Many hits, many flops: The year 2023 has a lot to offer, but one game clearly shines through.
I didn’t want to join in the adulation of the specialist media and the community, as the initial reason for the early online canonization was that the game comes without microtransactions and other hidden hurdles in the current game landscape. But there’s a lot more to the game, especially when you compare it to Game of the Year contenders like “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” or the current “Starfield.”
What started in January with “Hi-Fi Rush” and “Fire Emblem Engage”, followed by titles like “Hogwarts Legacy”, “Resident Evil 4: Remake”, “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor”, “Diablo 4”, “Dave the Diver” or “Final Fantasy 16” finally with the likes of “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty”, “Armored Core 6”, “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2”, “Alan Wake 2″ and ” Super Mario Bros. Wonder ” in the home stretch.
This list is, of course, not exhaustive, but after a year in which I played a lot, I have to say that “Baldur’s Gate 3” is the first after many very good titles that have completely convinced me. It starts with a beautiful soundtrack, continues with lovingly designed characters and ends with strong dialogues and a well thought-out and challenging combat system. Everything is just right, even when it comes to playing time, as long as you have enough time and resources.
Roleplaying actually has this gift that few games have. It awakens the urge to explore, rewards conscious diversions and, despite an exciting world, never lets go of the common thread that ties the player to the main story. That’s not easy with a game of this size, as other representatives of the genre have proven this year.
Big competition
It’s this ease of jumping into another playthrough, despite having done the first Act of the game several times in early access, that speaks to the level of autonomy the game offers. You have 12 classes and 11 races from the D&D Player’s Handbook to choose from, multi-classing is available alongside several backgrounds, and all in all, if you’ve created a D&D character before, you’ll be able to dive into this adventure based on Wizards of the Coast’s world with relative ease.
Better yet, “Baldur’s Gate 3” has one of the more queer and trans-inclusive character creators in the gaming space. There’s no completely swings-and-misses with pronouns being linked to voice, a ‘feature’ that has cropped up in “Cyberpunk 2077” and, more recently, “Starfield”. Everything is fair play here, and why not? Authenticity or fantasy, either one is something which Larian’s character creator offers players freely.
Out of a lot of other fantasy RPGs, “Baldur’s Gate 3” leans more towards Dragon Age in terms of combat and party composition. While turn-based, the beats of combat are very reminiscent of BioWare’s fantasy series. Your typical team will most likely consist of a healer, an up-and-in-your-face fighter, a dex-based class like rogue or monk, and a damage dealer of the more magical variety. Yet even this can be shaken up a bit thanks to the abundance of spells and actions available to you. In one fight, I decided that making Karlach (Samantha Béart) shove a hag into a hole was the best way to do it, and on the next I asked my favourite wizard Gale (Tim Downie) to cast FIREBALL on a group of gnolls after misty-stepping up on a cliff that, he too, almost fell off after I mis-pressed the Grease spell’s location. Sorry Gale.
Secret recipe
And then there’s the point that “Baldur’s Gate 3”, as mentioned at the beginning, avoids unnecessary frills such as more expensive versions for earlier access or an in-game shop. You could register for early access three years ago for 30 euros, which means the community certainly played its part in making the game so good in the end. A regular price was then charged for the official release, without the expensive side versions that other manufacturers have introduced in recent years.
This courage needs to be emphasized all the more now that the pressure on game studios has noticeably increased over the years due to increasingly expensive productions and growing competition. Producing flops is no longer possible. The studio behind Forspoken was dissolved shortly after owner Square Enix’s disastrous ratings earlier this year. Daedalic Entertainment announced in July that after the flop game “Gollum” they no longer wanted to develop games themselves and had closed the associated department. Almost at the same time, the Embracer Group announced that Volition, the well-known studio behind the most recent and also very unsuccessful “Saints Row” title, is closing the doors.
It’s no surprise when multi-million dollar games like “Diablo 4 ” from developer Blizzard prominently incorporate the in-game shop into the action role-playing game and announce season passes in a media-effective way. “Diablo 4” can no longer be found on the streaming platform Twitch , which is a good indicator of which games are currently popular. Eleven years after the third part, expectations were apparently higher than the final result could deliver.
What makes them extra special is that, in reality, we’ve had these characters ever since “Baldur’s Gate 3″’s early access three years prior and — much like watching a baby grow up — have seen them change over time. To be able to watch them develop throughout the game’s three acts in a way that feels utterly true to them, regardless of my input or not, is what makes them so memorable and feel so real in the first place.
“Baldur’s Gate 3” is at its very best when you get lost in the magic that has been expertly crafted by Larian, whether that be by embracing the art of barrelmancy or choosing to slaughter an entire grove full of innocents because you’re after the drowussy. No one playthrough is ever the same, and the sheer amount of things to do, to find out and interact with, is astronomical.
But what really speaks to me about “Baldur’s Gate 3” is how its stirred something inside of my chest that I haven’t quite felt since my far-too-young-self sat down to play Dragon Age: Origins for the first time. Truthfully I had thought the feeling lost, with age and general lack-of-time making my time to game outside of work hours precious. But “Baldur’s Gate 3” proved just how wrong I was. For that I’ll always be grateful.
“Baldur’s Gate 3” is available to play now for PS5 and PC.
An article by Dominik Böhler
Dominik Böhler is the Editor-at-Large of GAY45. A 26 y.o., PhD candidate, passionate about the transcendence of science in the philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. Works in Vienna and commutes to England at the University of Oxford where to continue the DPhil (doctoral) programme in Information, Communication, and the Social Sciences. Böhler does not like to have a social media presence.
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