baldur’s gate iii – Trekking with Dennis

Baldur’s Gate 3: Narrative and Role-Playing Thoughts

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Baldur’s Gate 3 – including its ending.

This piece is a follow-up to my spoiler-free review of Baldur’s Gate 3. If you haven’t read that, it provides a bit of background to some of the things we’re going to talk about here, and also goes into detail about some of the mechanics of Baldur’s Gate 3 and what I enjoyed about it from a gameplay perspective. It should also go without saying that we’re going to talk about some specific story points today, including the ending of the game and several character questlines. If you haven’t completed the game and don’t want to see spoilers, this is your opportunity to nope out!

Baldur’s Gate 3 had a strong story that roped me in almost from the first moment. It also told a story with plenty of variety, with companion questlines that went in interesting and unexpected directions, and side-quests that were just as engaging and impactful as the main quest. I adore the experience that I had, and I can’t wait to jump in for a second run and try to do some things differently – so everything we’re going to discuss today has to be seen through that lens. So to repeat: I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Baldur’s Gate 3!

You know there has to be a “but” coming after that, though… right?

But I have some notes! Firstly, Baldur’s Gate 3 makes no apologies for being a dense story, and for really throwing players in the deep end from the very first moment. The wall of content that you experience upon booting up the game for the first time – in which I’m including the intro cinematic, the opening level, and the character creator – throws a lot at you all at once. For someone who didn’t play the original Baldur’s Gate and who’s unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons… it can be a lot to take in.

I made a lot of mistakes during my first few hours with Baldur’s Gate 3, and the game doesn’t hold players’ hands. For some folks, that’s a huge positive! But for me, I have mixed feelings. I’m no stranger to this phenomenon – I cut my teeth playing games in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when games didn’t have more than a manual in the box to help you out. But there’s a reason why most modern games offer more by way of tutorials and do more to ease players into the story! Baldur’s Gate 3 begins by throwing up a metaphorical brick wall that has no obvious way around or over it – and it’s up to you as a player to either muddle through or hop online to find a strategy guide.

My unfamiliarity with Dungeons and Dragons was a hurdle – one that I have no doubt impacted my experience with the game. It’s to the writers’ credit, more so than anything else, that I continued to play the game and kept coming back to it when I ran into something I didn’t understand or a problem I wasn’t sure how to solve. Although the story has huge stakes, particularly as it gets into its second and third acts and talk turns to the “Dead Three” and their chosen, at its core in those early moments it’s a story of survival. One person – the player character – is infected by a parasite and has to find a cure. That’s the driving force, and that’s what leads you to your allies and companions, and sets the stage for this story.

That character-centred story, with high personal stakes, is what roped me in during those crucial first moments. Even as I had no clue what mind-flayers, githyanki, or nautiloids were, there was a sense of urgency and a basic, innate survival instinct at the heart of the story that begged me to keep going. The writing to bring this to life and to get me instantly invested in this vast, dense world when I had no real frame of reference is truly world-class – there’s no other way to describe it. When people say that video games can be just as engaging, entertaining, and emotional as books or films, it’s stories like Baldur’s Gate 3 that they can point to!

Despite what you may have heard, Baldur’s Gate 3 does not have “17,000 endings.” There are a few basic ending options, which can be modified depending on player choice – and random dice rolls throughout the game. If a companion died, for example, or was never recruited, they don’t show up at the end. Likewise for allies – if an ally was never recruited, they aren’t available in the endgame. This adds variety, and means that it’s worth making multiple runs through the game to see different things and experience some of these different ending options. But I feel that the “17,000” claim is rather overstating what’s actually on offer. Don’t get me wrong: there’s far more variety and more ending options than in something like Mass Effect 3! But just not perhaps as much variety as has been claimed.

The ending I experienced during my first playthrough felt like the “best” possibility based on the way I’d played the game and which characters I had on my side. But other players might find that other options or pathways could have led to an even better outcome, which is absolutely part of the fun!

One of the citizens of Baldur’s Gate takes down a mind-flayer.

One thing that I liked about Baldur’s Gate 3 was the feeling of “impossible” choices. There are multiple points at which the road forks and you have to choose between one ally and another – betraying one in order to side with someone else. I kind of “cheesed” part of this by placing a companion on the back burner and largely ignoring her, allowing me to more easily side with one ally over another when doing so threatened to tread on the toes of her storyline. But it wasn’t the easiest thing to do – showing, I think, just how much the story had grabbed me and how much I’d come to care about these characters. I never like upsetting an NPC in a video game, but the friends and allies I’d made in Baldur’s Gate 3 felt like real people, so the idea of going against their wishes or even betraying them… I couldn’t do it!

Obviously Baldur’s Gate 3 is a sequel – so I expected some callbacks to earlier games. But I was surprised at how heavily Baldur’s Gate 3 seemed to lean on those two older titles, especially as the second and third acts of the game rolled around. I’m not familiar with those stories having never played the games, but there was enough exposition dumped to make it clear that some characters and storylines were basically direct continuations of the events of those games. That’s a creative decision, and one that fans of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 will surely have appreciated. For me, I could have done without that, and at a few points this sequel-itis felt quite in-your-face.

The character of Vicona DeVir is one of several who return from earlier games.

Let’s talk a bit about companions. There are ten potential companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 – two of whom appear to be mutually-exclusive, meaning you have to choose one over the other for a maximum of nine potential companions per playthrough. There are also hirelings who can be purchased to round out the party if you feel you’re missing a particular class or skill – but these characters are less interactive, have few if any unique dialogue options, and I personally felt didn’t serve a lot of purpose. You’re limited to four characters in your party at any one time – your main character plus three others – and hirelings count toward that limit. So unless there’s a problem with your main companions, the need for hirelings feels quite diminished.

In terms of variety, replayability, and player choice, I felt that the game offered a lot of pathways to bringing your party together – but many of these pathways led to the same end point. You could choose in what order to recruit party members – even if, at the time of my first playthrough, I wasn’t aware that I was doing so(!) – but for the most part, even if you deliberately shun a character that the game deems to be important, one way or another they’ll find their way back to you. In my case, the character of Wyll literally showed up at my camp toward the end of Act 1.

I’d seen Wyll briefly during one of the first fights in the game, but after that encounter I lost track of him and didn’t recruit him. I could’ve gone through the entire game not even realising I’d missed a prospective companion, but Wyll later showed up at my camp to confront Karlach – before being talked into joining the party. It kind of felt like this interaction was less organic and natural than others, and that Wyll was almost forced upon me, with Baldur’s Gate 3′s developers insisting that I take him along for the journey.

