Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound

Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound was to be a video game, the third entry in the Dungeons & Dragons Baldur's Gate series, as the sequel to Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. It was to be developed by Black Isle Studios, going by the codenames FR6 and Project Jefferson. The game was announced in 2002 and was said to use the D&D 3rd Edition ruleset. The game was set to use a new 3D engine based on BioWare's Aurora Engine, itself a successor to the Infinity Engine used for the first two Baldur's Gate games.[1]

Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound
Developer(s)	Black Isle Studios
Publisher(s)	Interplay Entertainment
Designer(s)	Josh Sawyer Damien Foletto
Series	Baldur's Gate
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	Cancelled
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

The game appeared to have been cancelled in 2003, though Interplay made no such announcement, when its engine was announced to have been used for the planned game Van Buren by Black Isle Studios. However, with Van Buren's cancellation, the Jefferson engine was never used for any game. The game's motto would have been: "You cannot kill guilt".[2]

Rumors about the development of The Black Hound continued up until 2012, when Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition was announced. The developers, Beamdog, revealed that they planned on making Baldur's Gate III, but did not initially reveal whether it would be a continuation of The Black Hound.[3][4][5] Trent Oster from Beamdog later clarified that if they were to release a Baldur's Gate III, it would not be based on The Black Hound, but would instead be an original story.[6]

In 2019, Larian Studios announced that it was developing Baldur's Gate III, but have not mentioned any connection to the previously planned Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound game.

Plot

Setting

The game was set to take place in the fictional Forgotten Realms continent of Faerûn. It would have been set in the Dalelands and allowed players to travel mostly in the area of Archendale. Players would have also been able to travel to key areas in Archendale such as the White Ford, the Church of Lathander and bases of the Red Wizards of Thay. Other areas in the Dalelands featured would have been Battledale, Deepingdale as well as an area of North Sembia. Though it is possible that Baldur's Gate would have appeared in the game as well in a cameo appearance, this remains unconfirmed and highly unlikely.

Characters

None of the characters from the previous Baldur's Gate games would have returned, the cast would have been completely original as well as the story, although characters from the Icewind Dale series would have returned. The reason for this is Icewind Dale was released after Interplay lost the initial D&D license. An original NPC would have been Stellaga Brightstar, a priestess in the Church of Lathander. The game would have revolved around the hunt for May Farrow, the evil cleric who killed a black hound. The Black Hound was the representation of the selfish acts of the game's main antagonist and would appear to the player through circumstance and remind him of his actions throughout the game.[7]

The main faction in the game would have been the Archenriders, who are also the first faction encountered by the player, the Church of Lathander would have been a faction at the same importance. The Red Wizards of Thay, the Sembian Silver Ravens, the Malarite People of Black Blood and the Elves of Deepingdale would have been other major factions in the game that the player would have been allowed to side with. The characters from Icewind Dale that would have come would have been the gnome, Maralie Fiddlebender and the Druid, Iselore who would have appeared in a cameo. The Harpers and the Zhentarim would have also appeared. The Zhentarim would have been seen for part of the game as the Black Network.

Story

May Farrow and her gang of raiders have spent weeks tracking down the black hound, the essence of May's guilt for unleashing a great evil. The player character is resting by the firelight in an old barn to hide from the storm outside when a black hound arrives and after being shot twice by an arrow, it cries one last time before it dies on the player lap. May almost kills the player, accusing him of being in league with the dog (meaning she thinks the player character is another essence of her guilt) and almost kills the player character (PC) before the Riders of Archendale save the PC. They question the PC, take the PC to the magistrate, who question the PC further and inform the PC not to leave the areas of North Sembia, Archendale, Battledale and Deepingdale. Whenever the player then approaches somebody with great guilt, the black hound appears to him and eventually the players actions make the player the essence of guilt throughout the four areas mentioned above. As the player unravels more secrets, he learns that he can't kill guilt, thus he cannot kill the black hound or what he has become (the player can physically die, but people won't forget about what the player did). Eventually, he learns the tale of a widowed farmer's wife, taking great guilt in her husband's death as for some reason she believes it is her fault, she tries to resurrect him. She succeeds but finds him to be an abomination and cannot stop him, despite him being very weak at the time. Through the course of the game, the farmer is growing stronger and stronger off the guilt absorbed by the black hound through the player. The player learns of this wife being May Farrow, who believes killing the hound would be a way to stop the farmer, the hound however latched its soul onto the player and uses him as a tunnel to channel guilt to the farmer and as a guide to the world.[8]

The game would not have been a sequel to Baldur's Gate II in terms of story but rather gameplay, however, it did continue part of story of Icewind Dale II through joinable NPC's, specifically Maralie Fiddlebender, who would have been an adult in the story. There was a hound featured in the storybook of Icewind Dale II of which Maralie narrated, according to the developers, the game would have revolved around this hound. The game was also revealed to have a connection to another one of Black Isle Studios games, Project Jackson. Project Jackson was then revealed to be Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II. This connection was unknown and as of current, there is only one connection known: a Forgotten Realms setting. It is possible that there could be a story connection due to both the Harpers and the Zhentarim being in the game, but this was never revealed by any developer on the project. It was only stated that the projects were related once in the entire history of the project.[9]

