including new content for some beloved character who got the short end of the wizard staff the first time around, like Karlach. But one character is still coming up short for fans: Wyll. And at least one writer at Larian is just as frustrated by it as you.
This comes from a Reddit AMA today conducted by a number of Larian employees, during which one person asked why Wyll wasn’t developed further in post-launch patches, even as other companions got storyline and even personality updates. We’ve known for a while that the “Blade of Frontiers” warlock Wyll was rewritten significantly from his early access version to final version.
The question was answered by Larian senior writer Kevin VanOrd, who explained that he also wished Wyll had gotten more attention, and that the lack of content compared to other companions was mostly the result of a series of unfortunate timing coincidences. Here’s how VanOrd puts it:
I wish Wyll had gotten more content and a more fulfilling arc too.
As you probably know, we weren’t connecting with Wyll’s Early Access recruitment and initial questing, so we started over at a point when most of the other companion stories were fairly solid. A lot of decisions came later in development than was ideal – and there was a key situation near Baldur’s Gate that I intended to heavily involve Wyll in (the Red War College) that got cut. That meant back to the drawing board again. We eventually tied him to Duke Ravengard and started to work on that element of his arc just in time for me to get unexpectedly ill. I was out of the office for quite a while, and again after the epilogue’s release.
I think that Ansur’s lair was Swen’s idea – we did have the resources for a standalone dungeon, so we got to work on tying Wyll to the Wyrmway, but I couldn’t get more than a dungeon boss out of it. Once the situations were in place, that was that – I had to start writing them.
Wyll’s content is sparser than I’d have liked as a result. He’s also split into two stories, really – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and that might have been a mistake in hindsight. I also wish I could given him a stronger endpoint – it always bugged me that he can end up just as he started, as the Blade of Frontiers, without any meaningful difference. All that said, I love the Blade and I am really proud of him, his sincerity, his good nature, and his eager heroism. I’m truly sorry I didn’t give you more quality time with him.
It’s worth pointing out that it’s not that Wyll received no updates post-launch. Patch 7 made some light tweaks to Wyll’s dialogue that helped those pursuing him romantically have a more interesting time, though it didn’t really give him any new story content. But that’s nothing compared to Karlach, who got an entirely new ending in the same patch. Karlach, like Wyll, was considered to be one of the character who had been given the least love in terms of story content in the 1.0 release, and has consistently been a popular favorite. Recently, one fan broke down how many minutes of dialogue every character in Baldur’s Gate 3 had, and Wyll’s down below most of the other companions with just under 9 hours speaking. Still, it’s not as bad as Halsin, Minthara, Jaheira, and Minsc, though admittedly those four companions are a little more complex to recruit and you can’t even get them until Acts 2 or 3.
So, perhaps cold comfort to Wyll fans, but it’s comforting to know that he wasn’t intentionally sidelined. We’re proud of him too.
In the same AMA, CEO Swen Vincke addressed concerns about generative AI use on the studio’s next game, Divinity, following a controversy around some of Vincke’s comments from an interview last year.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
