TGO Weekend Special | October 10, 2020 | Review: Baldur's Gate III (Early Access)
Hello! Today I have a special weekend edition of the newsletter for you :)
I don’t usually send Saturday/Sunday newsletters for two reasons:
I like having a lighter workload on my weekend in order to catch up on things like homework
The newsletter is best suited for, well, news. And the weekend episodes of the audio versions have me talking about a bunch of random things that are gaming related, but not necessarily news.
Today, I had a guest host on the show — my good friend Kato. He spent some time playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which recently launched into early access, and I wanted him to talk about his experience.
Since it’s so well written, I thought what the heck, you might be interested in it too! So here it is :) If you’d prefer to hear this, rather than read it, feel free to tune in to the podcast feed.
Back with the news on Monday. Thanks!
— Adrian
Impressions of Baldur’s Gate III
Written by: Katosepe
It has been 19 years since Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal capped off the Bhaalspawn Saga. With Larian Studios at the helm, the drought is finally ending and there are many reasons why fans should be more hopeful now than they were with the last aborted attempt to bring D&D back to gamers.
Even at first glance, it is very apparent why Baldur’s Gate 3 is launching in Early Access rather than having a full launch. Characters in dialogue sequences move their mouths for maybe half of their lines. Cutscenes and dialogue options seem to be missing. My first character’s patchy facial hair is looking less like he forgot to bring his razor on this adventure and more like he caught a horrible illness covering his face with pixelated black squares. The game needs a serious coat of polish but if you go in expecting that, the underlying game is looking like a strong contender for the title of greatest computer RPG ever made.
Playing Dungeons and Dragons with a pen and paper is all about freedom. While video games may have a graphical leg up on D&D, they are always limited by what the game programmers put into the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 is also going to have these limitations, but I have never felt more free playing a video game than I have here.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is based around the combat systems found in Larian’s series Divinity: Original Sin but it has been massively expanded, both to fit with Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition and beyond. Added are options you may find in the 5th edition Player’s Handbook such as dashing, helping allies, or shoving enemies. Along with these expected options are other unexpected things, such as being able to dip your weapon into environment obstacles. For example, if there is acid on the ground, you can dip your weapon in that acid to add acid damage to the weapon for a few turns. Jumping is also added, which creates a huge sense of verticality into combat, and gives players a way of jumping over small fires or other obstacles.
The current player options are limited compared to what Larian has promised but even right now, players can easily spend hours customizing different characters with 6 of the main classes being represented, each with at least 2 subclasses. While character customization shows you the suggested options based on your species, you can override these to make a green-skinned human or a pink tiefling if you’d like. If you’re familiar with Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, you’ll feel right at home with the choices here, with nearly every class feeling mostly identical to the pen and paper counterpart. The major exception is the Ranger which seems to be altered fairly significantly — but as anyone who has played a Ranger can tell you, this is for the best.
If there is one aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3 that feels light at the moment, it’s dialogue. Even with many different dialogue tags giving player characters special options, the dialogue currently lacks much nuance. After watching an NPC demonstrate a particularly horrifying act of cruelty towards a child, I was mostly only given the choice to call them out on their crime or claim it was an accident and side with them. It would have been great to have a bit more of a nuanced opinion on the situation and I’m hoping that more choices are added over the Early Access period.
Now, one question I know many people are probably asking is whether they can play Baldur’s Gate 3 without knowledge of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and the answer is absolutely yes. I still have plenty to explore in the Early Access build which clocks in at about 25 hours of content in a single playthrough or one act of the overall game, but I have yet to see a single reference to the story of the original games. I have strong reason to believe there will be some connections down the road but I’m doubtful that these will be anything more than some familiar faces and casual references, nothing that should keep a new player from enjoying the game to its fullest.
As a fan of the original games, my expectations were high leading up to Baldur’s Gate 3 and so far, Larian has only exceeded them. The game is out now on Steam and GOG as well as Google Stadia and is going for the full retail price of $60 US dollars. There’s no harm waiting for a more polished experience, although Larian has suggested the full release is at least a year out, but for those looking to play Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition in a video game or for those who can’t get enough computer RPG goodness, Baldur’s Gate 3 is already looking to be one of the best examples of the genre to date.
Wrap-Up
A huge thanks to Kato for sharing his thoughts with us! If you’d like to hear the two of us interact, feel free to join us for the TGO Podcast — live every Saturday on Twitch at 3pm Eastern.
Say Hello!
That’s all for today :) If you want to get in touch, you can always reply to this email. You can also DM me on Twitter, or come join the community on Discord (it’s awesome)!
This newsletter is a companion/alternative to a mini-podcast I produce. The show is archived on Youtube, with most people listening on Amazon Alexa devices — but it’s also available on all podcast hosts.