Summary
Influence can be a dangerous thing in gaming. Many a dev has spoken about the nightmare scenario of working on a game for years, only for a senior executive to come in one Monday and say “I played this great game at the weekend, they had this cool feature we should use!”. Games have long development cycles and slow turning circles, and so adding inspiration often takes a long time. What does that mean forBaldur’s Gate 3’slegacy?
In some ways, Baldur’s Gate 3 is nothing new. It did what CRPGs have been trying to do since the beginning of time - since we called them cRPGs and nobody thought it was weird. Baldur’s Gate 3 perfects the formula, and that is no mean feat, but the idea of perfectly simulating the chance rolls ofD&Dwhile providing a seemingly endless array of interesting paths forward for every outcome has always been the goal. Other games have just fallen short of it. But now, Baldur’s Gate 3 has shown the path forward.
What Can Games Learn From Baldur’s Gate 3?
It’s difficult to take a lot of inspiration from Baldur’s Gate 3 though. It’s easier to take the HUD and aiming system fromDoomand say ‘that’s how you make an FPS’, or to copy Rogue and thus become a roguelike. There are still bad FPS games and roguelikes, but the basic inspiration (since iterated on by dozens) is easy to track. Baldur’s Gate 3 is beloved because it has excellent character writing and rich storytelling - many games have tried and failed to do this in the past.
Writing can be a weak spot in gaming because it often isn’t given the space to breathe. Games rely on momentum and gameplay, and storytelling is often sacrificed in service of this. But games that get it right often stand the test of time, withThe Last of Us,Half-Life,Nier: Automata, andRed Dead Redemptionstill praised to this day. As for the fleshed out cast of characters, Baldur’s Gate 3 is not unique there either - my main thought while playing it was how much those interactions reminded me ofMass Effect 2.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was my game of the year last year, I’d have it in my top ten of all time, and when we look back on this generation as a whole in the future, it might well be my pick of the bunch then too. I fully understand its greatness. But it’s hard to see where much inspiration goes. I don’t think it will cause an uptick in the fantasy genre - we already knowstudios are exploring thatand it has long been a popular haunt for all things pixelated. We might get a bit more attention paid to character writing, and thus more great versions through the law of averages, but how much of that can we really say is caused by Baldur’s Gate 3?
Will Dice Rolls Improve After Baldur’s Gate?
When we look atBreath of the Wild, the last game to attain the levels of world domination that Larian’s RPG reached, the inspiration that would flow was clear to see. BOTW had a new way to approach the open world, removing quest markers orany forced directionality to offer near total freedom, a philosophy we sawElden Ringapply to great success. There were smaller elements of inspiration that could be more easily plucked out too - the glider, the stamina bar, the weather impacting traversal… much like Doom was not the first FPS, these various features had appeared in games before, but the way Zelda used them was unique, or at least was until a hundred other games copied them.
It’s harder to swipe smaller details from Baldur’s Gate 3, but maybe the answer is in the dice. The d20 system is clearly not Baldur’s Gate 3’s invention, and it is oftenused in support of Dungeons & Dragons' 5e rules, whichLarian would do well not to run too far from in its next endeavour. But the way it relays this system to an audience that may be unfamiliar, the true choice rather than just the illusion of it, and the different approaches you can gain from choices you make elsewhere in the game or even at the character creator, all make it better than just a regular dice roll.
Many games let you make choices that impact key points in the story, but these are often 50/50 outcomes that hurtle towards the same 50/50 by the end. Baldur’s Gate 3 is rarely thinking of the ending or even progression, and instead lets choices be choices, each with different pathways that you can stumble on in a variety of other ways. It makes failing as interesting as succeeding because the choice you make may be ripped away from you, and your class has a significant impact beyond a one-off quest or some flavour text.
It’s hard to know what other lessons games will learn from something as large and impressive as Baldur’s Gate 3, or when we’ll see the fruits of this labour sprout forth. Baldur’s Gate 3 will be long remembered by everyone who plays it, but it remains to be seen how the industry will honour its legacy.
Baldur’s Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.
