Summary

• Baldur's Gate 3 actors and developers walk us through recording motion capture for the game.
• The actors who performed in some of the romance scenes say that the environment always felt safe - and could get very funny.
• Larian wants to improve on its mocap use even further in its next games, rather than go back to the Divinity: Original 2 style of storytelling.

It’s 2022, and Josh Wichard is on his way to work. He’s off to perform in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3 again, having already provided voice work for the game since 2019. Now, Larian wants him back in the studio, th♒is time for motion capture. He’s just been sent✃ the storyboard for his first scene, so he has a look at what the day has in store for him.

“I was looking at the shot list, and it's all of like… parting the tentacles to find a mouth,” says Wichard, speaking with me over Zoom. This was going to be the first intimacy scene of his career, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:and it involved a mind flayer.

He wouldn’t be filming the scene alone. His partner throughout this series of mocap recordings, Saskia Allen, ♏was also on her way to the studio.

“Our first day together was like, ‘Hey, how you doing? Let's pretend to kiss some tentacles”, she tells me. “You just have to throw yourself into it. Josh and I immediately connected as actors.”

Wichard agrees this was for th✱e best. “We were both really worried that it was going to be awkward,” he says. “I think♏ when you jump in with that scene, you lose any kind of awkwardness.”

At this point, Baldur’s Gate 3 had been in the hands of players through early access for almost two years, so this was far from the first mocap recording for the game. Many actors, including every member of the main cast, provided mocap for their characters from the get-go, especially their movements and facial expressions during conversations. Many of them were still in the studio, recording crucial story moments and speeches for their characters. Wichard was aware of thisꦫ, as he’d been there from the beginning, playing one of the custom character voice sets, commonly referred to as Tav 1.

However, even so close to Baldur’s Gate 3’s full launch in August 2023, there was much more to be done. Early access only gave players a slice of the game’s first act, and as players will remember, the romance scenes faded to black before we saw any action. This left some huge story moments from every act in the game for Wicha🌞rd and Allen to get through, seeing them play a range of different characters.

Larian Was Going All In On Mocap For Baldur's Gate 3

This wasn’t just new territory for Wichard and Allen - Larian itself was making a huge leap here. Its previous game, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Divinity: Original Sin 2, communicates almost everything through its in-game narrator. With mౠore limited animations, everything from conflict𝔉 to sex is told to us through the writing. Yet it was decided incredibly early on that this wouldn’t be the case in Baldur’s Gate 3.

“For Swen [Vincke, CEO] and the cr🉐eative directors who were push🐲ing this, this was just the progression they knew they wanted to do,” says Greg Lidstone, director of animation at Larian. “They wanted to give the players more of a cinematic experience.”

Larian had numerous mocap facilities of its own from the start, even opeဣning a new one mid-development, but it a♈lso partnered with Pitstop Productions for many shoots. It was a huge undertaking.

“They brought in a bunch of people from outside and steeped us in Larian ideology,” he continues. “Like, the way they want to do stuff and the way꧟ they want to tell stories. And then we just adapted our methods and tried to support the writers and telling those stories.&rdqℱuo;

Lidstone credits Jason Latino, who came over from Telltale, as one of the figures pushing this new method of storytelling in a Larian game. This gave the studio experience from some of the most beloved story-focused games out there, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Telltale’s The Walking Dead and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Wolf Among Us.

In aid of this, Larian also hired cinematic animation producer Leah Caldwell. She joined in 2019, overseeing the filming that involved countless actors, including, by her estimate, almost 250 actors who did both mocap and voice work, and arou🌳nd 25 actors who solely provided mocap, spread throughout Larian and Pitstop’s studios.

By the time it came to these additionꦯal mocap recording sessions with Wichard and Allen, Caldwell was familiar with the story and the cast. Both she and Lidstone sat in on these sessions and didn’t at♉ all shy away from what was being filmed.

“It wasn't just about sex, it was about intimacy,” says Caldwell. “Tying it into their story [and] who they are as a character.”

In the final game, this is how you get from tentacle shenanigans with t𒆙he Emperor, to something far more wholesome with Karlach.

“A lot of time, thought, and effort went into those to make sure it was suitable for their characters, and not just quite a hardcore sex scene for a character that it might not suit,” she says. “Like Karlach, for example, is very intimate [with] the date scene leading up to that. I felt that suited Karlach’s romance and her storyline a lot more than if we'd put something similar to Minthara’s.”

“It wasn't just about sex, it was about intimacy" - Leah Caldwell

But that just opens us to another challenge. Caldwell, Lidstone, and the rest of the cinema✃tics team had to help Allen and Wichard jump between dozens of characters, all with their own nuances, and all played by other actors. Both Lidstone and Caldwell can remember the flares added to each character by their main actors - the way Neil Newbon carried himself as Astarion, Maggie Robertson’s knife tricks as Orin - and now, these had to be picked up by Allen and Wichard,💦 and carried through across vastly different scenes.

