Baldur’s Gate 3 – If Michael Bay made an RPG

It’s time to finally review this mastodon of a game after giving it around 150 hours on one-and-a-half playthroughs. For the most part, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fine addition to the CRPG genre, and Dungeons & Dragons games overall. However, it’s not without issues, and issues it has aplenty. This rest on more than just gameplay and story, unfortunately, since there is a lot of polarizing content in it that takes the form of the current progressive zeitgeist. Your level of tolerance will affect your enjoyment of Baldur’s Gate 3, unless you are a firm believer, and sees this game as some kind of triumph furthering the cause – like mainstream gaming journalists. More on that later.

Let’s start with the story, and there will be some spoilers here on out, so beware. I wouldn’t be able to get some important points across otherwise, but I will try to keep it at a minimum. The game starts very bombastic with a nautiloid (mind flayer) ship appearing above the city of Baldur’s Gate. It is being hunted by dragon riders from the githyanki race (a race not native to Faerun) so this isn’t exactly a friendly visit over a cup of tea. While flying over the city the nautiloid decides to kidnap a few people by teleporting them into mind-flayer-converting pods, and it’s here where you come in. See, you are one of these people that get wisped away and when onboard you are force-fed a tadpole through the eye – it’s all very pleasant, I promise.

The attacks by the githyanki continue during this event, which eventually forces the nautiloid to a brutal crash-landing, and with that, the “tutorial island” is over. After just barely surviving the impact, you begin the real adventure on a beach, as a level one with nothing more to you than your name. It’s all very typical of Larian Studios. From here on out you will have to figure out what happened, and why, and a way to remove the mind worm before it turns you into a mind flayer.

Three games in one
Baldur’s Gate 3 story is structured into 3 massive acts, each with its own separate storyline and ending. The acts do still have a connection with each other as you continue to pursue the reason why you were kidnapped in the first place and to find a way to remove the mind worm – which is a constant conundrum throughout the game. The story works and it’s intriguing and mysterious, but it does have some huge issues. First off, the connection to the original games is flimsy at best since Baldur’s Gate 3 is set about 100 years after the Bhaal spawn incident. There are references, and you even get a meet a few characters from past games. However, it does feel more like fanservice than anything else. I found this disappointing, and while it’s still fun meeting the old characters, it’s a letdown since they have no real impact on the story at large. They also feel a bit odd on the verve of being poorly written compared to their older parts, especially everything involving the good old god of murder.

The narrative structure, pacing, and reason to care about anything is also a bit strange. The quest about the mind worm feels very urgent narrative-wise, yet you still have all the time in the world to meander around and do whatever you want. As a reminder, you are just some random dude getting picked in Baldur’s Gate, which doesn’t exactly scream “call of adventure“. You are here just to survive while forced together with a motley crew of castaways. There is no real incentive to actually do anything that is expected from a roleplaying fantasy game. Why go explore some random dungeon when you have a worm in your brain ready to transform you? And why in gods name does the rest of the crew follow you down into these crypts? They don’t even like you, and you probably don’t like them much.

Another issue that ties into this is that you don’t enter the city of Baldur’s Gate until the final act. It treats you as a newcomer even when most backgrounds have you as a citizen of the city. You are also expected to care about the city, as apparently it will be destroyed in a gruesome way in the game’s crescendo if you are not there to stop it. Why would you care about any of this, though? That’s what I mean by the structure of the game feels strange. A solution to this would be to set the first few levels in Baldur’s Gate – to get a chance to know the city, to be able to craft an identity for your character, and why not make a few friends, maybe even a companion or two that follow you through the ordeal. Imagine making a triumphant return if this was the case, instead of just walking into an unknown city with the expectation that you should care dearly about this place, a place you know nothing about and has no attachment to. As it is, it feels very artificial and forced.

