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The companions who join you on Baldur’s Gate 3’s epic journey along the Sword Coast are a wonderful bunch, but one character definitely got the short end of the stick: Wyll. The Warlock was famously rewritten ahead of the game’s launch in 2023 when developer Larian decided his story in the early access release wasn’t quite working. Some things stayed the same, such as his character design, Warlock status, and where the player would ultimately recruit him, but his story was completely revamped, his voice actor was changed, and he was given ties to other characters, such as Tiefling party member Karlach.
In an ongoing Reddit AMA, the team at Larian provided some insight into the process and also explained why Wyll has notably less content than other party members as a result. It turns out Wyll’s story was finally coming together right when most other members of the player’s traveling party were being solidified, and some storylines the team planned on implementing him into ended up being cut. Senior writer Kevin VanOrd also explains that he had health issues during some of those iteration phases, which meant that he lost precious time that was meant to be spent fleshing out Wyll’s role. Overall, it sounds like VanOrd loves the character but wishes he could have done more with him.
As you probably know, we weren’t connecting with Wyll’s Early Access recruitment and initial questing, so we started over at a point when most of the other companion stories were fairly solid. A lot of decisions came later in development than was ideal – and there was a key situation near Baldur’s Gate that I intended to heavily involve Wyll in (the Red War College) that got cut. That meant back to the drawing board again. We eventually tied him to Duke Ravengard and started to work on that element of his arc just in time for me to get unexpectedly ill. I was out of the office for quite a while, and again after the epilogue’s release.
I think that Ansur’s lair was Swen’s idea – we did have the resources for a standalone dungeon, so we got to work on tying Wyll to the Wyrmway, but I couldn’t get more than a dungeon boss out of it. Once the situations were in place, that was that – I had to start writing them.
Wyll’s content is sparser than I’d have liked as a result. He’s also split into two stories, really – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and that might have been a mistake in hindsight. I also wish I could [have] given him a stronger endpoint – it always bugged me that he can end up just as he started, as the Blade of Frontiers, without any meaningful difference. All that said, I love the Blade and I am really proud of him, his sincerity, his good nature, and his eager heroism. I’m truly sorry I didn’t give you more quality time with him.
In the years since Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian has patched in some new content for Wyll and other companions, but he has always felt like he was a few steps behind the rest of the crew. But based on VanOrd’s explanation, it sounds like the character was mostly a victim of circumstance, though that may not satisfy his diehards who have watched other characters get more scenes, interactions, and love over the course of the game.
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