Baldur's Gate 3 is the game of the moment. Without a doubt, it is the game of the summer. And it may - for many - also be the game of the year. We are talking about a role-playing title with all of the law, isometric view, millions of decisions, many other classes, races and abilities and a depth rarely seen in this medium. Baldur's Gate 3 is an extremely complex game, something that by all accounts should be a niche experience that has been elevated to mainstream audiences. And there are many whys.
The quick summary is that Baldur's Gate 3 has been a bit like the Barbie movie. It is not a random success. It is not a coincidence. Its numbers – over a billion dollars at the box office for Barbie and peaks of 800,000 concurrent users on Steam for Baldur's Gate – and its impact are the consequence of having a great team working with great intellectual property with confidence and security. It's choosing Greta Gerwig after seeing what she was capable of doing with Lady Bird and Little Women or, in this case, trusting Larian Studios after seeing how amazing Divinity: Original Sin 2 was. The end result – in both cases – it is a whole with many layers that can be slowly discovered and savored. And then we are going to review some of them.
The new from Larian Studios, developed in part from Barcelona, is a western role-playing game set in a fantasy world similar to Dungeons and Dragons. The adventure takes place in the world of Faerûn and the protagonist is basically a blank sheet that you will shape throughout the game. You can choose between 11 different races - such as elves, humans, dwarves and tieflings, among many others - and many other classes. At the game level, Baldur's Gate 3 combines free exploration and infinite decisions with turn-based combat and a perfectly measured strategy.
But let this description not intimidate anyone. Everyone is welcome in Faerûn and the experience is certainly worth giving it a try.
Baldur's Gate 3 was released on PC on August 3, but his adventure on this platform began three years earlier. On October 6, 2020, the new title from Larian Studios was released in Early Access with the goal of continuing development in parallel with user experiences. This has allowed Larian, for three years, to build the game on the feedback from the community, polishing and improving everything that wasn't working. And there are many things that could not have worked.
Because in Baldur's Gate 3 there are many things. In general. It's hard to talk about scale with this game. It's not about a huge map – which it does – or complex mechanics – which it does – or a great, superbly written story – which it does – the scale of Baldur's Gate 3 occupies several dimensions and grows as you progress. you get into the game. With each conversation, with each Perception roll, and with each secret, it scales up and seems limitless. As of this writing, I've been playing the game for about 20 hours and I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what Larian Studios is trying to offer me.
Baldur's Gate 3 is literally Dungeons and Dragons. The story, the mechanics, the classes, the races, the world, everything is straight out of Wizards of the Coast's fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons RPG. Playing the new from Larian Studios is starting a new DnD campaign – with or without friends – in which the Dungeon Master is the computer. Baldur's Gate is the wet dream of any fan of traditional role-playing, but it is also a great gateway to this world.
Larian Studios has built the game on a foundation that has been polished and refined since the eighties and has applied everything that makes traditional role-playing great and interesting to a video game. And the love shows. It is not made halfheartedly and there is care in every corner of the lands of Faerûn. And if the base is good and the team is good, the end result cannot fail.
We have the main ingredients: a studio with very good professionals, time, care and a great raw material with which to develop the game. But the success of Baldur's Gate 3 is also due, in part, to being the cultural phenomenon of the moment (at least in the video game sector). In the same way that the simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer created a marketing monster that no one wanted to be left out of, Baldur's Gate 3 is the game of the summer.
In English there is the concept FOMO (fear of missing out), which means “fear of missing out” on something. It is that feeling that prevents you from being the first to leave a party or the one that pushes you to watch a series just to not be left out of the conversations during the break at work. And that FOMO now, in the electronic entertainment sector, is Baldur's Gate 3.
Sometimes FOMO can be detrimental, pushing you to lose sleep or waste 10 hours of your life on the latest Netflix show (which is probably terrible). But, in the case of Baldur's Gate 3, this fear of missing out is doing you a favor.
In his analysis of Red Dead Redemption 2, DayoScript says that the Rockstar Games western seems to have an indie game vocation, but with an infinite budget. It's an extremely slow and contemplative title that runs away from many of the usual tropes and suspects of Triple A games. And this makes it unique and is one of the many reasons that made Red Dead Redemption 2 one of the best games on the market. PS4 generation.
Something similar happened with Elden Ring at the beginning of 2022 or, in general, with all From Software titles since Dark Souls 3. Hidetaka Miyazaqui's work had all the numbers to stay in its niche, but it exploded and Elden Ring became a mass phenomenon and swept away. And now it's the turn of Baldur's Gate 3.
By its crude description – an RPG with an isometric view, turn-based combat and more than 150 hours of cinematics – Larian's newest should be a relative success. And, in fact, from the study it is what they expected: the company's own CEO, Swen Vincke, anticipated a maximum peak of concurrent players on PC of 100,000 people. Currently the maximum peak has already reached 800,000 only on Steam and without counting users of other services such as gog.com.
Quality, in the end, exceeds expectations. Having a coffee quietly in your camp in the American Wild West makes Red Dead Redemption 2 great and, behind its difficulty, the Souls hide a great mastery in terms of level design, mechanics and incredible final bosses. At first glance, Baldur's Gate 3 may seem clunky or overly complex (yes, there are a lot of percentages and antics and the combat is turn-based), but beneath this layer of niche gameplay is an RPG masterpiece worth experiencing. , played and replayed.
As always, many will get off the ship before finishing the game. Others have been swept up in FOMO and “hot media” stuff and bought a game that isn't for them and they really don't like it. The bubble will deflate at some point. The first time I went to see Barbie at the cinema, about 15 people left the room in the middle of the screening, complaining. Greta Gerwig's feminist plea was not what they expected. And it is what you have to reach many and get out of your usual audience. Although, as happened with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or Elden Ring, then many stay and the fan base grows and grows.
The adventure of Baldur's Gate 3 has just begun. At the moment it can only be played on PC, but the PlayStation 5 version will arrive on September 6 and reservations have already skyrocketed. So whether or not the bubble bursts, I'm hopping on the Larian Studios bandwagon and heading back to the land of Faerûn with my level 4 paladin to fight goblins and dark elves.
