Larian Studios · Baldur's Gate 3
Eight live shows for one of the most anticipated games ever made, from a four-way video call to a Twitch-steered production inside a mediaeval castle.
The challenge
In 2020, Larian Studios had to put Baldur's Gate 3 in front of the world. Early Access was ready to announce and launch, and a fanbase with decades of attachment to the Baldur's Gate name was waiting to judge it. The pandemic had removed every stage, show floor and press event that would normally carry a moment like that.
So the brief was bigger than a stream. Larian needed to reach the fans they already had, announce and launch Early Access, show the game actually running, and make it unmistakable that Baldur's Gate 3 was being built by people who loved the genre and the source material as much as the audience did.
Working with Dreamtek, the answer became the Panel From Hell. It began as a live panel show and grew, edition by edition, into first-person recreations of the game itself, steered in real time by Twitch votes.
There was never a studio. There was an office, a run of extraordinary Belgian venues, and a production team that knew how to turn one into the other.
The castle
By the third edition the production moved into the vaults beneath Gravensteen castle in Ghent: multiple sets, roaming cameras, and the game world recreated live, in first person, reacting to the audience's Twitch votes as they came in, widely described as a first of its kind on Twitch.
A 12th-century monument offers mediaeval-grade power and connectivity, and it stays a working tourist attraction by day. So the crew's real day started when the castle closed: roll out of the crypt, run the cables, rehearse, tech-check, produce, then strike everything back out of sight before the doors reopened at nine the next morning. Every night, all week.
The approach
Production Solutions came in through Dreamtek as the on-site production team: the technical production, engineering, RF systems and multi-platform streaming were ours to design and deliver. We brought in DiverZe to run audio inside our team, and worked hand in hand with Larian's camera partner Leitmotiv, advising on the live workflow their cameras fed into.
The venues kept coming. One edition launched the game's Bard class as a heavy-metal band performance from a small Ghent theatre. And in July 2023, the final Release Showcase went out from Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent's thousand-year-old former abbey, in front of a live audience, launching the game itself.
It's thanks to Tobin and his crew's expertise that we were able to realise our Panel From Hell Livestreams; no matter how big our scope was, they always delivered.
The kit
The series was heavily reported across gaming media and did exactly what it set out to do: it gave Larian a voice through COVID, and showed the community that the people making Baldur's Gate 3 were fans of it too.
By the end we were no longer just a supplier on a stream. We were considered part of the Larian family. Both Production Solutions and Tobin Taylor are credited in the game.
And somewhere between the castle and the credits, the paperwork from the biggest freelance job Tobin had ever done quietly turned into a company. Production Solutions exists because of this project.
Planning a launch, a show, or an idea that does not fit inside a normal venue? Contact us to talk it through.
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