The Baldur’s Gate games have a legendary status. When Black Isle studios released the first one, it changed many gamers’ perceptions on what storytelling in a game could be. Its gameplay was challenging, its story was engaging, and its characters were well-written. When I first played it, I was almost immediately hooked. Up to that point, I had only played JRPGs, and this was my first introduction to both Western RPGs and Dungeons and Dragons. I fell in love with characters like Jaheira, Imoen, and, of course, Minsc and Boo. My story isn’t unique among older players, and the original Baldur’s Gate occupies a holy trinity among old school fans. It had been announced a couple of years ago that Wizards of the Coast had chosen Larian studios to develop the third title for this legendary series, and I couldn’t be more excited. Larian is the same studio that brought us Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. Both of these games were the best RPGs of their respective years, so the series was in good hands.
After twenty years of waiting for a follow-up, I finally watched gameplay footage of Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke showed off an hour’s worth of footage at PAX East, and it was glorious. The footage showed off the intro cinematic, and quite a bit about combat, dialogue options, camping, and turn-based movement out of combat.
Character creation seems to be very similar to Larian’s previous games, down to having the option to play pre-built characters with their own backstories, dialogue options, and motivations. Swen chose Astarion, a high elf vampire spawn rogue. As previously mentioned, picking Astarion changed certain dialogue options, giving him the opportunity to attempt to feed off potential companions. It was mentioned that there would initially be 9 races and 6 classes from which to choose in early access, with more coming upon full release.
Another thing like their previous games is the turn-based combat. The combat in the gameplay footage felt a lot like Divinity: Original Sin 2, and that’s to its credit. Dungeons and Dragons is, by necessity, a turn-based game. As such, it made sense to move from the real-time pausable combat of the original Baldur’s Gates to this approach. On their turn, each character gets a movement action, a standard action, and a bonus action. With their standard action, they can attack, cast spells, use special abilities, shove, jump, or throw. The crowd roared with laughter as Swen threw one of his boots at a difficult enemy and killed it.
One thing that is very reminiscent of Baldur’s Gate is the difficulty. The original game was hard! If you didn’t plan out battle carefully, you would experience a full party death. Larian has kept this in the upcoming sequel. During the first combat in the reveal, Swen experienced such a tragedy due to a couple of critical misses and poor tactical decisions. He came back and later claimed victory by using environmental factors to do extra damage to the enemies.
Something I am really excited about with this game is the out of combat turns. When you hit the turn button out of combat, you get six seconds to act. This makes stealth feel more like actually playing Dungeons and Dragons, and allowing you to set up combat to your liking before the fight actually starts. Swen used this mechanic to sneak around behind an enemy on a balcony, shoving him off and doing massive damage once the battle started in earnest. With this and the jump mechanics, Baldur’s Gate 3 looks to have a verticality that wasn’t possible in either the previous entries or Larian’s other games.
Watching the gameplay, I marveled at how good the game looked at this early stage. Keep in mind; this game is an extremely early stage. Even considering this, things seemed really polished. There were a few animations missing, and there was a hilarious bug where one of the enemies kept ascending and descending a ladder. These were forgivable because the game has still so far to go, and it was still incredible to see how far it had come so early.
The last thing to discuss with this reveal is the story. You play a character who has been abducted by mindflayers, a psionic Cthulu inspired race. In Faerun, they have somehow found again the technology to create their ancient nautiloids: giant, tentacled flying ships. Once captured aboard this ship, you are implanted with a mindflayer tadpole, beginning a process called Ceremorphosis. The tadpole will eat its way into your brain and rewire you, turning you into one of the sinister illithids. Your rescuers come in the form of githyanki, ancient enemies of the mindflayers. They arrive on dragons, downing the ship of which you are captive, and free you. As such, you have scant days to find a healer and free yourself of the parasite.
There is currently no set release date for this game, and I would not personally expect it to be released this year. However, my hopes for it have never been higher, and I am so excited to play it for the first time. We will keep you updated as more details are released!
What do you all think of the revealed Baldur’s Gate 3 info so far?
