Whether it’s grumpy goblins, gothic elves or romance with a bear, you’re bound to have heard of Baldur’s Gate 3 the last days. Third most played game on Steam with a nice peak at 814,000 simultaneous players, Larian Studios’ RPG is on everyone’s lips. This is not insignificant: it is undoubtedly one of the best role-playing games ever created.
To try to understand a little the surge Baldur’s Gate 3, we must first take an interest in its creators, Larian Studios, a Belgian studio founded twenty-seven years ago. It’s not just any studio. Since its inception, the developer has continued to prove its love for role-playing games, notably creating one of the most acclaimed modern RPG series of all time: Divinity.
The last two episodes to date, and particularly Divinity Original Sin 2 released in 2017, impressed players and critics with an incredible level of writing, memorable adventures and almost infinite replayability, so many are the possibilities available to players. At Larian, we like games that can take several hundred hours, and where no one will ever experience the same adventure as the neighbor. And it is precisely for this expertise that the studio was expected at the turn by developing Baldur’s Gate 3, third episode of a series almost as old as Édouard Balladur. About sixty-nine years.
Rarely in a role-playing game have we seen characters who seem so alive
Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s a bit of a wet dream for many paper RPG fans. This fantasy of taking part in a great adventure and being told stories, knowing that the only right decision will be the one you choose to make. Pass a fight by using your charisma during a dialogue, steal a key from a character to completely avoid a quest, assassinate the NPC who gives us the quest or talk to animals if our powers allow it… The same quest generally gives rise to a myriad solutions and possible outcomes, the players’ imagination being the only engine to advance in the adventure.
The character creation itself has plenty to keep you busy. With its eleven races, twelve classes and forty-six subclasses, it is directly based on the rules of Dungeons & Dragons to allow newcomers to forge a character that corresponds to them (down to the genitals). Whether you want to play melee, ranged weapons, stealth, spells, charm or necromancy, there is something for everyone. The game even offers to define a story, or even to make multi-class to mix two distinct skill trees and thus imagine original combinations. A gold-hungry dragon-man who knows plants inside out and despises humans — it’s possible if you want to.
And adventurers, there are four in a group: we can play Baldur’s Gate 3 with 3 friends who will each occupy a seat, or go solo with AI-controlled companions — each with their own story and distinct motivations. In this case, we control the four characters during the fights and we use their different abilities to get out of delicate situations. Once back to exploring, they will take part in discussions, befriend each other and may be the source of romances. Rarely in a role-playing game have we seen characters who seem so alive, and whose personality displays nuances, emotions and mood swings. Rarely did we feel like we were talking with real people, actually.
When dropped into such a rich world, the possibilities can clearly be daunting. Already by the simple lifespan of the game announced: about 80 hours for the main story and more than 200 if you decide to attack quests and secondary areas. That’s a lot of wide areas to explore, with hundreds of characters, events and treasures hidden in the recesses of a cursed forest, deep in a gloomy cave or in a teeming city. But it’s especially when you realize the number of approaches for a single problem that the brain begins to heat up a bit.
Let’s take the example of a simple door, the one that comes just after the tutorial of the game, in the first fifteen meters of the adventure. It’s closed, and every good adventurer wants to know what’s behind it. You can try to hook it, or destroy it with great hammer blows. You can also bypass it, and realize that a trapdoor located at the top of the mountain allows you to descend inside a crypt, containing several sarcophagi, traps and a group of bandits. The group of bandits in question reacts in different ways to approaching adventurers. It is possible to surprise them by going through a hidden door, to break the ceiling by dropping a rock on it, or to kill them. And this single door that has already taken three hours of your time is about 5% of the very first area of the game. It’s enough to make you dizzy.
There are all the same certain things which can surprise during the first hours of play of Baldur’s Gate 3, especially when you expect to find a modern RPG there. Since the formula is based on the latest Dungeons & Dragons rulebook, it also uses its familiar rules to RPG fans. Impossible to spam spells, for example: they occupy a limited number of slots that you must recharge by taking a rest (long or short) with your group. And during the long rests, the adventurers will establish a camp and discuss before sleeping in straw mattresses to leave the next day. This is exactly what one would do in a classic role-playing game.
The rules can be a bit confusing, especially the balance between real-time and turn-based gameplay. But, I promise, Larian has done an incredible job of supporting new players and it is possible to find your way around even if you have never played a CRPG in your life or never tried Roleplay. This is the greatest success of Baldur’s Gate 3 : constantly give the player the impression of taking part in an epic that goes beyond him, where the adventure will inevitably end up going into a spin when one of the members of the group makes a bad roll of the dice. We always end up falling on our feet and we remember the bad passes with humor, like memories engraved forever in our life as a player.
Admittedly, the game has just been released, and it will certainly take you some time to get through it. But it’s not a game to be afraid of, and I promise you won’t regret setting foot in it.
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