Digging Into The Game Design of Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios is perhaps the only company with a vast RPG history that still produces genuinely old-school RPGs. Behind this name are fantastic game worlds, hours-long gameplay experiences, classic game design, and, of course, humor. The company has distinct canons and rules that give its games a recognizable touch. But at the same time, these also create limitations. Today, we'll discuss Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios' most popular project. It introduced the general public to something new - something long known to genre enthusiasts.

The founder of the studio, Swen Vincke, loves board games and has always aimed to transform that passion into a computer game format. This became the foundation for every game design element in the studio's projects. The direction for realizing their ideas was set by a game called Ultima VII. A direction that, according to Vincke, was never continued by anyone else. We're talking about a huge open world, many interactive items and their combinations, various ways to approach a single situation, and thrilling world exploration. These are the very pillars on which Larian Studios' game design stands.

From a game design perspective, the development of every gameplay situation in their games is built on a "+1" model. This means that developers simulate every possible outcome for a gameplay situation and then add... one more on top. This is not only about the progression of the main plot but about interactions with the world. Every barrel in Baldur's Gate 3 can be broken, exploded, or moved. Barrels can block a building entrance or be stacked into a staircase or tower to elevate an archer. One can even put something or someone inside a barrel and carry it around. And that's just the barrel, only one of the many interactive objects in the game.

Due to this interactivity, players encounter countless unexpected events and twists in their gameplay. Some passage options are always hidden from the player. Access to them might depend, for instance, on a skill to talk to animals or the dead, a random encounter, completing a companion's quest, or performing a specific action. Every chat or minor in-game event can spawn many new scenarios based on the "+1" idea. This makes the game world grow immensely, making even small areas and starting quests feel incredibly expansive.

The desire to make the entire environment interactive has been with the studio since its earliest projects. But for me, the Divinity Original Sin series remains the most exemplary and innovative. Its ideas are what Baldur's Gate 3 primarily continues. In Original Sin, players could perform some utterly insane actions. The idea of interaction with "unremarkable" objects was executed brilliantly there. This world here is divided into several components: the regular world inhabited by various humanoids, the world of animals, the world of objects, and the world of living objects. Here, you could mediate disputes between a dog and a cat, accept an intriguing quest from a chicken, argue with a chest, and wear buckets on your head.

In this world, objects aren't insignificant, as in most games. Any unliving object in the game might be more important than an NPC. The animals possess a set of qualities, emotions, and motivations that rival those of humans. For instance, in Baldur's Gate 3, there's the story of the "dark urge," obsessed with a desire for blood, paralleled by an emotionally similar dramatic tale of the "Strange Ox." The popular scene from Baldur's Gate 3 trailer, where one has intercourse with a druid in bear form, might be shocking and innovative for the general audience but certainly not for the studio. Compare this with the possibility in Original Sin for elves to peek into the past by eating a corpse. This feature is also continued in Baldur's Gate 3, where players can activate brains and converse with their former owners by inserting them into a skull.

The idea of high interactivity brings the element many of us love in games – randomness. In some places, the stakes of this randomness are high, and you wish to encounter it as rarely as possible, like in From Software games. When rolling, the planks beneath you break, and you plunge to death, losing souls. But these random moments are nice in other cases, such as in Baldur's Gate. Both types entertain the player and make their journey emotionally rich.

In the discussion on randomness, I'd like to highlight another crucial mechanic in Baldur's Gate 3 – turn-based battles. I won't go into deep details; they're complex and worth a separate discussion. But I'll mention the role of surfaces and how they interact in battles, which makes combat amazing for me. You can set oil, explode barrels to create fire zones, electrify water with lightning, or use gravity to push enemies off the map. This is just a glimpse of the possible interactions. These can be advantageous or dangerous - you might harm teammates or face cunning enemies who use the same tactics. The game's AI is smart, often outthinking the player. So, if an enemy immediately pushes your top character off a ledge, it's intentional, not random.

