New ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ gameplay is a testament to how far we’ve come

It’s abundantly clear that Baldur’s Gate 3 is an immense game, and Thursday’s gameplay demonstration during IGN’s Summer of Gaming left a mark in showing just how far role-playing video games have come over the years.

The new Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay starts off with a combat scenario against goblins, followed by a tense conversation that players will have to navigate through and a deeper dive into the game’s story and lore, literally and figuratively. It builds off the first gameplay demonstration by Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke from February and gives more insight into all the ways the players can interact with the game, the environment, characters, and enemies — things that stem from the game’s source material, Dungeons & Dungeons. It seems like there are really no limitations in BG3.

That’s the goal, at least, based on what we’ve seen of the game so far and interviews from a preview event back in February with Vincke and senior writer Adam Smith. The developers are trying to account for every possible action that a player would want to take in the game and building systems that allow them to do that.

In Dungeons & Dragons, dungeon masters have a large set of rules they can work from, which instructs them in how to react to players’ decisions. There’s so much improvising that players can do in D&D, and dungeon masters who control the game and decide what players can actually do have to be able to account for whatever players come up with — whether that’s a player using materials to build a makeshift staircase to get to an advantageous area before combat, or coming at a conversation with a character in a way the dungeon master didn’t think about.

Dungeon masters have to work on the fly, sometimes making up their own rules to accommodate players’ imaginations.

The game Baldur’s Gate 3 is itself a sort of virtual dungeon master and has to react to players in all kinds of ways that other games and RPGs can ignore, simply because the developers are intent on adhering to the spirit of D&D and want to offer up that virtual D&D experience in as rich a way as possible.

Seeing where the game is at right now, it’s hard not to look back and remember the ways that the Baldur’s Gate series has pushed the RPG genre since the first game released in 1998.

Growing a game genre

Baldur’s Gate and its expansion Tales of the Sword Coast released to high acclaim in the late ’90s, shifting the increasingly stale role-playing genre of games into new directions. 

Not only was the game’s world massive at the time and filled with all kinds of quests and characters that added life to the Forgotten Realms, it introduced the tactical pause — a feature that let players pause during combat to strategize their next moves, whether that was readying a spell or moving to a better location. It helped bridge the gap between real-time combat and turn-based combat, Baldur’s Gate developer James Ohlen told Eurogamer in 2018.

This feature has been used in all kinds of RPGs since Baldur’s Gate introduced it, like Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age, and gives these games a feel that’s closer to traditional tabletop RPGs where players get time to figure out their moves during combat but there’s still a good sense of flow.

It may not look like much these days, but the customization options and gameplay you see in this playthrough of the opening of the game are things that largely haven’t changed in the 22 years since the game’s release.

The popularity of Baldur’s Gate and developer BioWare’s take on the D&D-based RPG breathed new life into the genre. Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment followed not long after before Baldur’s Gate 2 came out in 2000, taking the elements of the first game and elevating them, adding more strategic options in combat and offering players more impactful quests and storylines.

Many of these ideas helped form a baseline for the series Neverwinter Nights, which first launched in 2002 and was also developed by BioWare. Online play was growing stronger and the complexity of game systems was growing across the RPG genre, allowing players more and more freedom in their actions.

But compared to what we’ve seen with Baldur’s Gate 3, these games that were heralded for their freedom before seem limited.

Baldur’s Gate 3‘s freedom

The combat sequence that kicks off the latest demo of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s gameplay feels like a digital representation of Dungeons & Dragons players’ imaginations, not only visually but also from a mechanics perspective. The party of adventurers has all kind of options in taking on these violent goblins, a handful of which are on rooftops with a clear advantage. Of course, the players’ characters can get up there too, a vertical option that isn’t usually present in RPG games like this.

That freedom of movement and exploration itself feels like it opens up the game world so much, lifting restrictions that normally keep RPGs pretty grounded.

And then there are the conversations with so many options leading in different directions. By utilizing characters’ skills, mannerisms, or backgrounds, a simple conversation can alter the players’ path dramatically in BG3. The developers set up each conversation with a robust selection of options, anticipating all kinds of responses and actions for players, which effectively gives the impression that players can kind of do whatever they want.

Just like in D&D, there really are no “correct” decisions, just different ones, even though they may majorly affect what happens to your character and where you end up. For example, using the Mind Flayer tadpole that’s planted in some of the characters’ heads more and more will make those characters darker and darker, even though the tadpole option is often an easy way out.

These constant choices were presented to viewers of the gameplay demo who were able to vote and decide what Swen Vincke did, whether it was which location he moved toward or how he approached and responded to various characters, primarily goblins, before heading deep into the earth to find the Underdark.

Seeing all those options and the different ways that players can approach any given situation in Baldur’s Gate 3 is frankly mind-blowing. There are so many ways that these little stories within the larger story pan out, so many different paths to take and characters to meet, avoid, or kill, so many secrets to uncover or pass over.

It’s a testament not only to how far games have evolved, but the work of everyone helping to create this game. About 350 people are working on the game, Vincke said back in February, which means there are so many people working on all kinds of different scenarios and thinking about all the ways that players may want to approach them.

A release date for Baldur’s Gate 3 has not yet been revealed.