Gameplay

Game dynamics

Several interviews shed light on gameplay components with the most prominently being conducted with Winterwind Productions It would have been built on the same fundamentals as the previous Baldur's Gate games updated to fit the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition ruleset, meaning it would have used pausable realtime gameplay. Damien Foletto, a developer on the game, hoped to use elements from other games such as The Temple of Elemental Evil. The game was not to be turn-based because it would have had a significant production and marketing cost, requiring a wider audience base to be profitable. The developers intended to draw deeply from a wide variety of D&D source books to offer a diverse selection of weapons. Not all of the weapons were going to be available, but most of them would have been and the player would have been able to do "crazy" things with any weapon. As in Fallout 2, no single weapon would have been better than other weapons, and each weapon would have had its own traits.[10]

Progression

Originally, players would have only been able to advance up to level 5. This was later changed to level 8. This was for two reasons: for the player to be able to level up to higher levels in the sequels and for the player to use more strategy. The game was originally planned to have players focus less on leveling up and more on using their brains to solve problems presented within the computer game. While there would have been many D&D character classes and races to choose from, the low level cap would necessitate the exclusion of prestige classes.[11]

Karma

The game was said to be truly non-linear, where the player has freedom to visit any location and perform any action they wanted, keeping in mind that there will always be repercussions for the player's actions in the game. Failed/incomplete quests would have had consequences as the game progressed. Unlike previous games, the player was able to switch between alignments depending on the actions in the game. This would have also required the player character to make difficult decisions which could affect his reputation with one group in order to maintain his reputation with another.[12]

Party

CNPCs would only join a player's party if they agreed with the player's actions. Acting contrary to the intentions and philosophies of CNPCs could result in them leaving the party, attacking the player character, or expressing their discontent in dialogue. Player characters possessing a high enough charisma could mitigate the risk of defection. Just like the original Baldur's Gate, the player could switch freely between their character and CNPCs in their party. Continuing to act against the will of CNPCs could result in the player losing the ability to play as them even if they remained within the party as a follower. Conversations would always be conducted from the perspective of the player character, but CNPCs could interject in conversation depending on applicable skills, charisma scores, and personalities. Properly leveling up the charisma levels of CNPCs could also reduce the risk of potentially violent conflict within the party.[13]

Player character belonging to the wizard and warlock classes would have access to familiars and animal companions. It's still not known whether familiars and animal companions would be handled as traditional CNPCs or with a new set of mechanics.

Reputation

There would have been several types of reputations in The Black Hound: Regional Reputation, Factional Reputation, Fame/Infamy, and Epithets. The first three all have positive and negative scales. Some characters may only care about positive reputation in an area, others might only care about negative reputation in an organization, and others might try to balance a number of reputations when they speak to the player. Regional Reputation is a positive/negative counter that depends on the actions the character performs in a specific region. Not only will Factional Reputation affect dealings with certain organizations, it will also affect your dealings with the allies and enemies of those organizations. Fame and Infamy would have been awarded to the player character depending on their actions. Their reputation would be displayed in epithets.[14]

Development

As revealed by J.E. Sawyer, the game's development history was adjacent with that of Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter - Trials of the Luremaster and Icewind Dale II and did not have a full development team on it until the end of all development of Icewind Dale II. Development on the game had started in late 2000 and early 2001. Jefferson was scheduled to be released in Christmas 2003, but was canceled in mid-2003 for an extension of Interplay's license to release D&D games on the console, the game was about 80% done, according to a developer on the project, before being canceled; the result of this was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II. The Interplay license to release Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games on the console expired in 2008, when Interplay was recovering from their financial woes.[15]

Jefferson Engine

The game was going to use the Jefferson Engine, which was Black Isle Studios continuation of the Infinity Engine. They had decided on using a new engine because to them the Infinity Engine was a mess and was being extensively overused, as it had already been used in six projects. The Jefferson Engine was said to be a very powerful 3D engine that would have incorporated everything from the previous Baldur's Gate games, the Temple of Elemental Evil and some elements from Fallout and put them into one. The engine would have allowed armor worn by the player to be shown in the game. The ability to import characters from one game to another was going to be available as well.

Trilogy

The game was intended to be part of a trilogy of video games; The Black Hound was planned to be released in 2004, and the other parts were set to be released in early 2005 and late 2005. This was in hopes that Wizards of the Coast would renew their PC D&D license. Interplay did, however, use the Jefferson Engine for the canceled Fallout 3, Van Buren, of which only a tech-demo was released.[16]

References

1. Jon "Buck" Birnbaum (13 February 2007). "The Black Hound Interview". Gamebanshee.com. Archived from the original on 5 February 2010. Retrieved 15 September 2009.
2. Joseph Avery-North (4 February 2005). "An Interview with Damien Foletto". Winterwind-Productions.com. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
3. "Baldur's Gate III, Neverwinter Nights II in Development?". IGN. Retrieved 2 April 2007.
4. Tom Bramwell (2 December 2008). "Atari to revisit Baldur's, Test Drive". EuroGamer. Archived from the original on 16 December 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2009.
5. Smee, Andrew (7 February 2010). "Mass Effect 3 & Beyond". IGN UK. Archived from the original on 30 March 2010. Retrieved 9 March 2010.
6. Oster, Trent [@TrentOster] (26 April 2012). "I think Josh is doing well over at Obsidian. If a #BG3 were to happen we would go another direction than the Black Hound" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
7. "TBH Characters". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
8. "TBH Story". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
9. "TBH and Icewind Dale 2 connections". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
10. "TBH Game Dynamics". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
11. "Why The Black Hound had a Level 8 cap". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
12. "The Black Hound's Karma system". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
13. "CNPC's in Baldur's Gate 3". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
14. "The reputation system of Baldur's Gate III". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
15. "Why Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound got canceled". Retrieved 23 June 2011.
16. "Projects FR6 and Van Buren". Retrieved 23 June 2011.