So many villains
Beyond all the minor bosses you will dispatch through gory violence, all with their own short portrayal, there are just too many “main” villains in this story – from avatars of gods to fallen paladins and crazed Bhaal cultists. The main villains are not even introduced in the first act! There is nothing that propels you forward besides the tadpole stuck in your skull, and to be honest, the story and the motivations are a bit confusing – this combined with the meandering nature of the game makes for a hell of a long twisty experience. There is a pretty good mystery behind it all, but act one never makes it clear who the main bad guys are. Act 2 introduces one of the main villains and many underling bosses – and only for that act it should be pointed out, as after Act 2 most of them will be gone from the story forever. The antagonists never get a real chance to shine since they don’t follow you from act to act. With all this I mean; there is nobody like Sarevok or Jon Irenicus that is a constant thorn in your side. Well, except for the bad-guy cult called the Absolute. But considering how easy they are to infiltrate even as the purest of good souls, they stand out as a bunch of incompetent fools that are easily tricked. They never come off as a serious danger or a real antagonistic faction.

Friends & companions
On companions, they are of the typical BioWare kind, or at least very inspired by that type of writing, however, for some reason they are written with the sexual appetite of Hugh Hefner, as everyone wants to bone you regardless of what sex you are. I talked about this in of my impression articles, so I won’t go into it too much, but it ruins every prospect of forming any kind of brotherhood (or sisterhood for that matter) since I doubt you could form that kind of connection when you need to establish a HR department just to take a rest in the wilderness. Past that, the companions are okay, but not overly interesting, and one fault in this (besides the writing trying to upstage BioWare companions at every turn) is that their backgrounds are just way too outlandish. In general, I don’t like the “chosen one” storyline, but if you play a custom “good” character as I did, the game gives you nothing except the tadpole lodged into your brain – an aspect your companions even share. See, all the companions have something going for them, something much bigger than the tadpole which (at least to them) makes the brain worm a minor issue compared. By playing a custom character, you are relegated to a nanny role for grown-ups, making sure their needs are met, so they can experience their part of the story. While you, the so-called main protagonist of the Baldur’s Gate 3 get nothing. There is no personal journey, no interesting quest to fulfill… zero, zip, nada. I can’t think I have ever experienced something like this in an RPG before, but now that I have, it feels incredibly empty narrative-wise since any one of the companions can technically defeat the big bad without you. 

To continue on that note, playing as one of the companions is a thing you can do. This to me defeats the purpose of playing a game based on DnD as you are forced into a role and class. However, there is one interesting custom background you can play that is called The Dark Urge. I know, very edgy, yet story-wise, it makes your character take a larger part of the world as your background is interwoven into the narrative, and the older games in the series. Now, according to Larian (Swen), it’s not recommended to take this custom background on your first playthrough since it has some macabre forced events. I don’t know about this, though, since it makes your character have a point to it all which makes it all the more fascinating. This guy also suffers from amnesia, which makes it much easier to build up a personality for your character. I wish I picked this background for myself the first time around, however, I did pick it for my evil playthrough.

See no evil
In one of my impression articles, I talked favorably about choice and consequences and different paths to take. However, now playing as a mostly evil guy, I have noticed that the general structure of the game remains almost exactly the same. Beyond a few choices that don’t make too much sense (even for an evil character), like the Act 1 choice of destroying the grove or not – there isn’t much that changes the plot overall. Actually, by playing evil, you limit yourself, as three of the companions will leave you outright which means you will have to hire one of the zombie-like vessels ones from Mr. Lich – if you want a full party, that is. 

You do gain one companion, but not until far into Act 2, if you didn’t kill her earlier because she is behind a persuasion roll which if you fail means you will have to kill her. All in all, I find this path extremely lacking so far, even if it’s fun to be an asshole. There is a shortage of evil-aligned companions, and the structure of Baldur’s Gate 3 remains the same despite your evil nature, as said. For example, you can’t join the Absolute. Doing their bidding doesn’t help much, as you (set by the story) will never accept them, which limits the roleplaying possibilities. They treat you almost the same regardless of whether you are playing a goodie two-shoe or incarnate of evil. The same goes for the good factions, like the Harpers. I have not completed my evil playthrough, so I can’t talk about the whole game from this perspective with certainty, but the initial impressions are not promising. They might as well have gone with the Mass Effect renegade asshole options for the evil path since it’s aligned with taking the high road. You got the same goal, and what makes this disappointing while other games don’t bother me in the same way (as most players will play a good guy, so it will have the majority focus) is that Larian promised more with this title.