“There are definitely times where one minute you're so-and-so, and then the next you’re Ketheric, so you do jump around a bit. But I like that,” says Wichard.

“There were points where you'd be like, ‘Oh, we’re back in The Forge’. And then I’d be like, ‘This is Auntie Ethel stuff’. [...] And then they’re like, ‘So in this bit, you’re finding bits of the decapitated clown’. And I was like, ‘...the what?’”

Both Wichard and Allen praise the storyboards they were given as the reason they could keep track of what was happening. And it turns out that the intimacy scenes were no d🦋ifferent. Every movement was mapped out before they’d put their mocap suits on, the only difference being that the atmosphere in the studio was incredibly different from their fight sc﷽enes.

Working With An Intimacy Coordinator

“We did what we call a closed shoot,” explains Caldwell. “Normally on a shoot day, you would hav𓄧e a producer there. So myself, you might have some of the animators who worked on the scene, or maybe a cinematic artist might dial in as well, so they can help give any 🐓extra context.

“But for the romance scenes, we did a lot of prep work before we went into them to make sure that we didn't need to have those people dial in. The only people on the set were the intimacy coordinator, Greg as the performance director, and the mocap technician.”

That was another thing that Larian decided on early in production. Like TV and film increasingly have, the cinematics team turned to intimacy coordinators for both voice and motion capture work, so no one at any stage of production felt uncomfortable. For the mocap side, they brought on Enric Ortuño, who has experience in TV, film, and theatr♏e.

“We knew that we wer💎e doing these kinds of scenes, and we knew that they would be complicated and that they would involve things that could possibly become difficult for an actor,” explains Lidstone.

“It is sometimes difficult as a director to give up a level of control, having someone else on the set who has a say,” he continues. “But I really liked h🧔im and he was great [...] he helped me understand what the benefits of having him there are.

“There's a power imbalance there, right? Like, I'm an employer, I'm asking them to do stuff,” he says. “I don't know [the actor’s] history, I don't know their life experience. So maybe it is something that is uncomfortable for them. And it's sometimes hard for me to watch for that kind of stuff. Having someone there who is empowered to say, ‘You know what, Greg, actually, I think we need a couple of minutes’ [...] it helps me to relax.”

The actors agree that this helped. “Larian [was] very, very good about it,” says Allen. “I think they might be the first [game] studio ever to employ an intimacy coordinator. It's incredibly professional. [...] It was great having Enric there because he was just there to make sure we were comfortable. I never once felt unsafe or anything like that. So it was just an amazing experience.”

Even with the intimacy coordinator in the room and the storyboards to follow, Wichard and Allen were still in control. As Wichard recalls, “We spoke to the intimacy coordinator. And he was like, because it's digital, you don't have to kiss, [but] we just decided that it would just be easier to kiss. It's just gonna be more realistic than us sort of hovering our faces near each other.”

“Any awkwardness was always disp🍌elled by the absolute comedy afterwards" - Josh Wichard

Allen agrees. “You just have to completely let your guard down. You can't go into it with any sort of hesitancy, you have to trust. And we fully trusted each other,” she says. “It was always with a lot of laughter and a lot of warmth [...] We got to know each other and what each other was comfortable doing.”

Ultimately, it sounds like the only issues they encountered were caused, not by anything in the script, but by ꦍthe suཧits they had to wear.

“The suit is all bound together with Velcro, which is great, but not when you're attached to someone else who is also in a suit primarily made of Velcro,” says Wichard. “So sometimes you just pull each other [apart] and it's just the sound of ripping Velcro. And then you stand up and you're taking one of your dots off them and putting it back on you.”

Allen remembers this well. “You’d be in a scene where you'd be making out and then we'd end up with each other's markers all over each other, which was just unavoidable,” she says. “Then the data would [show] that someone's hand was stuck on someone's head or something.

“We were quite lucky that there weren't head cams, which could have been even worse. That's like locking antlers.”

It at least had one unintended side effect, according to Wichard. “Any awkwardness was always dispelled by the absolute comedy afterwards,” he remembers. “The weirdest thing is you've just had this very tender moment. And then they're like, ‘And cut!’, then you both have to stand up and T pose.”

Larian tried to make it more comfortable where it could, trying to make prop beds so they could have an idea of what was going on in the scene. Despite this, Wichard and Allen enjoyed the theatrics of it all. “It's kind of [like] playing,” Allen says. “It's just the best kind of acting. You get to really explore and create. [...] It's the best job in the world.”

It’s perhaps a testament to the environment Larian and th🐲e actors cultivated that these scenes were not the most uncomfortable to film. In fact, when I asked Allen what she felt most nervous about recording, her answer completely surprised me.

“It’s ironic, we were so nervous about the intimacy and then we relaxed with that so easily,” she explains. “And then we found out we were doing this dance sequence for Wyll. They just chucked it at us, ‘Yeah, you know, you're gonna get a choreographer coming in to go through some moves with you and create a dance’.

