Baldur’s Gate 3’s iconic Moonrise Towers was almost twice its final size, but director Swen Vincke says “the game was getting too big so we had to cut that”

Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3 sends you through Moonrise Towers, a base for the cult of the Absolute and the intermittent headquarters for several key villains. According to director and Larian boss Swen Vincke, this key area was once designed as two individual towers, potentially doubling the size of an already hefty dungeon, but had to be cut down during development. Spoilers for Act 2 ahead. 

In a new interview with BAFTA, Vincke reveals “Moonrise Towers used to be two towers, and we shipped with only one tower. For a long time there was actually the ruins of the second tower, and then we removed that also so it’s only one tower. Originally, we planned on having two towers.” 

Why did Larian cut the second tower of Moonrise Towers, which is still somewhat confusingly called Moonrise Towers plural? It was “purely production,” Vincke says. Believe it or not, “the game was getting too big so we had to cut that out.” 

The fact that Larian could cut this tower but still leave ruins behind suggests to me that it would have been a bespoke space of its own rather than a smaller attachment to the facility we ended up with. Moonrise Towers is built a bit like a castle, so Larian could’ve theoretically added another literal stone tower to the same base. But if the devs wanted to – and this is easy for me to say – it seems like it wouldn’t have created too much work to leave a ruined stone tower as set dressing that can’t be explored, especially if the asset was already made.

Vincke’s description seems bigger than that. It sounds like the issue was making two fully realized towers. Perhaps the platform connected to the mainland via bridge would’ve been expanded to accommodate yet another massive base. 

However many towers it has, Moonrise Towers remains one of the highlights of Act 2. You can access the area in multiple ways to begin with, and there are likewise several ways to infiltrate the tower itself. I have fond memories of my Paladin essentially kicking the door in and getting Gale to sort out the crowds of guards with a few trusty fireballs, and then sending Astarion skulking along support beams in search of hidden paths and treasures. Which is to say nothing of the climactic boss fight with Ketheric, which introduces a whole other area attached to the tower. On reflection, maybe two towers would’ve been too much.  

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