I’m not upset about the outcome – Wyll’s story was one of the most interesting in the game in more ways than one, and having him in the party led to some incredible moments in all three of the game’s main acts. But this is very much a case of the ends justifying the means, with a rare misstep in the way the game’s narrative came close to breaking the fourth wall leading to better and more engaging story beats later on.

Wyll proved to be a great companion character across the rest of the game.

I recently saw a spoiler-y video online, unfortunately, which confirms that the same thing also happens with the companion character Shadowheart. Players have to go a bit more out of their way to avoid Shadowheart, actively pushing her away and insisting she doesn’t join the party, but even if this path is chosen, Shadowheart makes her way back to the party partway through Act 1. And from what I saw in the video – which, admittedly, was not the entire storyline or sequence – it also felt like a very forceful way that the game pushed her into the party.

I’m not sure how true this is of all the other companions, but the main “tadpoled” characters of Astarion, Karlach, and Gale could well fall into this category too, showing up uninvited even if rebuffed by the player. And having played and enjoyed all of their arcs across the game, I think it’s not unfair to say that players would be missing out if they chose not to engage with these characters at least once. But in a game that sells itself in part on the fact that it offers players endless choices, the way some of these characters are basically forced into the party leads to a strange kind of disconnect between the game’s ambition on that front and the way it actually plays.

If ignored or rebuffed earlier in the game, Shadowheart shows up at the goblins’ camp in Act 1.

Some elements of Baldur’s Gate 3′s role-playing felt a little constrained by the mechanics of the game. To give one example from my own playthrough: I wanted my character to wield a flail – you know, the medieval weapon that’s basically a spiky ball attached to a chain. There wasn’t any real reason for this other than that I thought it looked neat on my character, a drow druid. But through my entire playthrough, I didn’t encounter any decent flails for my character to use.

There were swords aplenty, as well as axes, bows, and even staffs and clubs. But if I’d chosen to equip my character with a flail – after specifically choosing to make them proficient with that weapon type – I would have sacrificed a lot. Not only were there no unique or enchanted flails, offering additional bonuses like fire or ice damage, but the only ones I came across were pretty weak. They were easily outmatched by even the most basic swords and rapiers, leaving me with little choice but to equip a weapon I wasn’t wild about just to get the best stats. That’s part of gaming, in a way, but I would have liked to have seen more options on the weapon front. Baldur’s Gate 3 has plenty of weapon types on the surface, and uses that as part of its “play the game however you want” selling-point. But if some of these weapons are basically non-viable, especially later in the game when coming up against higher-level enemies, it kind of renders the whole thing redundant.

That’s a specific complaint because I couldn’t find a flail that was as good (or almost as good) as many of the swords and other weapons that I encountered. But I will give the game credit for offering a variety of unique weapons, and for making it so that most characters can experiment with different ranged and melee weapon types. My druid, for example, was able to gain proficiencies with swords and crossbows at a relatively early point in the campaign, and it completely transformed them from a pure spellcaster into a much more well-rounded character who had multiple options when engaged in combat.

I didn’t choose to re-spec my character during my playthrough, nor change my class. I just didn’t feel that was necessary – but again, it’s nice that the game offers that option. I could absolutely see a scenario in which changing class would be worthwhile, and actually for a druid – which was my class – perhaps that’s even more relevant! Of the ten companions you can recruit, two are druids – so I can see a situation in which some players might want to change class to avoid having too many of the same character types in their party.

Talking to Withers at camp allows you to change your class, if desired.

Let’s talk about romance, because I feel this was one area where Baldur’s Gate 3 strayed from being a deeply engaging story into one that was very – for want of a better term – “video-gamey.” The basic problem is this: no matter who you are, what choices you made, what your background is, or what actions you take… everyone falls in love with you. That includes members of your party as well as important allies – and it just felt too easy to go down these romantic paths. It got to a point where I felt I had to basically avoid interacting with some characters after accidentally ending up in a romantic entanglement, and I just felt that this side of the story was clumsily handled.

It’s great that Baldur’s Gate 3 offers so many romantic options, don’t get me wrong, and that there are options for players to be gay, bi, straight, and so on. But it’s also a bit odd that every character so easily falls for the player – even if they take actions that they claim to disapprove of, or even after the player is already in a committed relationship with another NPC. I also find it a little odd that every NPC is able to be romanced regardless of whether the player character is male, female, or non-binary. Is everyone in Faerûn pansexual? Doing what games like Mass Effect do and restricting some romantic encounters by gender wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily – if it was right for the character in question.

Some companions fall in love with the player character a little *too* easily!

Jumping ahead to the end of the game, while I had a fantastic time with the story and the way it brought together different characters that I’d encountered across my many hours of playtime, there are a couple of things to say.

Firstly, the fact that so many characters can be present as allies in the endgame is fantastic – and I absolutely love this kind of “everyone pitching in to save the day” story. It felt great, it was emotional, and I was genuinely surprised to see some characters turning up to offer their aid as Baldur’s Gate was besieged by the mind-flayers!

But – and you knew there was another “but” coming – the way this happens completely reframes many of these character encounters earlier in the game. Instead of helping little Arabella because it’s the right thing to do or because it feels like something your character would do, on a repeat playthrough you’re going to be acutely aware that saving her has a positive outcome in the endgame. Likewise the owlbear cub, Councillor Florrick, or Inspector Valeria. There are at least a dozen characters who can play a role here – and that knowledge completely changes how I’d approach their encounters and quests on a second playthrough.

Saving Arabella in Act 1 (and helping her again in Acts 2 and 3) has positive repercussions as the climactic battle rages.

This is kind of a trend you’ll see with Baldur’s Gate 3: while there are, in theory, many options for how to progress through the game, and the game is very adaptable if an NPC or even party member is killed, there are clearly some choices that lead to better outcomes, especially as the story reaches its climax. If you killed a bunch of NPCs, failed to save others, or just straight-up ignored whole questlines – which is easy to do, as some encounters have quite specific requirements – you’ll have fewer allies for the final fight against the Elder Brain, potentially giving you a tougher fight or a less-enjoyable time.

If your desire is to play as an “evil” character, I think this would affect you the most. Baldur’s Gate 3 tries to offset some of this, to its credit, by giving the “evil” options some positive endgame outcomes and alliances – such as if you betray Nightsong and turn her over to Lorroakan. But even then, I think you’re going to be left with fewer allies for the final fight. Maybe that’s okay – and narratively, if it makes sense for your character and your play style, that’s fine. But it may mean that, in terms of the mechanics of how the game works, you’ll end up having a worse or harder time.

