Freedom is a drill and more in a video game. In Grand Theft Auto you can buy a house, but you can't start a family. And in, for example, Starfield you can explore some planets, but you can't travel between them with your ship without loading times and without going through menus. The electronic entertainment industry, for decades, has promised freedom with large open worlds, increasingly complex mechanics and more detailed graphics. But, in a video game, what is not written in the code does not exist. And Baldur's Gate 3 throws all this to the ground.
On a purely technological level – beyond being a technical prodigy in terms of systems – Baldur's Gate 3 is no different from other video games and is governed by the same rules. But when it comes to the simulacrum, to the simulation of freedom, the new from Larian Studios – developed in part from Barcelona – is in another league. He is always one step ahead of the player, he has everything planned and this allows him to create a world that is not realistic, it is real.
And this is evidenced by the resounding success of the title on PC. With more than 5.2 million copies sold on Steam – the leading PC gaming platform – the new from Larian Studios has become the phenomenon of the summer and has established a new paradigm for role-playing games. This week it arrives on PlayStation 5 and in a few months it will also be launched on Xbox Series X | S.
In my first playthrough, my character ended up as a level 12 paladin of vengeance who mistakenly lost favor with his god early in the adventure. But she didn't give up on him and decided that she was going to fight to get the oath back from him. Soon after, he fell in love with a cleric of darkness - a worshiper of the goddess Shar - and was faced with another dilemma: fight for love, even if it leads to evil, or give it up in favor of good? In the end he didn't have to choose, it was the cleric who renounced his goddess and chose good and my champion. Both of them, along with many other companions - such as a barbarian with a combustion mechanical heart and a vampire elf - saved the world of The Forgotten Realms and later retired to live a quiet life far from the fame that has granted them as heroes.
The second shock comes after a wonderful and epic cinematic. From the incredible action, to the top view and the interface typical of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. At that first moment, what entered my eyes did not allow me to imagine how alive the world of Baldur's Gate is and how much I would care about its characters.
Because, deep down, the hyper-realistic graphics and perfectly measured and implemented animations don't matter. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has all of this, it's a technical prodigy, but at no time does it feel real, at no time did I care about its characters – at least I didn't care more than the protagonists of the Expendables movies, after explosions and shootings.
I believe in the world of The Last of Us and I love Ellie too much - even more so after watching the series - but Baldur's Gate 3 shows that Naughty Dog's is not the only correct path when it comes to telling great transcendent stories comparable to any other. another medium with – erroneously – more prestige such as cinema or literature. Let no one criticize my Astarion or Karlach or Shadowheart or Lae'zel because they will have to deal with my sword.
I could do a thorough analysis of some mechanics or the development of the story and the script. But I think it's the least. Yes, there are times when it's amazing how well everything works and how all the spells, abilities and environment interact in and out of combat. At times, Baldur's Gate 3 feels more like an immersive Dishonored or Prey-style sim than a turn-based combat RPG.
It's also amazing how every animal in the game has its own lines of dialogue – yes, with the right spell you can talk to animals – or how corpses also talk and can help you solve a quest. These are just two examples of the living and synergistic corpus that makes up the world of Baldur's Gate 3, but there are many more. many more.
Everything I have commented exploits its maximum potential in the first two acts. The pace is excellent and the desire to move forward is constantly renewed with each new discovery. The third act, on the other hand, falters slightly and shows – just a little – the artifice. It's more rushed and it's likely that you'll reach the end with too many active missions that you'll have to close one by one before reaching the epilogue. At times it feels like a shopping list and from the real world that it presents us we move to the simulated world of the video game, to the illusion of freedom. Which, let's see, is normal because, after all, we are talking about a video game. But the start and the knot are so good that the small dip at the end is more noticeable than it should be.
Even with that, I just hope I can go back to Faerûn soon. I'm already planning my second game, this time cooperatively with three more friends. And I think I'm going to go with an evil character because I have the feeling that I have even more of a midgame to discover. So we'll see each other in The Forgotten Realms, saving or conquering – who knows? – The Sword Coast and the city of Baldur's Gate.
