What's The Hype With "Baldur's Gate 3"?
And How it Won 6 Game Awards in One Night
Imma be real. I didn’t get the hype for this game. I bought it to play with a friend, we speedran through the character customization and then launched directly into an open world we were woefully under leveled and outclassed for.
I hated the whimsical autosave. The possibility of combat anytime you explored a new dungeon, whether you wanted to or not. The ludicrous nature of a combat sequence with you versus a tiny army of 20 (I fucked up at the Goblin camp and made everyone unhappy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
After logging in several more sessions and playing the game, how it’s meant to be “played” and absolutely how it is meant to be experienced, I get it.
Like, for every gripe I have, there are 20 positives.
The character designs. The dialogue and voice acting. The story open enough for interpretation but weird enough that you don’t feel railroaded into following the Main Quest and only the Main Quest.
I have collected so much in-game cheese.
I get to romance (and be fantastically rejected) by almost all the NPCs.
I spit literal flames and that’s really cool because I can’t do that in real life.
This is such a damn good game. Sorry to Hogwarts Legacy and PS5’s Spider-Man 2 for feeling like they were disrespected by the Game Awards, but if you compare apples to apples, Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is giving you a filet mignon steak to those appetizers. They’re all great games, well done, beautifully rendered, allowing a playscape in a realm we’re familiar with but different enough to feel like doing a new playthrough.
But Baldur’s Gate lets you do (almost) anything. Think on that carefully.
BG3 is drawn from the magical and fantastical realms Dungeons & Dragons has carefully crafted over the past decades.
There is no kink or slut shaming in this game. Death is a byproduct of having to live in a hostile world.
Your magical abilities are only as powerful as your intelligence to level them up canonically.
All the game mechanic details are awesome. You really do get a feel for how to play an actual D&D session with multiple friends in a campaign. There are cantrips, spell slots, attack and movements that use up your turn ability.
Which can seem overwhelming, but if your jazz is like Supergiant’s Transistor, Altus’ Persona, or Sid Meier’s Civilization VI— this combat system will make sense and even hopefully impress you with how detailed and cohesive it is.
OOH GIRL
Also the story.
Y’all know I’m a sucker for story.
The characters are phenomenal and mysterious and makes you want to betroth—er, protect them BUT the overall plot also keeps you entertained.
Why do I have a worm in my head? Why does it whisper sweet nothings into my gray matter? Who is the mysterious goddess that saves you and unironically looks like my ideal twink?
I DON’T KNOW. YET! AND THAT’S REALLY COOL.
In my playthrough, we have unceremoniously killed several key people integral to our Main Quest (not on purpose, more like we didn’t realize they could die and then they did and we didn’t want to reload a previous save so…RIP Halsin and those two humans in the cave. We lived though so that’s cool), we’re given tidbits and morsels of our party’s lore, and any interaction or action can be met with approval or not by our members.
I can’t even imagine the behemoth of an engine running the scripts for any and all possible outcomes.
There is a definitive goal that you can work towards and hotkeys galore to make accessing game menus easier, but the sheer scale of what you can do is impressive. It makes me want to try some sort of nuzlocke in my next run, or speedrun a romance or bits of the game itself to some sort of self-satisfaction or self-flagellation.
So yeah.
I haven’t finished a full playthrough, but just like McDonald’s Mantra: I am loving it.
You know what’s hard for me?
I remember being 17. Going to Babbage’s in the mall. And picking up my massive box of the original bakeries gate. It was 6 CD’s. I knew I was in for a time. After installing it for 2-3 hours (those were the days) I was enthralled by what really was a very open game especially at the time.
Baldurs gate 2? Same magic. Bigger more political world.
Baldurs gate 3 bounced off of me in early access. But I wanted to wait for the full release. And I jumped in.
And loved it. I was a hard sell too. I revere the original games as probably the best rpgs ever made. (Sorry cloud, Terra, crono).
Once you understand that “yes, you can do that”. It opens up. It has been so long since a game has said “break me.” Modern gaming has become obsessed with balance and making every challenge 1% harder than the last just to keep you on that dopamine treadmill of feeling like you’re constantly getting better. Along comes BG3 begging you to break it.
Too hard? Figure it out. Too many enemies? Have you tried bombs? Or talking?
Yes standing on top of 10 boxes does make you hard to hit. You mean I can just sneak in and assassinate that guy?
Wait I was meant to recruit that person?
It’s refreshing but you have to let go of the last decade of game design. A decade that programmed content meant to be tackled in a few specific ways and look like choice. And don’t get me wrong. Those games are good. But the paths are programmed. There’s the guns blazing or the stealth path. You can choose one of the other.
BG3 gives you a lot of choices by, instead of programming a players way through the game, the developers just programmed systems, characters, and encounters. It’s up to you to figure out how to flex those systems in those encounters. With those characters.
It is hopefully a wake up call and a breath of fresh air.
My sister continuously shares her adventures throughout Baulders Gate 3 and continues to BEG for me to play it.
Your review brought joy to my sister and upset when you mentioned the death of Halsin!
Continue what you’re doing, a fantastic read!