Choosing to help the strange ox – which I did for no other reason than it seemed like a bit of silly fun – ended up making a difference.

Sticking with the ending of the game, after a beautiful coming-together of friends and allies – which, in spite of the criticisms above, felt amazing on that first playthrough – and the climactic battle against the Elder Brain, things just sort of… ended. There was a brief epilogue showing some of the surviving party members, but they soon went their separate ways. Depending on choices you may have made, the macguffin at the heart of the story – the Crown of Karsus – may be lost in the sea off the coast of Baldur’s Gate. And depending on promises you may have made to certain characters… it feels like the story didn’t actually end at that point, in spite of the credits rolling!

For me, I’d chosen to pledge the Crown of Karsus to Gale, who in turn planned to return it to the goddess Mystra. As my character and Gale stared wistfully out to sea, I couldn’t help but feel that another chapter of the story was yet to be told. Maybe that will be Baldur’s Gate 4… but I’m not so sure of that!

Gale at the end of the game. His story didn’t feel complete.

The same feeling hit me with Wyll and Karlach. Karlach’s questline involved getting her infernal mechanical heart back into working order, but she learned toward the end of that story that the only long-term solution that could save her life involved returning to Avernus. Karlach seemed ready to die – and everything I’ve read about this quest says that there’s no “happy ending” for her, unfortunately. That’s a creative choice that I respect, and being with Karlach as she went out on her terms was a fitting, if bittersweet, end to her story.

At the last second, though, Wyll intervened and promised to stay with her in Avernus, saving her life but condemning both of them to one of the nine hells. This moment could have worked better if more time had been dedicated to it; it felt rushed, and because it was such a twist on what the game seemed to have been building up to with Karlach, I don’t think it worked as well as it could have. We also didn’t get to see Wyll and Karlach depart – the sequence just came to an abrupt end.

Karlach’s story seemed to come to an abrupt end.

Although my character got a moment during the epilogue with their romantic partner, other characters were either only seen briefly or were notable by their absence. The Emperor (who I chose to save instead of freeing Orpheus) very quickly shuffled off-screen, as did Lae’zel and Shadowheart. Jaheira, Minsc, and Halsin didn’t have much to say during the epilogue, despite being party members and surviving the fight. Other allies who fought alongside me during the climactic battle were entirely absent.

I get that making an overly-long epilogue could be offputting for some people, but this is the end point of what was, for me, a story that had lasted more than eighty-five hours over the span of an entire month, so getting a few extra minutes to see what happened to some of my companions and friends would have felt great. Even just a picture and a block of text explaining where they went next would have been something; it didn’t need to be a fully-animated and voiced sequence if that was prohibitively expensive.

I mentioned earlier that I chose to play as a drow (dark elf) druid during my playthrough, and based on that I have a few thoughts about how well races, backgrounds, and classes are implemented in the game. During my spoiler-free review I mentioned this, so forgive me for repeating myself! But I didn’t feel that there were very many places in the game where being either a drow or a druid actually made much difference in terms of role-playing and conversations. And backgrounds were all but forgotten; I had to go back and check which one I even picked, because I don’t think it ever came up.

Obviously classes matter in Baldur’s Gate 3 – they matter a great deal, as they impact what kind of spells you can cast, what weapons you’re able to proficiently wield, how easy things like picking locks or sneaking will be, and some even give you advantages in conversations or when trying to persuade NPCs. All of that has a profound impact on the way Baldur’s Gate 3 plays – and one of the reasons why I’m so keen to start a second run through the game is to pick a different class and try things differently.

Perhaps I should play as a halfling monk next time?

But in terms of the game world and characters therein, I didn’t feel that my choices (at the character creation stage) made much of a difference. A few characters remarked on my being a drow when I first met them, but immediately moved on and it was never mentioned again. I think I saw about half a dozen drow conversation prompts during my playthrough, most of which related to darkness, seeing in the dark, or visiting the underdark (which I now know is where drows live!) And half a dozen lines of unique dialogue isn’t bad per se… but in a playthrough that lasted eighty-five hours, it’s not like I felt that being a drow was affecting every conversation or having a big impact on how most people saw my character.

The same was true of being a druid. A handful of lines of dialogue about nature or the natural world were available, and especially toward the beginning of the game in the druids’ grove I felt optimistic that my choice was going to have a bigger impact on the way my character engaged with NPCs. But as the game wore on, it became clear that the grove was a bit of an outlier, and that the number of these unique dialogue options were few and far between.

One of the druids near the beginning of the game.

There was no point at which I felt, as a druid, a unique pathway opened up for me to engage with a character, resolve a situation, or perhaps even start a quest that other classes wouldn’t have access to. Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to go out of its way to make sure that all races and classes have access to all of the quests and missions – which is a double-edged sword, really. On the positive side, it means that everyone can enjoy what’s on offer, but on the negative side… it kind of detracts from that wonderful character creation process, and leaves some of those choices feeling less important or just flat-out unimportant.

This is a bad example, as the missions in question were piss-poor and incredibly basic, but it’s the only one that springs to mind right now so it’ll have to do! But in Cyberpunk 2077, each of the three life paths (i.e. backgrounds) that were on offer led to a unique prologue and one unique in-game mission. Although in Cyberpunk these missions were lacklustre, at least there was an attempt to add to the role-playing experience by throwing a bone to players, making those early choices feel a bit more special and impactful. It also goes without saying that unique missions for each class or background add to any game’s replayability.

The choice of background doesn’t seem to matter.

Even if class-locked quests were off the table, it would still have been nice to see unique ways to progress through different parts of the game that were only available to certain classes or character types. To draw on another example, in the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3, players who chose the “engineer” class get a class-exclusive opportunity that really impacts the mission and that makes perfect narrative sense. I didn’t see any of this in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe other classes or backgrounds have moments like this – but drow druids don’t, at least not from what I saw.

Every single combat encounter is going to be different depending on both the player’s class and the combination of classes of party members – be they the in-game companions or other people if playing co-operatively. And that’s great – it means that there’s a real strategic element to the game when it comes to deciding who to bring along and how to approach different moments. Getting a good combination of ranged, melee, and magical characters is a good starting point – but some encounters may need more heavy hitters, a healer, or a stealthy character, just to give three basic examples.

And that variety is a huge part of the fun. The different challenges posed by Baldur’s Gate 3′s huge variety of enemies makes practically every encounter feel unique. Even when facing off against the same basic enemy faction – goblins, for instance – there can still be this variety. A single boss goblin feels very different from a small group, and the strategies for defeating the small group are completely different from those needed to defeat a whole horde! I loved this aspect of the game, as it wasn’t possible to just pick a favourite party and stick with it the whole time; Baldur’s Gate 3 goes out of its way to encourage party-swapping and companion variety.

