Baldur's Gate 3 expansion sounds unlikely - and if it happens, it'd take a long time to arrive

Might Baldur's Gate 3 get an expansion? Those hoping to play a further adventure, post-level 12 - the cap for the RPG - might have their fingers crossed, but it sounds like it's unlikely to happen given what we've just heard from the developer.

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PC Gamer reports that despite the theoretical potential for an expansion that allows characters to level up beyond the current cap of level 12 in Baldur's Gate 3, Larian founder Swen Vincke very much played down any possible such outing.

In an interview, Vincke told PC Gamer:

"Honestly, we haven't started on an expansion."

Vincke added:

"[Level 12-20] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you're going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly ... Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort."

As PC Gamer also points out, there are problems not just in the mobs that might be faced, but the kind of spells high-level D&D provides to players, such as the very open-ended 'wish' spell (the kind of thing a DM needs to interpret in context, ideally).

The other complication with an expansion would be how to pick up from the ending of Baldur's Gate 3, considering that it has a massive amount of possible permutations - and that would be a lot of effort to build off.

Due to this, if there was to be an expansion, players would be waiting "for a long time" Vincke assures us.

Now, notably there is no direct denial that Larian won't ever consider making an expansion. Given the success of Baldur's Gate 3, which has surprised even the developer, there has to be a temptation here - and Vincke does mention working on an expansion as a possibility (at least to explore whether it might be feasible).

On balance, though, we wouldn't bank on this happening given the overall vibe of the interview.