Adam Smith, senior writer for Baldur's Gate 3, was interviewed by CGMagonline.
More information.CGMagazine: I wanted to just touch on this into lore and the canon of Dungeons & Dragons up to this point. How much flexibility did you have as a writer for this installment of the series?
Adam Smith: There was a module that worked as a precursor to where we are, even if it's not a prequel story. We spoke to Wizard of the Coast, while they were working on that we made sure that things matched up. It is very collaborative in that sense, but in terms of the lore we would come up with concepts only to find out it already does exist. Because it has been decades with so many writers and so many designers, if you can think it, Dungeons & Dragons most likely has it in some way.
It's already been thought of so what we tried to do is say, let's find these really cool weird, interesting parts of the Forgotten Realms and outside them sometimes. What we tend to do is we find the really cool, weird stuff, then we just see how far we can push it and how it overlaps with the other stuff we want to do. Obviously, we're going to end up in Baldur's Gate and when you get there, a lot of different things are going to be converging on you, including a lot of different concepts and themes. It is exciting to see that happen.
[...]
CGMagazine: How did you balance fresh material while still keeping true to past instalments?
Adam Smith: Baldur's Gate 3 needed to not feel like it's just a throwback or a nostalgia trip. It has to feel new, because that's part of what Baldur's Gate always was. It was the thing that was pushing things forward. We want to be there as well. Narrative wise, canonically, we are set 100 years later, so that means that we're not going backwards. But the stuff that happened in Baldur's Gate, the Bhaalspawn Saga, is not the kind of stuff that gets forgotten. So, it is part of our world. And we have characters who remember it. We have characters who have strong memories of it. 100 years is a long time if you are human, but it is not a long time if you are an elf. So, some people are still around who know what it was like to live through those events.
But it is that sense of both the history of the games, but also the history within the world of the events of the game, that is powerful. The story within the game, within the Forgotten Realms, has a legendary status so there was no way we could ignore it. You don't need to know what happened 100 years ago to have your own story now. I don't need to know the history of New York City to be able to be in New York City and experience it. Our objective was always to tell a new story that takes place in a world that recognizes the same world and all history that came before.
[...]