Exploration also feels like it has some of this variety. Having a character who’s adept at lockpicking in the party is a good rule of thumb, but characters who are perceptive or who have other bonuses also come in handy!

Some characters have an easier time than others when it comes to lockpicking, among other activities.

I just felt that, again, the way I created my custom character didn’t offer as much of that outside of combat. As either a drow or a druid, I didn’t find any unique ways to complete quests, any unique character encounters, or really any conversations or questlines that felt like they were really taking my character’s unique attributes into account. By the time I’d got stuck into the game and buffed up my character’s martial skills, giving me a mix of magic and weapon abilities, I felt that I had different ways to approach many encounters – but none of that felt like it was truly unique to who my character was.

There were also a few parts of the game that I felt were either not well-integrated or easy to overlook. For example, I didn’t create a single potion during my entire run. I didn’t even know potion-making was an option until I was well into Act 1, and I found that I was easily able to acquire enough health potions out in the wild such that making my own just never seemed like something I needed to do.

Perhaps it’s more to do with the way I played the game, but I felt that potions and scrolls were less useful than spells and weapons – and I only used a handful across my run. Maybe there are things I missed out on because of that, and when I jump back in for a second playthrough I’d love to take more advantage of alchemy and scrolls. I’ll have to see whether and to what extent that makes a difference! But in my first run, I felt that neither were essential and both were easily overlooked.

While I feel you’d almost have to go out of your way to get into potion-making in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I feel the feature would benefit from an in-game introduction and tutorial, I like that it’s an option for players who want to role-play that kind of magical character. Potions are a big deal in fantasy settings, and it would feel like something’s missing if potion-making wasn’t present at all. I just feel it could be made more prominent in the game as things stand.

There’s one specific quest that I want to single out for criticism, and I’m picking on it not because I didn’t enjoy it – I think it’s one of the best and most interesting in the entire game – but because of how weirdly finicky it was to play, and how it had some very exacting requirements. For someone just playing the game, as I was, without a guide, it feels too easy to accidentally encounter this quest and then have it pretty significantly and negatively impact much of Act 3. I’m talking about the quest that involves rescuing the hostages from the Iron Throne – an underwater prison.

I first stumbled upon this quest by picking a lock in the city of Baldur’s Gate, then exploring what seemed to be a random warehouse. In the depths of the warehouse was a submarine that could ferry my party to this prison – but starting this quest before talking to other characters, including Gortash, Orin, one of the gnomes at the Steel Watch facility, and Wyll’s devil patron Mizora causes problems. Doing this in the “wrong” order leads to the quest having a much worse outcome, with Wyll’s father dead and the gnome rebellion at the Steel Watch not triggering properly. For a game that prides itself on letting players loose to freely explore, and on offering multiple branching paths… the way in which this particular quest was handled didn’t feel great, and it sticks up as an outlier. Despite that, when I managed to play it the “right” way, it ended up being one of my favourites in the game. It’s just a shame that it’s so exacting in its requirements, and that there aren’t any real ways around that.

This quest was very convoluted if you wanted to do it properly.

So I think we’d better wrap things up!

As I said last time, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best game I’ve played so far this year. I adored the time I spent in Faerûn – my first ever venture into this particular fantasy realm – and I’m already chomping at the bit to start a second run through the game! I’m trying to restrain myself, as I feel jumping back in so soon after beating the game for the first time would diminish the experience, and I want to get as much out of my next go around as possible. But I daren’t wait too long, and I suspect I’ll give in and start that second playthrough before Christmas.

Though there were a few places where things could’ve been improved, and some quests that felt very particular with their requirements, overall I had a wonderful time with Baldur’s Gate 3. From the very first moment I felt gripped by what was simultaneously a small-scale, personal story and one that had world-ending repercussions. That’s in spite of having essentially zero background knowledge about the world of Dungeons and Dragons. The writing and gameplay were both outstanding, and kept me coming back for more.

I hope this has been interesting. There are bound to be many different perspectives on Baldur’s Gate 3, as it’s a game that encourages players to take different paths through its story. I already know that I haven’t seen all that the game has to offer – including an entire area of the map, many NPCs, one companion character, and I have no doubt multiple questlines, too. Now that I know what to expect, I’ll make a few changes to the way I play next time in order to check off some of those missing experiences! But I’ll try to save a few for another run, too.

Although I’ve found a few things to pick on in terms of Baldur’s Gate 3′s narrative and role-playing, none of those things prevented me from thoroughly enjoying a game that’s sure to be, for many folks, the game of the year. Baldur’s Gate 3 came out of nowhere this year – it hadn’t been on my radar at all. Both in terms of story and gameplay, I was stunned. I had an amazing time, and I can’t wait to go around again.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC and PlayStation 5, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Some screenshots and promo art used above courtesy of Larian Studios and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Baldur’s Gate 3 and the return of “save-scumming!”

Wed 06.09.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Baldur’s Gate 3.

As Baldur’s Gate 3 has taken the gaming world by storm, an age-old monster has awoken from its slumber. No, not the mind-flayers – I’m talking about the practice of “save-scumming!” There have been more than enough hot takes on the subject over the past couple of months… but hey, what’s the harm in one more?

Save-scumming, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the practice of creating a save just before an important dice roll or event, then re-loading the save to try again if something doesn’t go to plan. Though ubiquitous across gaming, save-scumming was controversial in the ’90s with games like Fallout and of course the original Baldur’s Gate.

The original *Baldur’s Gate* was where many folks first heard about “save-scumming.”

For as long as games have existed, gamers have looked for ways to cheat and get around the system. Before save files were commonplace, writing down passcodes to unlock levels was one way of doing it, and of course cheat codes have been a part of the gaming landscape for decades. But save-scumming seems to hit a sore spot for some fans of role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3, and the success of the game has reinvigorated the debate in 2023.

I’m a big advocate of accessibility in gaming, and I include in that category cheat codes, god modes, save-scumming, and everything else. If someone wants to play a game but finds it too difficult to the point of being frustrating or offputting, why shouldn’t they find a way to make it easier and get some enjoyment out of the game? Maybe you like to play games for the challenge and to “git gud,” but not everyone does. Difficulty and accessibility will have to be the topic of a future article, though, because we’re dangerously close to veering off-topic!

What’s your take on save-scumming, Lae’zel?