“We were more nervous about this than the kissing. Give us the sex scenes any day, the dance is terrif🅺ying.”

In the end, it ended up being one of her favourite scenes to record - al🙈though it’s the polar opposite of her other favourite: “Some of the Orin sequences, where I got 🐼to stab Josh in the eyes and be incredibly evil,” she laughs. “You go from one extreme to the other.”

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Launch - And That Bear Scene

While there was p♌lenty of kissing and killing to be had in the studio, it was the former that got the most attention. Of course, Larian knew what it was doing when i💛t focused on one particular romance scene in its final showcase before launch day.

“You kind of expect the bear scene will get a lot of people talking,” recalls Lidstone. “I didn't expect my niece and nephew to message my wife about it. That was a weird thing.”

Banging the bear has cemented itself as part of Baldur’s Gate 3’s lore. In the run-up to release, it was all anyone could talk about. To this day, Halsin’s actor, Dave Jones, is inundated with bear jokes - and he didnꦯ’t think the scene would be that popular.

“Well, sex sells, doesn’t it?” Wichard laughs. “I’m very proud of my work - of all of my work. But it is bizarre when people are like, ‘I did love that scen🐻e’. I’m like… okay. I never really know what to say.”

Honestly, after a💞ll that fuss, the sex scene is way more graphic if you get🦩 Halsin to stay in elf form.

Now that hardcore fans have played throu♊gh the game multiple times, every romance scene has been picked apart and seen from every angle. Larian was q꧟uick to accommodate this, adding some new kissing animations into the game in its February patch.

The devs aren’t able to give me a rundown of what post-launch inclusions were planned before release - in some cases, there was some crossover - but the kisses did come as a direct result of fan feedb🥀ack.

“We actually do listen, we read the Reddit pages, we get fan feedback,” says Lidstone. “Not everything that gets posted, we're like,’Yeah, we're gonna do that next’. But we pay attention to people's concerns. Doing that whole additional kisses and hugs, I thought that was really, really sweet.”

For Wichard, Allen, and others in the Baldur’s Gate 3 cast, this meant they got to go back and shoot some more footage. “We've been lucky enough to actually be [brought back] after the game's release, which I didn't expect to happen,” says Allen. “I thought, ‘Oh, the game's over, how sad’. But we keep being called back in, which is amazing.

“I just had no idea how well it was going to do. You don't realise what a big scale it is until you have friends messaging you being like, ‘Oh my god, were you involved in this game? It's like my favourite game in the world.’”

Kisses In Baldur's Gate 3

On the other hand, Wichard had an inkling they were onto something special, having spent some time around the main cast. “Occasionally they'd have the doors open to the other mocap studios, and I’d walk by and hear, like, Tim [Downie, the actor who plays Gale] giving one of his amazing performances,” he says. “And when you look at the ensemble [...] you just see the wealth of talent that we had. And the scripts were so good, and I just remember thinking ‘God, there's no way it can’t be good’.”

In the end, Larian’s doubling down on mocap paid off. Baldur’s Gate 3 was both the first 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate game and first Larian game for so many players, as its promise of carefully crafted cutscenes, especially the romance scenes, encouraged many to give it a go. At a time when many studios are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:looking to outsource this work to AI, Larian is only ramping this up for its next♏ game.

“We certainly don't want to sit back and go, ‘Ah, we did it’,” says Lidstone. “That's the worst thing to do, especially for artists like ourselves, we want to do better. We want to improve on what we've done.

“I'd like to do more in the future, bigger scenes. The Gale [romance] scene was probably one of the most successful, I would love to have that level of fidelity for everything across the board.

“We learned so much making BG3 that we know where we had trouble. And we've spent the last couple of months thinking about that and what we can do to improve upon that so that we deliver something that's, I don't want to say better, but that the fans would want.”

What Comes After Baldur's Gate 3?

But Larian has some fans to win over. Because of the game’s success, there are many who would have preferred the studio stick with Baldur’s Gate 3, fleshing out characters who didn’t get as much material as others at launch. Instead, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it cancelled a planned DLC and is already 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:moving on with a different IP.

“A lot of people are understanding of us wanting to do that, and having more flexibility and allowing us to continue on within our kind of own universes,” says Caldwell. “I think people will really love what we're cooking up and the stories that we're going to tell.

“If they haven't played D:OS and D:OS 2, seeing how that relates to what we built upon in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can only kind of imagine the plethora of stories that we can tell, building on from what we've learnt from the last 20-plus years of Larian being in existence.”

Right now, I’m told the department is already looking at concept art for the next game, beginning to figure out how they c✤an make that wor𓆉k with Larian’s new focus on cinematics.

“We're really excited. We think you will be too,” says Caldwell. “And I think if you speak to any other team, it's obvious we're bubbling and ready to go. I know I certainly am.”