One final issue with the story is that it collapses in Act 3. It still retains the fundamentals of the storyline, and it ends somewhat satisfactorily with the main baddie dead – even if the obligatory twist seems a bit off. Act 3 seems very rushed, and it loses much of the freeform sandbox nature that the game had before this. It becomes very linear, and most solutions come from either direct combat, making a persuasion check, or infiltrating (which usually ends in a big fight regardless). These changes might not stand out from the first and second chapter, but the quest solutions become binary, and your own ingenuity in solving these quests are almost removed from the game. It becomes the typical walk, talk and spank approach that is common in RPGs. In other words, you go from set-piece to set-piece to resolve the finality of many long-form quests, which makes you feel like you are going through a grocery store checklist rather than playing an immersive game.

It’s still okay
Regardless of my issues with the plot, it’s still entertaining, and I wouldn’t have played it for 150 hours if it wasn’t. I’m just providing a counterbalance to the reviews made by mainstream outlets since I get the impression that they haven’t played the game beyond Act 1. They just give praise upon praise, without talking about any of the issues, and for many gaming magazines, Baldur’s Gate 3 has received the highest score ever in their scoring history. I find that a wee bit extreme. It might be good, but it isn’t that good, and it also means that we have reached the peak of gaming. Why even try anymore? I mean, 97% out of 100? How will that be surpassed?

Polarization
Now, let’s talk about some of the woke issues. I don’t want to go into it too much, because I don’t want to politicize this blog more than I have to. However, in the case of Baldur’s Gate 3, it can’t be avoided. It’s very progressive, in the sense that it has to include every race under the sun regardless of location, and every sexual orientation ever (of course) – in an amount that goes from tolerable “representation” to woke with capital W. As it is fantasy, the gender roles are not that defined like in real life, but having the majority of military leaders and such titles held by women – small tiny women, and being black to boot feels a step too far on the scale of believability. Baldur’s Gate itself gives the impression of being a modern-day Los Angeles than something based on medieval Europe – and this is on top of all the fantasy races that already live here. Remember, humans are supposed to be the majority in the setting, but this has been thrown out the window with a homogeneous population. It just makes no sense to have this diverse of a population with geography meaning absolutely nothing. It’s highly immersion shattering, especially when you know that if it ever comes out an expansion in let’s say an Arabic-themed land, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will have citizens look the part. As it should be, but that also means it should work in all directions and places. And have not even talked about the bearded ladies and the drag-queen character… and I won’t. I will just leave it at that.

It doesn’t ruin the game, however, the zero care for world-building and setting destroys most of the plausibility just to score a few points with the progressive crowd; the game journalists, and the Reddit crowd. By taking a peak over at the Steam forum(*), you can see a lot of gamers are tired of this kind of pandering, and I sure hope Larian themselves take a look and maybe think. Oh well, on to other things.

DnD 5th Edition in my CRPG?
I don’t enjoy Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition that much, as I have mentioned many times on this site already, but I do think Larian Studios managed to make the rules fun in a gameplay sense at least. There are many things I dislike with this edition, like for example how everyone can use scrolls, and that races have been made to have equal stats, which removes the uniqueness of the races and has made them very samey. Those are just two examples of the many issues that dilute the experience from past editions, yet, as I said, Larian makes it work and transforms the combat into an enjoyable “mess”. Mess, as the combat retains the deadly surface coating and “barrelmancy” from their previous games. Many enemies got some kind of elemental bombs or spells, and that means that many encounters will eventually end with everything covered in either fire or acid. If these elements combine, stuff usually explodes too, and when you add barrels filled with oil into this mix, well, you see where I’m going with this. It gets very messy, and it can be abused to the high heavens. A good tactic is to use a barrel filled with oil and set it next to the boss and then throw a fire bolt at it. Farcical? Yes, it is, but it’s Larian we are talking about here.