I support save-scumming in single-player and co-op games, and in my own playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, I did it. So not only do I not care if you do it, I think it’s weird if you care that I do it!

In a single-player game, save-scumming doesn’t impact anyone except the person playing the game. If I choose to re-load an earlier save and try again, that’s nobody’s business but mine. You can shout at me till you’re blue in the face that it “goes against the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons!” and maybe you’re right about that. But I couldn’t give less of a shit if I tried.

And you know what? Practically everyone criticising save-scumming in Baldur’s Gate 3 is a hypocrite. Are you telling me you’ve never loaded a save game after dying? Not even in titles like Dark Souls or Elden Ring? If you choose to start a new game from the beginning every single time you die in a game or get a bad outcome… well, good for you, I guess. That’s certainly one way to play. But practically everyone loads their most recent save after dying against a hard boss or accidentally choosing the wrong dialogue option. That’s why games let you save your progress!

Baldur’s Gate 3 is an especially odd case for the anti-save-scumming crowd to pick on because I’d argue very strongly that the game goes out of its way to encourage the practice. How many other games can you think of that let you freely save during cut-scenes, dialogue, lockpicking, or even in the middle of a combat encounter? Baldur’s Gate 3 does – it even lets you create a save file right on the dice roll screen. Why would the developers do that if not because they know that many players want to play that way?

You can literally save on this screen for quick and easy re-loading.

A game as long as Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t one you can just pick up and play every day. It takes hours upon hours to progress through a single campaign – my own playthrough took more than 85 hours from beginning to end. And it’s a wonderful experience packed with unique encounters, well-written characters, and so much more. If my favourite companion is killed, or if I miss an important dice roll that means I can’t start a particular quest or get a valuable piece of loot… why should I have to progress through the rest of the game having a worse and less enjoyable experience? Why would I intentionally make the game less fun for myself just to preserve the nonexistent “integrity” of the digital dice? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!

That being said, if you’re adamantly opposed to ever save-scumming, or if you’re playing with friends who don’t approve… well, you do you, friend. It’s none of my business how you choose to play a single-player or co-op multiplayer game that I have absolutely no role in, so I would never say to anyone that they “have to” engage in save-scumming. Part of me respects someone who intentionally plays the game that way, knowing that they may well end up with a worse outcome and less-enjoyable experience.

At the end of the day, we’re talking about playing games for different reasons and from different points of view. I play games because I like the enjoyment, the story, and the adventure. I like to feel in control of the experience I’m having, and part of that means going back a step if I didn’t get the outcome I was hoping for. But if someone else plays games for the challenge, or enjoys the randomness and unpredictability that dice rolls bring, that’s totally fine! Just because it’s not how I choose to play doesn’t mean it’s bad, weird, stupid, or “objectively” worse.

Gaming is supposed to be fun, and there are different ways to approach it. My idea of fun may not be the same as yours – and I’m okay with that. I’ll defend save-scumming because, for me, it’s something that improves my experience of games like Baldur’s Gate 3. I think it’s silly to judge the way someone else chooses to play a single-player or co-op title, and there’s certainly a degree of snobbishness or even arrogance from some critics of save-scumming as they seem to look down their noses at people who play the game “the wrong way.” That’s a bit sad, to be honest, because how I choose to enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3 has no impact whatsoever on anyone else.

So save-scum all the way to Faerûn and back, friends! Or don’t, if you don’t want to. But if you only have time for one playthrough and you miss out on an interesting character, an exciting questline, or even just a fun piece of loot… I hope it’s worth it!

Baldur’s Gate 3: Spoiler-free review

Sun 03.09.23Sun 03.09.23Dennis

Here’s an unanswerable question to kick things off: does a critic or reviewer need to play through the entire game before publishing their review? The reason I ask is that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive game, and a lot of reviews that were published on release day or shortly after state up-front that they’re based on an incomplete experience.

That could be the topic of an entire article one day – and perhaps it should be! But for now, suffice to say that the reason my review is being published a month after Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on PC is because I took the time to complete the main campaign. As a result, I have a few things to say that I feel some early reviews glossed over or didn’t make mention of. The middle and latter parts of the game are a little different – and in some ways may feel slightly less polished than its opening act.

But let’s take a step back! I recently completed a single playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 – and there’s a case to be made that even a playthrough that lasted more than 85 hours and took in as much exploration and as many side-quests as possible still isn’t thorough. I definitely haven’t seen or experienced everything the game has to offer! That’s a great thing, in my opinion, as any game that offers that kind of replayability is fantastic.

As things stand right now, in early September, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best game I’ve played this year – and there’s no competition. This game hadn’t even been on my radar until a few weeks ago, so from my perspective it basically came out of nowhere! As someone who’s been playing games for well over three decades, getting that kind of experience is an increasingly rare phenomenon. I’m in love with Baldur’s Gate 3, and even at its most frustrating or difficult moments, I found myself inexorably drawn to the game. Finishing the story and seeing the credits roll was bittersweet! Coming to the end of such an amazing adventure left me feeling simultaneously thrilled at what I’d experienced and devastated that I couldn’t experience more of it!

In the ’90s, I missed out on the original Baldur’s Gate games. I wasn’t into Dungeons and Dragons, and I felt that turn-based CRPGs were less exciting and less fun than “Doom clones” (as we used to call first-person shooters), action-adventures, and even real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer or Age of Empires. So while I was dimly aware of Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, they were never titles that I felt any interest in trying for myself at the time.

I came to Baldur’s Gate 3 with basically no expectations. Sure, there had been some good reviews, and developer Larian Studios had received praise for Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel, but I really didn’t know what I was getting into. I don’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons or its lore, and having never played the original Baldur’s Gate I was completely unfamiliar with the world I was about to experience.

The original *Baldur’s Gate* looked like this…

Baldur’s Gate 3 catapulted me right into the story! The game’s introduction was dense and heavy, with a huge array of options in the character creator and an explosive opening chapter to the story to contend with. For someone brand-new to this world, it was a lot to take in all at once. I felt overwhelmed more than once in those first moments – and that feeling came back multiple times during the first few hours. Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t hold my hand – and while it may feel much more accessible than CRPGs did in the ’90s, players coming to the game having played modern action/RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077 or Skyrim might find the sheer density and wall of content to be offputting.

