Mods are something synonymous to PC gaming. Several massive titles, such as Killing Floor, Counter-Strike, The Stanley Parable, and DOTA 2 all started as mods before becoming their own thing further down the line. Without them, there’d likely be fewer game developers, with many people first cutting their teeth on changing other games.
Of recent games released with huge modding communities, one that has massively caught my attention is Baldur’s Gate 3. This game offers seemingly endless possibilities and the chance to make something already incredible even better.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t a small game. It’s also not a game bereft of character customization options, with a massive selection of choices presented to you almost the second you load up the title and constantly evolving throughout the story. Yet one of the biggest mods for the game, Fantastical Multiverse, adds a host of character customization options, including over a dozen new races. It’s this, and several other mods, that held up the backbone of my friend's very first modded playthrough of any game, and it’s this that held up our co-op playthrough. But after playing through the game with several mods, I was curious about the development process of one in particular: Fantastical Multiverse.
Fantastical Multiverse adds thirty-one extra species to the game. It also updates already-existing classes to align with the official descriptions found in the Dungeons & Dragons books published by Wizards of the Coast. What this essentially boils down to is that an already ridiculously big game, one that you could realistically play for years to come, becomes even longer, with more gameplay variations and changes to the game brought by the fact that there have been several changed dialogue options also added to the title to tie in with the new races.
“I wanted Fantastical Multiverse to be like this because I forever DM, and none of my role-play characters are Player’s Handbook races,” developer DungeonsAndSouls explained to me when I inquired as to what drove them to create a mod of this scale.
“As soon as I realized during Early Access Patch 3 [released in late 2020] that the game was mod-friendly, I got to work with the project. I loved this game and based on every Panel From Hell that Larian did I could see how much passion was being poured into Baldur’s Gate 3, so I knew I wasn’t investing my time into a project that I would end up abandoning.”
As previously mentioned, Fantastical Multiverse adds over thirty different races, with several complete overhauls to existing races. There are even races from other games, such as the Elezen from Final Fantasy XIV. The final plan for the project is to have one hundred different races available in the game. But an idea like this doesn’t just happen: it needs planning.
“Originally I just wanted the races my friend group and I wanted to play and wished to be included. I don’t play Player’s Handbook races. So I wanted Yuan-ti Pureblood, Dhampir, Astral Elf, The Downcast, Eladrin, Hexblood, and Shadar-Kai. I now want to make 100 total races for Fantastical Multiverse, so I typically aim for races that don’t require Blender [a 3D creation suite] immediately to make them. I’m pretty critical of my work, so I know Blender would just cause me major delays on the project so it’s easier to knock out the easier-to-produce races instead by using assets already in-game.”
That’s not to say that there’s not a desire to add races that would require more animation, or a lot more tinkering with models, however.
“Once I finish what I have set as a goal for 2.0, I’ll be starting to work on the races that require Blender like Tabaxi, Kenku, Aarakocra, Tortle, etc, as these are some of the highest request races I’ve seen on Twitter and NexusMods. I know that a lot of people have specific races they hold dear to them, so I tried to get the easier ones done first so that way I could spend most of my time focusing on polishing the ones that require Blender.”
What’s time consuming about everything here, and indeed about modding in general, is that often new models and cosmetics are needed. Everything isn’t always there in the game files, and it’s not like modders can use any of the base race models for something that’s from a completely different multiversal plane. But modifying the assets is something that is often done, and is indeed something done for Fantastical Multiverse.
“So far all the assets are just from Baldur’s Gate 3; I’ve yet to make any customs assets; all the assets are just modified. Larian puts a lot of detail into their creatures and NPCs which provides me with a lot of interesting assets that I can combine to get those more unique looks. Also, thanks to the way Larian designed the textures, most of the time the textures from creatures or NPCs are compatible with the player model, heads, and bodies. I just combined different assets to get the desired look,” DungeonAndSouls told me when I asked about the modeling process.
Of course, the mods available for the title aren’t the only ones that massively overhaul elements of the game. Sure, there’s a ton of stuff that adds new classes, new races, and new customization options to the game (and a lot of them are brilliant, with a personal favorite being those that add missing classes to the game, such as the Artificer from Eberron: Rising From The Last War).
There’s also smaller, funnier stuff, such as Wither’s Big Naturals, a mod that gives Withers an uh…. Well, you get the idea. At multiple points during my and my friend's playthrough, I went up to Wither’s to do something banal, like change my class, and was confronted with the hubris of my actions, forgetting I’d installed that mod.
For fans of the game who want to try modding for themselves, though, what exactly should they do?
“My best suggestion to anyone interested in mod development is to think of something you want to implement, and just start working on it. You can start with tutorial videos or even just read the unpacked information from the game, make small tweaks, and see the results in the game. It becomes a lot more enjoyable and rewarding when it’s something you care about.”
“I originally started modding way before in college for game development, and my first ever mod was a hairstyle for Skyrim. So I was driven to make this hairstyle on my own, instead of hoping one day someone else would; that drive led me to learn how to use Autodesk 3DS max and the Creation Kit. Anyone can develop mods, it’s just up to how much of your time you wish to invest into learning and creating,” DungeonsAndSouls explained.
With the official support for modding in the title coming next month in the next massive update to the game , and with Larian Studios showing in the past that they’re massive supporters of the community, it’ll be extremely interesting to see exactly what can be made with actual support and tools, especially from a company that supports their community as much as Larian.