Nevertheless, it’s rather fun to witness and use, and beyond the environmental stuff, the combat is fine. It’s all very typical going by DnD standards when it comes to turn-based gaming. Your place in the turn is determined by initiative, which faster units like the rogue benefit from, while heavier martial units come later. All this can of course be modified by potions and spells, much like the action-based economy. Each turn you can move and take one major action like attacking with either spell or weapon and one minor action like drinking a potion, pushing someone off a cliff, or coating your weapon in some kind of deadly poison. It works very well and adds a bit of flair to the fighting more than just standing around bashing each other. Many times it’s a better option to lure a tough enemy near a deadly pit than to take him out the normal heroic way by cutting his head off. However, it works both ways, as hostile units will use the same tactics against your group of adventurers too. Nothing sucks more than seeing your best guy get taken early out by standing too close to the edge, even if it’s funny to see him cursing his way down to certain death.

Buffing works very differently from say DnD 3.5, as of this version (or maybe it’s a Larian homebrew rule) you can only buff with one spell since it requires the caster to hold his concentration. So, you can only stretch the buffs as far as one per character, which eliminates the pre-buffing parties from the past. The same goes for potions – only one long-lasting effect can be activated at a time. I like this change for the most part, as it means encounters don’t have to be created with a massive amount of buffs in mind. However, I miss making superhuman beast-like units by throwing every available buff on them. This system also extends into combat, as the concentration effort can easily be disrupted by getting hit. The buffs, or hostile spells like domination will only last as long as you can protect the caster of the spell. It makes for interesting combat scenarios since there is now always a way out by hitting the guy that are mind-controlling your wizard to remove his focus.

Loot
Finding good loot is a staple of adventuring, and thank the lord Bhaal, there is a minimum of Larian’s randomized loot extravaganza in Baldur’s Gate 3. It does still have the typical color coding popularized by World of Warcraft (green is common, blue is rare, etc) but the equipment and weapon you can find is hand placed and does have a connection to the world and surrounding environment. Many of the items you can find come with effect synergies. Often they feel very class specific and a bit gamified compared to the older games in the series. While you will still find +1 or +2 items, the weapons, and armors now have specific bonuses that enhance a certain skill, which can limit its uses. Some of these effects seem like a far distant dream, like having a proc that only happens once in a blue moon under very special circumstances. However, even if gamified, they do enhance the general gameplay, as it is fun to collect these loot pieces that do more than just adds a few damage points. For example, I found a necklace called Broodmother’s Revenge that coats the weapon of the one that has the necklace equipped with poison every time he or she is healed. Or why not a cloak called The Deathstalker Mantle that cloaks you in shadow every time you kill somebody? Perfect for the local rogue! Items like this make the itemization very fun, but it also means that many objects see no use at all, because you don’t have that class or race in your party. This is a minor issue, though, and another thing to add – most of the stuff comes with short lore tidbits too. It’s not extravagant like the original games in the series, yet, some effort went into it beyond making the loot useful and fun to use.

Tech, camera and graphics
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a weird beast when it comes to graphics, controls, and camera. The visual fidelity is very high considering you can even see the pores on people’s faces. However, the developers are hell-bent on you playing it like a top-down adventure like the classic games – while making it very Dragon Age -esque with environmental closeups in cutscenes. It’s absolutely baffling, with my main issue coming from that there is no way to play the game with the WASD keys for movement. With a keyboard and mouse, the only way to play it is by clicking on the ground or holding down the left mouse button (who does that?). And here comes the killer: If you connect a controller (a 360 controller in my case) you can suddenly control your main character directly, just like in Dragon Age: Origins. Suddenly, you can see the beautiful world and experience it up close, but you are stuck with the horrendous controller interface that follows it. It’s almost unplayable with this interface since it looks poor and is very unimmersive, and all actions take an unreasonable long time compared to mouse and keyboard. I don’t get it, why not give us the option at least? Another problem is that the camera fights you in every way when it comes to tight spaces, and moving through elevated terrain. These issues are very common since you will often traverse houses and dungeons that go in all directions, up and down included. The camera work is a mess, and the lack of direct control when using mouse and keyboard is a MAJOR missed opportunity, especially when it comes to immersing yourself in the pretty world.