That’s not to say that Baldur’s Gate 3 is “too hard,” not by any means. Some combat encounters are challenging, and at higher difficulty levels you’re in for a tough fight! But figuring out how to effectively use the right combination of spells and weapons, as well as how to solve puzzles and complete quests was, for me at least, all part of the fun. There were some frustrating moments where I felt I’d come up against an impossible challenge – but I soon found that I could usually figure out where I was going wrong and, at the second or perhaps third time of asking, make progress.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been praised for its polish – and rightly so, for the most part. But I would be remiss not to mention that I encountered a few bugs and glitches during my playthrough, as well as some dodgy enemy and ally AI that could be frustrating. Although most of these were occasional or one-off issues, here are the ones that spring to mind:

Being able to pick up “null items” that didn’t exist,
Enemies repeatedly trying to open locked doors over and over,

Subtitles not showing during dialogue,
Characters getting stuck or being unable to navigate an open doorway,
Parts of a character’s skin/costume going missing,

Enemies and allies both charging head-first into fire or other environmental hazards,
Characters seeming to “freeze” and take no actions in combat when it was their turn,
The camera pointing in the wrong direction (or at nothing at all) during cut-scenes,

A quest marker that pointed to the wrong place on the map,
A mission-critical character in the latter part of the game who was randomly dead during a quest.

While I didn’t encounter any hard crashes – not a single one in over eighty-five hours of playing – nor any bugged or broken quests, I’m treating Baldur’s Gate 3 a bit more harshly on the bug front than I otherwise would, and that’s for one primary reason: this is a game that spent more than three years in early access. There was ample time to polish the experience and to take on board feedback from players. Some of these bugs occurred during the first part of the game, which is the part that was available to play during early access, so I really don’t give Larian a lot of leeway here when it comes to bugs.

Are bugs inevitable in games? Sure. Is Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the least-buggy titles so far this year? Absolutely… but that’s a low bar. Given how long the game has been in development, and especially given how long it spent in early access, the fact that basic things like subtitles or character models could be problematic isn’t great. While there are some mitigating circumstances – such as the game’s launch being pushed forward by over a month – I still think more could have been done to mitigate these issues.

This isn’t an item you’re supposed to be able to collect!

While we’re on this subject, let’s talk a little more about AI. Some of the characters in the game – and I’m including allies, companions, enemies, and occasionally the player character in this – could behave absolutely stupidly on occasion. Pathfinding when in turn-based mode could be particularly poor, and this is significant because character movement is strictly limited in combat and turn-based mode. Taking an unnecessarily long or winding route to a spot on the map or an objective can be the difference between being able to do something that turn or having to wait. Perhaps some of this could be explained by “user error” – but not all of it!

Then there were occasions where characters would damage their own allies, either by firing a weapon or casting a spell that impacted everyone around them. If I, as the player, chose to do something like that because I weighed that the benefits outweighed the cost, that’s my decision. But for the AI to make a move that crippled or killed some of its own characters… it just didn’t make a lot of sense to me, not when there were clearly other options available.

Promo screenshot featuring a combat encounter.

There were also a few let-downs when it came to the choices I made, and this is something that I definitely felt more of as the game progressed. Despite an impressive character creator offering backgrounds, races, classes, and more… I didn’t really feel that much beyond the class actually mattered. The way other characters in the world reacted to my character generally didn’t take my character’s race or background into account, and class primarily affected combat and stealth encounters. Considering the game’s lofty promises… only seeing a few lines of unique dialogue across eighty-five hours wasn’t as impressive as it could’ve been.

I chose to play as a dark elf/drow druid. And there were a few places where, as a druid, I got a line or two about nature… but the conversation would immediately return to other matters. As a drow, I didn’t feel that the way anyone in the world reacted to me was any different or would have been any different if I’d chosen to play as a human or a halfling. More could have been made of this, in my opinion, to really make these custom characters feel unique and part of the world.

The same was true of character relationships. Without giving too much away, none of them felt particularly reactive – either to the character I chose to play as or to my actions. Occasionally a pop-up would display informing me that so-and-so “approved” or “disapproved” of a certain action or dialogue choice. But at no point did any of this approval or disapproval matter. You might get a different line of dialogue when next interacting with them, but after that they’d again go right back to the way they were.

We’ll have to get into more detail about some of these decisions later – I’ll be writing a second part of this review in the days ahead in which I’ll talk more about specific character moments and story beats and get into spoiler territory. But for now, I think I’ve made my point about the lack of reaction from some of the characters and the overall generic feel to the player-created custom character. Maybe choosing to play as one of the pre-made characters would negate this feeling, but for me – and I’d wager, for a lot of other folks too – part of the fun of a role-playing game is creating a character, either to represent ourselves or as an opportunity to become someone completely different.

But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a truly compelling game that sucked me in and kept me in suspense practically the entire time. No sooner had I finished one complex mission than another would present itself, and the incredible thing was just how natural and organic the whole adventure and story felt. Exploring an area away from where the main quest seemed to be leading would see me encounter an interesting character who would have an entire hour-long mission of their own to send me on. Or diving into a dungeon would lead to uncovering a secret item that would have a massive impact on one of the characters in the group, again kicking off a quest or even a whole line of quests. Baldur’s Gate 3 certainly found a way to make exploring its beautifully-crafted world feel rewarding.

Levels and regions in Baldur’s Gate 3 feel balanced – not too big and not too small. There are just the right amount of items and loot to make exploring feel worthwhile without being unnecessarily time-consuming. And there’s a beautiful diversity of environments – from dark, rat-infested dungeons to beautiful beaches and hills. Unlike some open-world games, which can feel too big, directionless, or bland, everything about the world of Baldur’s Gate 3 was fantastic; a masterclass in level design.

How many games have you played where enemy types would soon feel repetitive and boring? I can practically guarantee you that won’t be the case in Baldur’s Gate 3! The sheer diversity of enemy types was fantastic, with practically every combat encounter offering something different. There are many named enemies and mini-bosses to go along with the bigger, badder bosses, too – and again, each of these feels unique and different from one another. There are factions that oppose you along your quest – but even when fighting the same group, the sheer array of characters, and the differing combinations in which enemy groups can be deployed, really worked to make each fight feel different from the last.

This diversity extends to friendly and neutral NPCs, too. There are so many different characters to meet, and practically all of them feel like they have a place in the fantasy world of Faerûn. Even background characters, like nameless villagers or soldiers, still manage to feel like they have a role to play – and perhaps a story all their own that we just didn’t see. These characters go a long way to building up a world that feels lived-in and real – and one in which the player character’s decisions do genuinely matter.

One of the game’s many non-player characters.

There’s also a decent amount of variety in terms of loot and items. Maybe this says more about the way I play these games – your mileage may vary – but I found I’d amassed a huge collection of everything from random junk to potions and scrolls by the time the campaign was into its final stretch. The ability to send items to camp instantaneously instead of having to sell them or leave them behind when over-encumbered is a life-saver – and a feature more games should take advantage of!

