“I think the biggest problem that we have faced in regards to the overarching story is that this project is called Path To Menzoberranzan, and it starts off in Athkatla,” Tomobamba says.
“Which is about 6000 kilometers away – to the south – of Menzoberranzan,” the narrative design coordinator and creative lead of this Baldur’s Gate 3 custom campaign modding project continues. “Menzoberranzan is also underground,” he adds.
So, the task facing Tomobamba, project leader and level design team leader Lotrich, and the rest of Path To Menzoberranzan team, in their quest to put out a demo of their ambitious custom campaign in a matter of months time, isn’t a small one. And that’s putting aside the fact that it’s coming together only about half a year or so after Larian first released official modding tools for BG3 with Patch 7.
Modders were quick to find ways to modify this toolkit in their own ways, creating versions like Moonglasses which are designed to give people the capability to create more complex mods for the game – ones involving the likes of entire custom campaigns and quests. Lotrich was there right from the beginning of this movement, experimenting with his own custom maps and managing to re-create locations like Waukeen’s Promenade from Baldur’s Gate 2.
After this, Lotrich, a “a huge fan of Baldur’s Gate 2 and Drow culture since childhood”, tells me they “started to create a silly project”. From there, they recount: “Tom reached out to me, and showcased his experience with film directing, writing, etc. We had the same mind and ideas, though I was more of a tech guy, so Tom started to work on the storyline. We decided to create a new story featuring Athkatla and Menzoberranzan.”
Tomobamba tells me that they were drawn to the project in the same manner that they believe numerous other members of the modding team were – stumbling across Lotrich’s regular Reddit posts about their BG3 modding work and progress. “I have been playing Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal on and off for the past 25 years,” he says, “To see Waukeen’s Promenade in its beautifully-designed glory in this amazing Baldur’s Gate 3 engine – this game that I played as a 2D top-down map back in, I don’t know, 2001 – it just blew my head off and it was incredible.
“I feel like I have been training and working towards this one mod for the past 25 years”, Path To Menzoberranzan’s creative lead adds, “I know the lore of the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2’s storylines I know like the back of my hand.”
The team the pair have played a big role in bringing together to work on the project, as you can imagine, is full of big fans of classic Baldur’s Gate like Lotrich and Tomobamba are, but the latter says that’s far from all each addition has brought to the table. “I’ve been working as a TV producer and director for many years, I’ve been writing things for a long while,” he tells me, “I’m really excited to bring the experience I have into a project like this, and I’m really, really excited because this doesn’t feel like an amateur production.
“We have managed to get the interest of some incredibly experienced people from all over the world, who have experience within specific industries that we can lean upon. We have people who’ve worked in video games, we have people that’ve worked in film production, we have creative writers, we have modders, we have mappers, all with experience working on projects not too dissimilar to this. So, it feels like [we’re] not running a team of amateurs, these are very much dead-set professionals who are making something incredible.”
Naturally, this hasn’t meant working on the project so far hasn’t presented challenges. Lotrich picks out animations as the toughest task they and their side of the mod have faced to this point, explaining: “those are very hard to create, but every day our team gets closer to understanding how to make them better and [more] efficient”.
Meanwhile, Tomobamba cites communicating and staying on the same page as the rest of the team as something he’s personally had to work around, due to being based in Australia. “Everyone else pretty much lives in the northern hemisphere,” he says, “So, to get on everyone else’s time zone – because I’m not gonna expect people to get onto my time zone – I’m sometimes going at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning just to have a meeting with some people.”
He adds that he and Lotrich are “constantly talking in our DMs”, and this has led to having to work around another quirk of being a team from all over the world. “English isn’t [Lotrich’s] first language,” he explains, “So, sometimes we have to find the word that he’s looking for.”
As for the practicalities of what Path To Menzoberranzan will look like, the team seems to have a good handle on what it wants its demo to look like, but is generally keeping its cards close to its chest when it comes to the specifics of what the full version and its story will entail. “Our aim is two big locations: Waukeen’s Promenade – [that’s] gonna be much bigger than in BG2, for example the houses and buildings surrounding it will be accessible – and Irenicus Dungeon,” Lorich says of the demo/beta, adding there’ll also be a “lot of small locations”.
Gameplay-wise, they say you can anticipate: “New combat, story, completely new companions with their own VAs, and romances – only a little part of the romances, same as romances in Act 1 of BG3 – new items, quests, and some completely unique mechanics that will highly affect gameplay in Athkatla”. They do at little teasing in terms of that last one, saying: “What can it be? Good question, I’m sure you can figure it out if you’ve played BG2.”
You won’t be able to bring along the party for the original game, with Lotrich explaining that this is because the team don’t want to use AI or run afoul of any copyright law. He doesn’t provide much detail about what you can expect from the mod’s new companions, though, aside from saying the team’s hard at work on them and that “we want players to FEEL the companions’ emotions”.
In terms of the full version’s story, Tomobamba adds: “To try and find a narrative that doesn’t feel contrived has been an interesting journey in itself. It was one of the things I was working on for several weeks, just trying to get this story to make sense. I don’t want the player to arrive in Athkatla, and then be told ‘Oh, by the way, the story isn’t here, it’s somewhere else, you’ve got to go now’.
“Stories are all about journeys, or some of the best stories are about journeys, and this story is very much a journey to an unknown place. So, to tell that properly and to work alongside writers to help me tell that properly has been quite the achievement, and we’re really proud of what we’ve made. It will parallel certain stories that have already been told, it will parallel certain journeys that people have already made, and it will end up in this most iconic, terrifying Drow capital.
“Who knows, you might die when you get there,” he jokes, “No, you’re not gonna die. I’m really excited for the story that we’ve told, I think it’s going to be very compelling and it’s going to be quite a unique experience.”
fbq('init', '1749355691872662');
fbq('track', 'PageView'); window.facebookPixelsDone = true;
window.dispatchEvent(new Event('BrockmanFacebookPixelsEnabled')); }
window.addEventListener('BrockmanTargetingCookiesAllowed', appendFacebookPixels);