I don't think anyone expected Larian Studios to take this year by the horns with Baldur's Gate 3. Much less churning remarkable mainstream success and universal critical acclaim to make headlines as GOTY. By the time I'm writing this, it already surpassed Tears of the Kingdom for being the highest rated game of 2023 on Metacritic, maintaining an active player-base which peaked over 875,000 players, became the most pre-ordered game on PSN (beating Insomniac's upcoming Spider-Man 2), and spawning an Elden Ring sized discourse amongst the industry over whether the bar of quality Larian laid down here is economically viable to expect. The Elden Ring comparisons aren't strangely too off-base because just like what Elden Ring had accomplished for open-worlds, Baldur's Gate 3 achieved the same effect for role-playing games moving forward. Larian has done something truly unthinkable with crafting an immensely engaging CRPG with production values comparable to any mainstream AAA video game in the market right now… and making it a colossal commercial success worthy of all the accolades it received.
What we have on our hands here is the western equivalent to Dragon Quest XI. If ya know, ya know. But for the tragically unenlightened, essentially, a grand cohesion of classical genre design sensibilities crossed with the modern technical know-how we’ve become accustomed to nowadays. Marking itself not just a “Greatest Hits Collection RPG”, or y’know, “a game for the older fans”, or, “for people starving a true return to pure BioWare role-playing form”, but a wider encapsulation for what the role-playing genre has accomplished. How far we’ve gone since the archaic days of grid paper and pencils, yet reminding us of the potential still not fully tapped despite what our favorite generational RPGs led us to believe. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a nostalgic celebration of the genre's preexistence but a pushing triumph for role-playing tomorrow. The best response one may think could disprove my notion in a post-New Vegas world is the other role-playing critical darling released in recent years, similarly taking loving homage and inspiration to its CRPG roots -- Disco Elysium. A fair response. I deeply admire and love that game, even with the messy controversy going on behind-the-scenes, but Disco Elysium only captures the specific cerebral aspect of the role-playing experience to reinvent the appeal of the genre. Not to discredit the artistic ambition on display, but I believe that’s still a limited showcase for making a passionate case about the true quality the role-playing genre can offer. Baldur’s Gate III captures something much grander, more all-encompassing, more than the sum of its parts taken all across the RPGverse. Obviously, there are shades of the original Baldur’s Gate games, but there’s also shades of Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout, and unintentionally Deus Ex with how reactive the systems and mechanics are to break them in creatively advantageous ways that made the developers surprised. But the game’s roots travel deeper beyond those role-playing titles making up the genre for the past decades. Thanks to its usage of the Forgotten Realms setting, it reaches the essence for why these games are truly enjoyable experiences.
Dungeons & Dragons is something worth considering whenever we approach the topic for role-playing video games and what’s the unique appeal for them weighed alongside different genres. It’s the origin point for where it all stemmed from; The Dungeon Master creates an elaborate campaign with his merry band of social misfits to play part of, engaging with their own imagination and creativity to battle the imaginative odds thrown at them. That’s the breaking-it-down-to-bare-essentials of the usual D&D experience but it’s the backbone for every RPG since then. Just replace “Dungeon Master” with “[insert name of developer]”, replace “Campaign” with “Story/Main Quest”, and the player is just you, the actual gamer, with his band of party members and companions. I think these are roots we don’t really keep conscious of anymore with newer strings of RPGs, because the execution and quality can be scattershot, but Balder’s Gate 3 is the one I’ve played that feels the most authentic to that original tabletop experience being replicated through this medium. There’s this overwhelming sense of confidence in what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and the why behind it all that radiates such big dick energy and a sense of liberating player freedom I haven’t encountered since Fallout: New Vegas. The Assault on the Moonrise Towers, breaking into the House of Hope to duking it out with the dastardly devilish Raphael, the hyper intense time sensitive prison breakout of The Iron Throne, and even the final battle are highlights where you can feel this freedom being exercised the most. The combat encounters in this game, rarely, feel just monotonous or unfair. You’re given so much flexibility in how to approach enemies through you and your party members’ unique skill-set or interacting with the environment. It plays like how you probably would ideally think and RPG would in your weird little head. There’s a group of enemies huddled together? Just throw a barrel of oil at them and set the ground before them on fire with an arrow or cast a spell. Having trouble with a really tough individual enemy or boss you have little confidence in whittling down? With enough strength, and passing a dice roll based on that, you can just push them off the ledge nearby and that’ll do it! You can even master the art of prep-time by having your main playable character be in dialogue with an enemy before combat triggers and switch to your other free party members to set up traps around them to get the complete upper-hand in battle. If you’re lucky, it’s even over before your entire turn ends. Outside of combat, you may be banned from a certain Sorcerous Sundries but with the help of a spell that disguises your appearance the NPCs treat you like they’ve never met you before, restarting their dialogue history with you. What I love the most about everything I’ve described you can do in the game is that although some may overshoot what the developers intended as possible creative solutions to certain obstacles, the game is designed so flexible that it never feels like an invalid choice but a testament to your imagination at play in/out of combat.
