Path to Menzoberranzan is the most ambitious modding project for Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3. Following a sizeable pause in development, the hundreds of volunteers working on the game-sized mod project have reorganised to eliminate waste, more efficiently create, and stomp out scope creep that’s so often seen in modding projects.
While development continues, the Path to Menzoberranzan team are following in the footsteps of Larian Studios with a similar early access release structure. As more of the mod is completed, more of the mod will be made playable, unlike some mods which spend a decade in development without any playable builds made public.
The first playable vertical slide for the game-sized mod will release in an Alpha build later this year. “What I can say right now is it will go through pre-production, through polish, through testing, of course, but it will lack some specific details,” project leader Gregory ‘Lotrich’ Barak told FRVR in a recent interview.
Path to Menzoberranzan’s alpha will essentially boil down to an early version of the game’s tutorial section. Just like how Baldur’s Gate 3 opens with the Nautiloid, the upcoming mod will follow in a similar vein, offering a condensed introduction scenario that introduces players to the world, some of its characters, and the vibe of its story.
“What we want to give our fans right now is just the foundation,” Lotrich continued. “We plan to give our Alpha the size of The Nautiloid.” This will give players their first real taste of the community’s biggest mod yet, although it will “lack some specific details” such as some voice lines, cinematics, and music tracks. “Besides that, full Nautiloid, kinda like Nautiloid,” Lotrich told us.
Fans who played Baldur’s Gate 3 during early access are aware that the official introduction of the game is quite changed from its original incarnation. It’s much smaller, less meandering, and feels less like a vertical slice. For Path to Menzoberranzan, the team is not aiming for the more complex introduction of early access BG3, but for the tightness of the finished version.
“The scope of it will be around the size of the final version of BG3,” added community manager Andrew Simone. “At least that’s what we’re hoping. It’s gonna be an early view at our tutorial level, but as Lotrich said, it’s going to be unfinished so there are going to be a few things unpolished, a few things that aren’t quite ready yet, but it’s an alpha, it’s a demo, that’s what it’s meant to be”.
The main purpose of the Alpha is to let the team know if they need to right the ship. While a completely original, fan-made volunteer project, the team is being propped up by an active Patreon, and nobody on the team wants to disappoint. The Alpha’s purpose is feedback, something all projects need, even passion projects. “The feedback to that is going to be really, really important to helping us figure out what we can improve and what went well,” Simone explained.
Path to Menzoberranzan is a colossus of a mod project with hundreds of developers, a structured team of volunteers, and an abundance of love for Larian’s RPG. It’s also not the only mod project in the works for the game with another custom campaign, Mad Mage’s Domain, currently in development with its own huge collection of developers.
At the time of publication, there is no public release date for the Path to Menzoberranzan Alpha, although it is poised to launch later this year. Additionally, the team is always looking for more developers to join the project as development continues on the huge, game-sized custom campaign.