By itself, just judging the graphics without the camera issue – it looks stunning. The textures are very high and detailed, and most things look crisp, everything from weapons to armor, to weird creatures. There are plenty of monsters to engage in combat, and they all look great visually and are well-animated. The bestiary is large and remains so throughout the game. People look generally good too, but here the animations can get a bit funky at times when it comes to cutscenes – with them having awkward arm and face movements. However, it never becomes a big problem, as there is a massive amount of scenes in the game. The sex scenes, though. They are very uncomfortable to watch regardless of animation quality. I became embarrassed watching them, and I’m no prude. Boy, sexing Minthara as my evil drow was a mistake, let me tell you.

The graphics are not without problems, though, yet it’s mostly because of design and technical stuff. Larian decided that night & day cycles and weather effects weren’t important enough to be added, so that aspect has been totally cut out. That means that Acts 1 & 3 will always be sunny happy days, while Act 2 will be gloomy Halloween land forever and ever (to be fair, it’s cursed). It limits the action and sandbox nature of Baldur’s Gate 3 since the inhabitants will never sleep making thieving action difficult at times. On weather, after so many hours in the sunshine, you start to beg for some rain – for something different, and maybe a different set of mood. And considering how much Larian likes to play with elemental powers like water and fire, it would have made the fights much more dynamic if the weather was randomized. Imagine not being able to use fire spells in a rainstorm for example, that sure would put a hamper on that fireballing mage. Once again, it’s not a mega issue, but it would definitely enhance the game.

Act 3 also falls apart when it comes to performance. The game up until that point was smooth sailing, but the moment from hitting the city my system started to stutter when it came to movement and animations – while keeping the FPS the same. Bit odd, I’m not sure what is causing the issue, but I suspect it has something to do with the increased population. My system just can’t handle Baldur’s Gate that well it seems.

Ear pleasure
There is no denying it, the music is fantastic. From the troubadour vocals to the bombastic orchestral pieces for combat. I have already spent many hours listening to the soundtrack outside the game, and I will spend many more hours doing so. It’s just quality through and through, and that is not all – it’s amusing too. One boss even sings his own theme song, not as in the in-game character, but the background tune has his vocals, and it’s directly linked to the situation at hand. I found it a bit cheesy, but fun nonetheless and very engaging. Brilliant move by Larian. One of my favorite “songs” is what the harpies sing when approaching them. It’s very beautiful and haunting at the same, because you know something sinister is coming your way when you start to hear their alluring song in the distance. Take a listen below!

It fits the setting perfectly, and having it continue playing during the fight against them adds a weird feeling of juxtaposition to the battle that works splendidly.

In conclusion, Baldur’s Gate 3 is well produced RPG that is worth a playthrough. However, it’s not the epitome of games, or RPGs for that matter, like many want you to believe. It has many issues with its story, and the structure of it, and Act 3 almost drops the ball fully, including its ending – the ending of the full game, that is. It’s also very politicized in a way that makes many interactions in-game awkward, and it’s also beyond “horny” for something that should focus on combat, adventuring, and constant mortal danger. Yet, as mentioned, it’s still a worthwhile game that will bring many hours of fun to the ones looking for a good fantasy romp. It has the needed parts to make it fun, like choice and consequence (even if limited), lots of items, and fun class building, regardless of the 5th edition making it more streamlined. I will put a careful recommendation on the game since your enjoyment will be highly based on your tolerance of modern culture war stuff and of course DnD 5th Edition.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas

---