The overarching grand story of Baldur’s Gate 3 may not be one of the greatest stories ever told or anything like that but it’s such a damn memorable adventure. It’s supported by a cast of party members who embody different but altogether aspects of what makes this game so addicting. It follows the mold of what certain Black Isle/Obsidian games have troped where they’re all a dysfunctional group of outcasts with layers worth peeling to get to the core of what ultimately unites them together -- personal torment -- and how they follow who could be the most tormented of them all, could mend their inner conflicts, or make it worse. I need to give proper applause to the stellar voice cast behind these party members; especially to Neil Newborn as Astarion who put more than 100% of his energy into delivering this assignment, giving life to the fan favorite poster boy of this game. A pedestal which is rightly deserved, much as the rest of the core party. What I love the most about these personal stories each companion has is how integral, through varying degrees, they are to the main plot. They’re not really just awkward non-important side stories that don’t bleed into the main story at all, creating a weird disconnect from how they’ve grown in those personal quests compared to how they act in the main one. That actually goes for so many of the side quests beyond the companions’ for this game, almost none of them feel inconsequential or meaningless detours because they all end up spiraling into each other to some extent. Throughout my playthrough, it surprised me at how my choices for some of these ended up being vital for how some of the bigger, plot important quests were approached. Especially for how it builds an interesting narrative of what’s basically a power struggle between the true masters behind the Absolute, the Harpers, the Guild, the Githyanki, a Vampire Lord, the Shar, high-ranking devils from the Nine Hells, and [spoiler]. There really isn’t any actual politics present in these, at most it’s kinda relegated to the background, but it still works well in presenting a setting like Forgotten Realms as something you’re a mere adventurer of. A sprawling, bustling canvas you’d have to sink so much of not just your time and diligence but your own personality into the mix too.
That’s the underlying quality for what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 not just one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, but one of the very best I’ll ever play. Larian understood the ingredient needed to make a game in a genre like this incredibly special is the attention towards the relationship between the game -- or more aptly, the developer -- and the player themselves. Like in an D&D campaign, tying this back to earlier, the back-and-forth relationship between the Dungeon Master and the player(s). Your experience in this game is going to differ from mine and any other person’s playthrough because of the sheer interactivity woven in the gameplay and how the story is carved by your mindset and choices. It probably doesn’t have the full branching depth as Fallout: New Vegas, nor reaches the passionate deeper narrative thinking of Disco Elysium, but what it has over those two is reminding you why role-playing games, the grand adventure you partake in, resonates within some of us because all it takes for it to come alive is fully trusting the player and their imagination.
What we have on our hands here is the western equivalent to Dragon Quest XI. If ya know, ya know. But for the tragically unenlightened, essentially, a grand cohesion of classical genre design sensibilities crossed with the modern technical know-how we’ve become accustomed to nowadays. Marking itself not just a “Greatest Hits Collection RPG”, or y’know, “a game for the older fans”, or, “for people starving a true return to pure BioWare role-playing form”, but a wider encapsulation for what the role-playing genre has accomplished. How far we’ve gone since the archaic days of grid paper and pencils, yet reminding us of the potential still not fully tapped despite what our favorite generational RPGs led us to believe. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a nostalgic celebration of the genre's preexistence but a pushing triumph for role-playing tomorrow. The best response one may think could disprove my notion in a post-New Vegas world is the other role-playing critical darling released in recent years, similarly taking loving homage and inspiration to its CRPG roots -- Disco Elysium. A fair response. I deeply admire and love that game, even with the messy controversy going on behind-the-scenes, but Disco Elysium only captures the specific cerebral aspect of the role-playing experience to reinvent the appeal of the genre. Not to discredit the artistic ambition on display, but I believe that’s still a limited showcase for making a passionate case about the true quality the role-playing genre can offer. Baldur’s Gate III captures something much grander, more all-encompassing, more than the sum of its parts taken all across the RPGverse. Obviously, there are shades of the original Baldur’s Gate games, but there’s also shades of Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout, and unintentionally Deus Ex with how reactive the systems and mechanics are to break them in creatively advantageous ways that made the developers surprised. But the game’s roots travel deeper beyond those role-playing titles making up the genre for the past decades. Thanks to its usage of the Forgotten Realms setting, it reaches the essence for why these games are truly enjoyable experiences.
