A good dungeon master (DM) in any role playing adventure session wastes no time getting to the point of the story. So let’s do that. Just like the fantastical city it is named after, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a soaring success. It’s everything you’ve ever loved about any roleplaying game, with +1 to all stats.
Like its predecessors, Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place in Dungeons and Dragons’ Forgotten Realms setting. Unlike those earlier titles – nascent offerings from the Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio, BioWare – this adventure from Belgian studio Larian, uses the fifth edition D&D ruleset. A few homebrew tweaks aside, it’s as faithful a rendition as you’ll find in the digital space, though no worries if you don’t know your Armor Class from your Proficiencies – the game will take care of all that pesky maths for you. It’s a solid, varied ruleset that’s as satisfying and permissive of creativity as they come, but even a great D&D module is only ever as good as the Dungeon Master in charge. So, what kind of DM is Larian Studios?
After creating your custom character from a huge pool of classes, species, traits and backgrounds, or after choosing to experience the story through the eyes of one of five wonderfully voice-acted and richly backstoried companion characters, you’ll wake up trapped in a tube inside a Nautiloid – a tentacled airship telekinetically piloted by bipedal, squid-faced horrors known as Mind Flayers. Also known as Illithids, these creatures reproduce by incubating vicious tadpoles inside the brains of their captives. Lucky you! Something’s off with your particular infection, though. You should have transformed into a Mind Flayer by now. But aside from the ability to read the thoughts of the similarly infected companions you’ll soon meet, you’re still your old self. Venturing forth to find out exactly why you haven’t – and what’s making these Mind Flayers so aggressive all of a sudden – kicks off the story proper.
RPG fans will have played through Baldur’s Gate 3’s basic structure before. You’ll travel through huge maps, exploring, fighting, looting, and talking your way through a main questline, seemingly limitless hugely entertaining side quests, and individual story threads for each of your companions. You’ll probably romance one or more of them, too. You’ll collect magical gear. You’ll level up.
So far, so go kill a basement full of rats for a bag of gold and a +1 dagger. What sets this apart is its sheer breadth of writing and reactivity, offering possibilities so varied you’d swear the game was sentient sometimes. “174 hours of cutscenes” was the headline leading up to release. That number, it turns out, is the sum total of thousands of tiny dialogue variations that most players will never see all of, but every word contributes to the most convincing illusion of an actual DM yet seen in a computer RPG.
There are spells in D&D that let you levitate and turn invisible. Spells that let you read minds, to talk to animals and the dead. Surely Larian can’t have written extra dialogue for almost every animal just in case I want to try these spells out? Surely they can’t have created level design rivalling immersive sim masterpieces such as Deus Ex and Dishonored, in case I try magically warping or sneaking or lockpicking or crate stacking around the place? Oh, but they have. Tell Baldur’s Gate 3 about the weird way you want to try to solve a problem, and there’s a very good chance its answer will be the same as any good Dungeon Master’s: OK, roll for it.
If the game has a flaw, it’s that its embarrassment of riches can sometimes feel utterly overwhelming. “Oh, you thought that map was big?”, the game grins as it pulls an Elden Ring. “Have a look down that well. See you in 10 hours.” Sometimes, a single tavern can mean a casual evening’s play as you slowly untangle its contents. Were the real world a fraction as exciting and utterly packed with distractions as Larian’s incarnation of Faerûn, none of us would need to invent fantasy worlds to begin with. This density and writing of quality would be impressive in a linear adventure; to find it in a game world this gorgeous, with this many branching dialogue trees and alternate story moments, is nothing short of awe inspiring. Most impressively, though, Baldur’s Gate 3 never gives the impression that Larian set out to create a benchmark; it just feels like they wanted every player to have as much fun as possible, no matter how they like to roleplay.
So, what kind of Dungeon Master is Larian? The kind that pulls all-nighters after their full-time job just to pen lengthy and exciting diversions for their players, then just as happily abandons them on game night because the rogue spotted something shiny over there, or the barbarian decided to ditch diplomacy in favour of swinging an axe at an NPC with a Succession episode’s worth of unspoken dialogue. The sort of DM that’s passionate, excitable, hilarious, sadistic, probably just a little bit too horny for their own good, and nearly always one step ahead of whatever mad scheme you might come up with. Baldur’s Gate 3, like its titular city, is a towering landmark of an RPG. Bustling with life, brimming with scope, and bursting with imagination.
