Baldur's Gate 3 is an Unforgettable Adventure in Existential Crisis Therapy
I am on the precipice of not touching Baldur’s Gate 3 again for at least a month.
There is finally tolerable weather outside — the deathly heat has subsided for now — and I can, at last, sit at my desk comfortably. In just three hours from now, Bethesda’s seminal Starfield launches for those with early access, making that tiny collection of time my best shot for putting thoughts to document regarding Baldur’s Gate 3. I must explain that my benching of Larian Studio’s absolutely shocking industry-wide hit is not a slight on the game in any way. I’m obsessed with it.
The triumphant return to a beloved franchise is a seemingly endless well of fine details and experiences. One that I am certain to continue in due time. The sea of information to digest, stories to pull apart like string cheese, and conversations to experience across a myriad of depth levels are exhilarating. However, if I were to play Baldur’s Gate 3 to completion (my version of that term) before moving on to the next game on my wishlist, it would be early 2024 before diving into other things.
This year hasn’t been anything short of dizzying for gamers, and with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, I made the assumption many others did; that only a few people outside of Dungeons and Dragons fans, original Baldur’s Gate aficionados, and CRPG enthusiasts would even think twice about playing it. Much to the delight of niche nerds everywhere — and the finance department of Larian Studios and Wizards of the Coast — Baldur’s Gate 3 quickly caught fire online and spurred on an adoption of a game generally reserved for a small (but dedicated) fan-base. It was huge. Almost immediately. In part due to the memes arriving on social platforms, but largely because Larian Studios is essentially the most intricate and studied studio making video games today.
Larian’s previous outings in the genre included titles in their home-brewed Divinity: Original Sin franchise. These were astounding projects, that almost single-handedly revived the CRPG genre for an audience cycling through the original rulers over and over again ad nauseam. The only downside … it was original. Baldur’s Gate 3 exemplifies all things that Larian has learned over the course of the last decade making and adapting Divinity to their player’s desires. Except that it comes with instant recognition thanks to being part of the Dungeons and Dragons universe; a pop culture inflated franchise in recent years.
No longer is D&D just for demon worshippers, hyper nerds, or your parents storytime around holiday dinner tables. During the influx of adoration for television shows like Stranger Things, the pandemic flushed out a lot of need for hobbyist exploration, time consumption, and escapism. Coming out of lockdown, Dungeons and Dragons was the biggest it had almost ever been.
So, when you pair that with one of modern video games’ most prolific development teams, you get what some are calling “the best game ever made”, and it shows.
Those that didn’t hop on the hype in the first few days of Baldur’s Gate 3’s full launch, quickly picked up on the chatter and joined along in the chanting. Currently, it is the highest-rated game ever made on PC. This is a D&D, turn-based, story-driven role-playing game.
Larian has been developing Baldur’s Gate 3 in the public eye for years. Launching into Early Access in order to sublet their design needs, adjust for feedback, all to ensure that players had the game they were looking for when it hit version 1.0 in the future. It is nearly impossible to release a piece of entertainment that people do not like when you have been building the entire thing strictly around what they are telling you they like over the course of nearly half a decade.
I splashed in the pool of Baldur’s Gate 3 when the Early Access launched. It was almost the entirety of the first chapter, minus the quality control and gameplay implementations that would be designed and developed over the next few years.
Ultimately, I backed off early knowing that a return to Baldur’s Gate (for me) would be like heading back to a summer camp that has nearly a complete stranglehold on my nostalgia and positive gaming memories.
We quote a lot of media in my family, and that doesn’t stop at video games. Other than some quirky weird one-offs, the Baldur’s Gate franchise occupies the majority of our cache of zingers and references. It was an all-hands obsession. Luckily for me — and my brother — we were raised by D&D-loving gaming parents, and — much like the way we were taught how to swim — it was the deep end for us almost immediately. Neither parent was interested in giving us the slow-play introduction to RPGs, and it made us the only kids we knew playing text-based adventures, early Neverwinter, Diablo, and of course Baldur’s Gate games.
That’s just the lead-in.
Cut to August of 2023,
In the middle of an exhaustive year of video games, and I am completely aware that the mixture of Larian and Baldur’s Gate would delight me into a near-catatonic state.
When you boot up BG3, you are greeted with a story dump that means the world to those who are familiar with the lore and universe of Dungeons and Dragons and gives off huge WTF vibes for those not. Which, is not a bad thing in this scenario.
After either spending an hour or two in the character creator or picking one of the established party characters, you embark on a nearly wide-open path to curing yourself of a mind-flayer parasite that has been embedded into your head.
The world you’re (literally) plopped into isn’t completely free to roam. Baldur’s Gate 3 is made up of pretty large maps with hard edges and multiple ways to leave one to enter another. Within that map, you are free — with or without consequences — to go where you please. It is as if your folks brought you to a gigantic ranch filled with minuscule and gigantic things to do in each pasture, and tells you to have fun. You can only muck about in a single portion at a time, but there is an unnerving amount of things to do in each.