Dungeons & Dragons is something worth considering whenever we approach the topic for role-playing video games and what’s the unique appeal for them weighed alongside different genres. It’s the origin point for where it all stemmed from; The Dungeon Master creates an elaborate campaign with his merry band of social misfits to play part of, engaging with their own imagination and creativity to battle the imaginative odds thrown at them. That’s the breaking-it-down-to-bare-essentials of the usual D&D experience but it’s the backbone for every RPG since then. Just replace “Dungeon Master” with “[insert name of developer]”, replace “Campaign” with “Story/Main Quest”, and the player is just you, the actual gamer, with his band of party members and companions. I think these are roots we don’t really keep conscious of anymore with newer strings of RPGs, because the execution and quality can be scattershot, but Balder’s Gate 3 is the one I’ve played that feels the most authentic to that original tabletop experience being replicated through this medium. There’s this overwhelming sense of confidence in what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and the why behind it all that radiates such big dick energy and a sense of liberating player freedom I haven’t encountered since Fallout: New Vegas. The Assault on the Moonrise Towers, breaking into the House of Hope to duking it out with the dastardly devilish Raphael, the hyper intense time sensitive prison breakout of The Iron Throne, and even the final battle are highlights where you can feel this freedom being exercised the most. The combat encounters in this game, rarely, feel just monotonous or unfair. You’re given so much flexibility in how to approach enemies through you and your party members’ unique skill-set or interacting with the environment. It plays like how you probably would ideally think and RPG would in your weird little head. There’s a group of enemies huddled together? Just throw a barrel of oil at them and set the ground before them on fire with an arrow or cast a spell. Having trouble with a really tough individual enemy or boss you have little confidence in whittling down? With enough strength, and passing a dice roll based on that, you can just push them off the ledge nearby and that’ll do it! You can even master the art of prep-time by having your main playable character be in dialogue with an enemy before combat triggers and switch to your other free party members to set up traps around them to get the complete upper-hand in battle. If you’re lucky, it’s even over before your entire turn ends. Outside of combat, you may be banned from a certain Sorcerous Sundries but with the help of a spell that disguises your appearance the NPCs treat you like they’ve never met you before, restarting their dialogue history with you. What I love the most about everything I’ve described you can do in the game is that although some may overshoot what the developers intended as possible creative solutions to certain obstacles, the game is designed so flexible that it never feels like an invalid choice but a testament to your imagination at play in/out of combat.
The overarching grand story of Baldur’s Gate 3 may not be one of the greatest stories ever told or anything like that but it’s such a damn memorable adventure. It’s supported by a cast of party members who embody different but altogether aspects of what makes this game so addicting. It follows the mold of what certain Black Isle/Obsidian games have troped where they’re all a dysfunctional group of outcasts with layers worth peeling to get to the core of what ultimately unites them together -- personal torment -- and how they follow who could be the most tormented of them all, could mend their inner conflicts, or make it worse. I need to give proper applause to the stellar voice cast behind these party members; especially to Neil Newborn as Astarion who put more than 100% of his energy into delivering this assignment, giving life to the fan favorite poster boy of this game. A pedestal which is rightly deserved, much as the rest of the core party. What I love the most about these personal stories each companion has is how integral, through varying degrees, they are to the main plot. They’re not really just awkward non-important side stories that don’t bleed into the main story at all, creating a weird disconnect from how they’ve grown in those personal quests compared to how they act in the main one. That actually goes for so many of the side quests beyond the companions’ for this game, almost none of them feel inconsequential or meaningless detours because they all end up spiraling into each other to some extent. Throughout my playthrough, it surprised me at how my choices for some of these ended up being vital for how some of the bigger, plot important quests were approached. Especially for how it builds an interesting narrative of what’s basically a power struggle between the true masters behind the Absolute, the Harpers, the Guild, the Githyanki, a Vampire Lord, the Shar, high-ranking devils from the Nine Hells, and [spoiler]. There really isn’t any actual politics present in these, at most it’s kinda relegated to the background, but it still works well in presenting a setting like Forgotten Realms as something you’re a mere adventurer of. A sprawling, bustling canvas you’d have to sink so much of not just your time and diligence but your own personality into the mix too.
That’s the underlying quality for what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 not just one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, but one of the very best I’ll ever play. Larian understood the ingredient needed to make a game in a genre like this incredibly special is the attention towards the relationship between the game -- or more aptly, the developer -- and the player themselves. Like in an D&D campaign, tying this back to earlier, the back-and-forth relationship between the Dungeon Master and the player(s). Your experience in this game is going to differ from mine and any other person’s playthrough because of the sheer interactivity woven in the gameplay and how the story is carved by your mindset and choices. It probably doesn’t have the full branching depth as Fallout: New Vegas, nor reaches the passionate deeper narrative thinking of Disco Elysium, but what it has over those two is reminding you why role-playing games, the grand adventure you partake in, resonates within some of us because all it takes for it to come alive is fully trusting the player and their imagination.