There are a couple of downsides here, though. Inventory management isn’t great, and when storing items in a chest at camp there’s no way to sort by category, meaning it can be a pain to find a specific item. Secondly, while there’s a huge number of individual items to find in the game, there wasn’t such a broad variety of cosmetic items to choose from, particularly in the armour department. Being able to recolour items with dye certainly helped, but a bit more cosmetic variety wouldn’t go amiss in a game like this – and I’d happily sacrifice a dozen or more of the random pieces of junk to get even one or two additional pairs of boots or suits of armour.

Inventory management could be easier sometimes.

I chose to play Baldur’s Gate 3 using a control pad, not mouse and keyboard. That’s my preferred way to play, and I found the game’s “radial menus” to be a little cumbersome, but ultimately perfectly usable. The fact that combat is turn-based means you aren’t having to panic trying to hit buttons in short order, and there’s time to open each menu and find exactly the right spell, attack, or action that you need!

When the game launches on PlayStation 5 later this week, I would imagine the controls will be similar. Controller support on PC was good, and everything from moving and exploring the world to those turn-based actions worked well. I doubt PlayStation players, or PC players like myself using a control pad, will have any major issues.

Let’s briefly talk about dice and randomness! Many events in Baldur’s Gate 3, from conversations to lockpicking and exploration to combat, rely on rolls of the digital dice. Some of these rolls are obvious and interactive – others are passive and happen in the background, though you’ll be informed of the outcome. A lot of games use “random number generation” to determine the outcome of all manner of things, but it’s obvious and even in-your-face in Baldur’s Gate 3. You can, of course “save-scum” to get around this – Baldur’s Gate 3 practically encourages save-scumming by implementing a free save system that allows you to save while in combat, right before a dice roll, and basically at any point.

Save-scumming will have to be the subject of an article of its own one day, but suffice to say I support the practice. It’s your game, and you should play it the way you want! If you get a once-in-a-single-playthrough encounter, with a positive or negative outcome literally hanging on the roll of a dice… why not go back and redo it if you want to get the “right” outcome? There were relatively few points where I felt I absolutely needed to get a specific outcome, and the game is incredibly adaptable in that regard. But it also definitely allows for easy re-dos thanks to the aforementioned free save system – and some generous in-game dice modifiers and boosters!

I picked up Baldur’s Gate 3 almost on a whim – I was looking for something to play while waiting for Starfield. I really didn’t know what to expect beyond a game that had been picking up some positive buzz, but I’m absolutely blown away by how much fun I had. It’s been an amazing ride, and in a way the fact that it was so unexpected only adds to that! Baldur’s Gate 3 hadn’t been on my radar at all in 2023, but it’s now a serious candidate for my “game of the year.” Check back in December, by the way, to see if it makes the cut!

I think I’ve said all I can without getting into the story too deeply. But I do have some thoughts on the details of the plot, so I hope you’ll join me in the days ahead for that. Or just swing by after you’ve beaten the game! Going in blind, as I did, is definitely recommended the first time around! The experience was much more enjoyable for me as I toddled and blundered my way through those opening hours of the game!

I don’t like to put a number score or a star rating on games when I review them. Check Metacritic if you want to get a mark out of ten! But if you want to know if I recommend Baldur’s Gate 3, the answer is an emphatic “yes.” This is the best game I’ve played in 2023 so far, and it’s not even close. There are some deep and complex systems that may seem offputting, and it’s a long game that requires a significant time commitment to make it all the way through. But even with those caveats – or rather, because of those selling-points – I can’t recommend it highly enough! You don’t need to be a Dungeons and Dragons player and you don’t need to have played a lot of CRPGs to get stuck into this game and have a fun time.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC, will be released on PlayStation 5 on the 6th of September, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Some screenshots and promo art used above courtesy of Larian Studios and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has set a high bar… Starfield, take note!

Thu 17.08.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers may be present for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield.

I’ll get into this in more detail in my review of Baldur’s Gate 3 – which is currently a work in progress – but I came to Larian’s Dungeons and Dragons CRPG with basically no expectations at all. The game wasn’t one that had been on my radar, I don’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons, and the primary reason I picked it up is because it happened to be well-timed, releasing just as the hype train for Starfield has been building. I was looking for a new game to play, and Baldur’s Gate 3 reared its head, backed up by plenty of positive reviews. It felt like the right game at the right time – but little more than a way to kill some time while waiting for the real prize: Starfield.

Suffice to say, I undervalued Baldur’s Gate 3 in a pretty big way! The game is fantastic, as you’ve no doubt heard from other reviewers, and although I can’t call it “perfect,” it’s certainly the best game I’ve played in 2023 so far. It will absolutely rival Starfield for the coveted “Trekking with Dennis Award” come December, and if Starfield should falter… well, maybe it’ll even pip it to the post and scoop the prize. I wouldn’t have expected that even just a couple of weeks ago.

A promo screenshot of *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

There are two things that Baldur’s Gate 3 has done well that Bethesda needs to consider when it comes to Starfield. The first is microtransactions. There aren’t any in Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’s in spite of comparable titles like Diablo IV positively drowning in them. As I’ve noted more than once, we haven’t yet had confirmation from Bethesda that Starfield will be free from microtransactions, season passes, lootboxes, premium currencies, and other shit-smeared trappings of the modern video games industry.

Secondly, while I have encountered a few glitches and bugs in my thirty-plus hours with Baldur’s Gate 3, the game is complete and pretty polished. The main quest is complete, side missions and character quests are all unique and interesting, and the state of the game overall is pretty darn good. The main mechanics and systems it employs, from magic and spellcasting to combat and exploration, all work well, and there are plenty of choices that genuinely have an impact on the game world.

A relatively minor visual bug that I encountered in *Baldur’s Gate 3*.

Bethesda has acquired a reputation over the years, and it’s well-deserved. Major Bethesda releases, from Oblivion to Fallout 76, have all arrived with bugs and glitches to varying degrees. Bethesda’s publishing arm is also responsible for the likes of Redfall, a title ridiculed for its broken state earlier this year. While Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t entirely bug-free, it’s on a completely different scale from any of Bethesda’s launches.

The microtransaction issue is already one that I’ve been sceptical about when it comes to Starfield. Well before the game has even launched, Bethesda has already been touting the first piece of story DLC, an expensive £25 add-on. Expansion packs are no bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s disappointing to see Bethesda leaning into add-ons and DLC so early in Starfield’s life. In contrast, Baldur’s Gate 3 may not have any DLC at all, with Larian potentially moving on to their next project instead, regarding the game and its story as complete.