Warning: if you are a completionist … it is wildly encouraged to either curve your addiction to complete each and every single thing, or quit every other hobby you have in the meantime. Actually, scratch that second part. Unless you scum save files, you are bound to make mistakes throughout your adventures in BG3, some of these consist of changes to relationships and the world itself that you can never undo. So, my suggestion is to make choices you feel like you (or if you are role-playing, your character) would make in the moment, and try your hardest to ignore the potential outcomes you may have missed out on.
Save those divergent paths for a second play-through. It will keep your mental anguish to a minimum.
Still, even after letting go of choice manipulation, scour the map for nearly every intractable thing. Driven by FOMO, my character is frantic in their searching and adamant in their exploration. And, the only persistent saving I do is to avoid potential long walks of shame back to places or battles that wipe my entire team.
Baldur’s Gate 3 consists of numerous reasons to sink its hooks into quite a large variety of gamers. If you’re into a story, there is almost nothing as intricate and well-written as this. If you are more of a fan of relationships and character development, the party system and its cast make for a diverse group of personalities. You can build connections with these characters in what I can only describe as the most intimate I’ve ever seen personal in-game conversations — multiplied to the empathetic moon by some of the best voice-acting performances in gaming history — and even establish love bonds. If you lean more towards tactically maniacal in your gaming profile, the combat in BG3 is the closest thing you will ever get to the tabletop game in which it derived its setting. The depth of Baldur’s Gate 3 is as deep and complicated as you wish to make it.
All that being said, I would still suggest BG3 to gamers looking for a straightforward RPG experience. You can easily run through this game without paying too much attention to the vast pool of toys scattered around you. If you want to be that person that just sits in the hot tub while everyone else is fucking around in the pool, you’re more than welcome to. Unfortunately, you will have to participate and learn how to be useful in BG3’s combat. This turn-based system has a lot going on, and if your interest lies in simplicity, that may come down to the classes that you choose to put in your party.
For myself, and many of my peers, we arrived at the shores of BG3 with an understanding of how the systems in this game were going to work. Whether it be general video game rules, or Dungeons and Dragons-specific rules. Gratefully, the learning curve for those new to the sandbox this game plays within is pretty low. Much like the pen-and-paper game, Baldur’s Gate 3 works splendidly because the world does exactly what you expect it to depending on how you interact with it. It works alongside general logic and does all it can to keep the rails on.
I remember in 2017, soaking up the reaction and feeling of playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. The biggest takeaway was that this new sandbox was “realistic.” By that I mean; if you blew air into a sail it would propel you. If you set fire to wood or grass it would burn. If you pushed a snowball down a mountain peak it would accrue size and gain momentum. The environment was authentic to how our monkey brains use logic. Baldur’s Gate 3 does the same thing. Harking back to a previous paragraph, this makes the experience of playing BG3 as intricate or as simple as you want it to be.
Obviously, this isn’t the place to get into nitty-gritty details regarding the working gears under the lid of this game, but I wanted to describe a feeling, a natural attraction, and an obsession that has swept through what was already going to be an unforgettable year for video game fans. This whole editorial is simply a wordy way to try and solidify the experience that I have had with Baldur’s Gate 3.
Regardless of how much of my affection towards this game comes from nostalgia tea being brewed by adoration for both Larian Studios and Baldur’s Gate, I can safely say that this may be the best game to come out this year. It is also dangerously close to being one of the best games I have ever had the privilege of playing.
From character creation to minute one, through to hour 100, Baldur’s Gate 3 has spun me along a vivid and enticing journey. I have howled with laughter, jumped with fright, cursed in frustration, yelped in panic, groaned with relief, and gasped in discovery. It is simultaneously the greatest water-cooler game of all time and an experience I wish to keep to myself. I want to share it with everyone I know yet at the same time will try my hardest to vault as many details as I can.
If you happen to be one of the few holding out on Baldur’s Gate 3 — no shade meant — I highly suggest giving it a try. Larian’s rebirth of this beloved franchise is going to be on the lips and keyboards of everyone in this industry for years to come.
Aside — if the number “3" in the title scares you, let me quell your concern. Each Baldur’s Gate game has little if nothing to do with the previous, and it mainly uses the franchise name to invoke uses of some titular characters (which are properly re-introduced), taking place in a specific region of the Dungeons and Dragons universe, and for commercial recognition. You will not feel ill-prepared if this is your first outing in the franchise.
Wrapping up my thoughts, as we are now just 60 seconds or so away from the launch of Starfield — I cannot wait to return, to start over, to complete a journey that I will not soon forget. And I hope you dip your toes in because once the serenity of the water takes you, it is just a countdown to prune-fingers from there.
Sincerely,
Earp