*Diablo IV* has an awful and aggressive in-game monetisation scheme. Let’s hope *Starfield* follows the *Baldur’s Gate 3* model…

The games are very different from one another. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a CRPG – a throwback, in many ways, to a style of game that has fallen out of fashion over the past twenty years or so. It employs turn-based combat, a third-person or isometric camera, and a game world broken up into several large regions (or levels) to accompany its three-act narrative.

Starfield, in contrast, is very much an action-RPG or even an RPG/shooter, with real-time combat inspired by the likes of id Software’s recent Doom and Doom Eternal titles. Although a third-person view is available, Bethesda has stated that the game is intended to primarily be played from a first-person perspective, and the game’s “open galaxy” map, while broken up into star systems and planets, isn’t split into sections or levels in the way that the map is in Baldur’s Gate 3. Starfield is also a sci-fi title to Baldur’s Gate 3′s fantasy setting.

*Starfield* will be a different kind of game – but with comparable features.

But there are plenty of similarities, too. Both games are role-playing experiences, both have skills to unlock, character progression, and both aim to tell expansive single-player stories complete with engaging characters, main and secondary quests to follow, and more. Though the comparison is not a direct one between two games with identical styles… it’s close enough that many Baldur’s Gate 3 players may be intending to play Starfield. In fact, Larian Studios deliberately moved up the release date of Baldur’s Gate 3 by more than a month to avoid a clash with Starfield.

So when I say that Baldur’s Gate 3 has set a high bar, I mean it. Coming just a few weeks apart, comparisons between the two games will be inevitable – and if Starfield should suffer a bumpy launch for any reason, those comparisons may not be favourable. Baldur’s Gate 3 will also be launching on PlayStation 5 the same week as Starfield arrives on PC and Xbox, so there’ll be a flood of new players joining the party. PlayStation fans may feel less bad at missing out on Starfield if Baldur’s Gate 3 is being heralded as the “better” title.

*Baldur’s Gate 3* promo screenshot featuring a dragonborn warrior.

But we mustn’t get too far ahead of ourselves! It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that players can enjoy one or both games on their own merit, without needing to “pick a side” or say which one is somehow “objectively better.” I want Starfield to be a fun experience – at least as much fun as Baldur’s Gate 3 has been for me over the past couple of weeks. But I recognise that, with the games releasing so close to one another, my impressions of Starfield – particularly insofar as how complete and polished it feels – will be coloured by my experience of Baldur’s Gate 3.

So… here’s the difficult part. In 2022, I praised Xbox and Bethesda for delaying Starfield. If the game needed more attention, more work, and more time to squash bugs and polish the experience, then a delay was unquestionably the right call. With a scant two weeks to go before Starfield’s pre-order exclusive early release, and with reviewers and publications eagerly awaiting their review copies… well, this is basically the last possible opportunity to delay the game. If Starfield should release with a level of bugs and glitches comparable in any way to the likes of Redfall or Fallout 76, not only will we lament this missed opportunity, but we’ll have those comparisons with Baldur’s Gate 3 to chew on.

*Starfield* was originally targeting a November 2022 release.

Whether you’ve played and enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3 or not, and regardless of whether it’s “your thing” or not, it’s undeniable that the game has raised the stakes for Starfield, and has set a high bar indeed for other single-player role-playing games to strive for. I hope Starfield can hit it. Heck, I hope Starfield smashes through it and sets a new, even higher bar! It’s rare to get a title as fun and as consumer-friendly as Baldur’s Gate 3, so to get two in a row would be beyond fantastic. You know what they say: you wait ages for something and then two come along at once!

Where I see the biggest potential comparison is with one of my biggest concerns about Starfield: monetisation. We’re so close to Starfield’s launch, and yet Bethesda and Xbox have still failed to clarify what kind of monetisation we can expect to see in the game. Unless the answer is “none at all,” as Larian repeatedly assured players in the run-up to the launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, that will already be a disappointment. Should that monetisation extend beyond large-scale expansion packs to include things like premium currencies or lootboxes… that could spell disaster.

Bethesda and Xbox have yet to comment on microtransactions in *Starfield*.

What Larian has done with Baldur’s Gate 3 is something that other AAA studios should strive for. Of course it’s true that not every game can be as expansive and feature-rich as Baldur’s Gate 3… but every game should be able to take inspiration from it in different areas. Single-player games shouldn’t need in-game monetisation to turn a profit. AAA studios should be launching complete games, not broken, “release now, fix later” messes, nor games with incomplete stories and promises of “roadmaps” to more content. Larian has also shown a willingness to listen to feedback from players through an extensive early access period, and while I’m generally sceptical about big studios using early access, and of long early access periods in general, in this case it seems to have worked as intended for once.

The fact is that Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t anything new, nor even particularly innovative. In many ways it’s actually a throwback to an older style of game that was prominent in the 1990s and early 2000s. As that kind of gameplay has fallen by the wayside in the push to open worlds, always-online experiences, and microtransactions… it feels different in 2023.

But that’s just a really sad commentary on the sorry state of the video games industry. A consumer-friendly game, one that doesn’t chase every trend going nor try to extort its players for extra cash, finds itself becoming headline news.

When I looked ahead to the games I was most interested to play in 2023, titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Redfall, Forspoken, and of course Starfield were all contenders. After several of those proved to be disappointing or underwhelming, it’s been a genuinely cathartic experience to pick up a new game and just… really enjoy playing it. That Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t on my radar and was thus an unexpected surprise just adds to that.

There has been chatter online and on social media about Baldur’s Gate 3 being a unique project that shouldn’t become the “industry standard” that players expect to see going forward. And there’s an element of truth to that: most games won’t be old-school CRPGs with hundreds of hours of content. But in terms of adopting consumer-friendly practices, abandoning trends when they don’t fit with the story a game is telling, and focusing on delivering a quality product… those are things that players can and should expect. Some of us never stopped asking the video games industry and its biggest corporations to deliver those things. Maybe the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 – coupled with some spectacular failures over the past few years – will finally be the catalyst that makes these corporations sit up and listen.

And as for Starfield… the bar has been well and truly raised. I can only hope that Xbox and Bethesda have done enough to reach it.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out now for PC, will be released on PlayStation 5 on the 6th of September, and will be released on Xbox Series consoles in 2024. Starfield will be released on PC and Xbox Series consoles on the 6th of September. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the copyright of Larian Studios, and is based on Dungeons and Dragons which is owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Starfield is the copyright of Bethesda Softworks, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.