Surfaces play into the primary element of combat – strategic mechanics, but they often emerge from randomness and accompany it until the end. Each player's battle is a unique combination of characters and their builds, abilities, strategies, and the player's reactions to surprises. Developers craft confrontations such that every fight has a vexing element for the player. An archer perched atop a staircase, a necromancer summoning skeletons each turn, or an approaching massive troll. Players strategize to neutralize these threats by prioritizing them and assessing the situation. They are given many opportunities and allowed to combine them as they please. This is why the battles are turn-based. Players have time to ponder the situation, fantasize, and decide. In the first act, you always feel you're given a platform to shine, showcase your intellect, and find an intriguing solution.

In the first act, you get to know the game's classes and characters, form your team, and discover how they work together. Every battle becomes an opportunity to try out new skills and strategies. This new game installment nails this aspect, making it feel like you're in a real DnD session. The magic amplifies when you play cooperatively. Imagine exploring a cave while your friend tackles city quests and then meeting to exchange stories at a tavern. Larian Studios has outdone itself, creating a cooperative experience that stands out among games. Their previous titles hinted at this brilliance. It's hard to put into words, but this is what top-notch multiplayer feels like a game where players can engage in rich dialogues, approach quests differently, and even follow their secret goals.

A genuinely unique aspect of Baldur's Gate 3 is the DnD mechanic tied to dice rolls. In real life, DnD lets participants role-play any character and do almost anything, guided only by their moral compass and imagined character traits. Lifting restrictions on variability was the developers' most significant challenge when porting this mechanic into the game. They achieved this with minor plot influences from a plethora of small actions. The success of almost every action depends on a dice roll. If the result surpasses a certain value, the action succeeds, and vice versa. It's sometimes hard to resist reloading the game to achieve the desired roll. The most "correct" approach is to accept what happens, like in real DnD, and enjoy a unique storyline with successes and failures that shape your path. Thanks to thousands of these small checks, Baldur's Gate 3 allows each player a unique playthrough. If you play honestly, you can be certain that the likelihood of someone having a playthrough similar to yours has never been so low.

Such a scale is impressive. However, it leads to an exponential increase in complexity. The more content and gameplay situations in the game, the more tangled the system becomes, making its realization harder. Hence, the peak number of bugs is concentrated in the third act. And here, I move to the critique. Firstly, all the mentioned mechanics were excellently implemented in Original Sin 2, the studio's previous game. While Baldur's Gate 3 handles them with care, it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Secondly, the vast world and its reliance on constant interactivity mean that after a perfect first act, there's always a second one with less variety. Items might be unique, but they function similarly to the first act's items; enemies become less surprising, and by this point, a character's abilities allow the player to establish a repetitive battle pattern. The game becomes duller. It still entertains with its narrative and nuances, but holistically, the player starts to feel burned out. Statistics show that most players drop off during the second act. Typically, only about 30% make it to its end.

By the third act, the situation gets even gloomier. It's usually riddled with even more bugs. Characters, leveled up to god-like statuses, can easily make up to five attacks each turn and land critical hits every time. Gameplay variations start to narrow, and choices that appear different often lead to the same results. The game drags on as the story wraps up its loose ends, leaving the ending a bit diluted. Speaking of the narrative, it's always secondary in the studio's games. Baldur's Gate 3 is no exception. The spotlight is always on gameplay. And while this is good for gameplay, it's not cool for storytelling. The narrative is filled with funny jokes and cool side quests; the companions' stories and the dark urge's plot are enjoyable. But the main plot leans on clichés and templates from two decades ago, now feeling more like post-irony than a well-thought-out script. The mere 12 general endings don't intrigue and blatantly overlook most of the player’s choices. There's no satisfaction from the finale. The pleasure is hidden in the process. Only that process isn't all smooth, either.

In Baldur's Gate 3 and all previous Larian games, I start to feel bored by the third act. I don't understand why they always structure the game using the same pattern every time, limiting themselves to the same path. Each new game so closely follows the template of its predecessor that it loses its uniqueness, feeling like an endless update. The glorious Act I, among other things, is conditioned by close interaction with the audience. It was in early access for years, and the developers received tons of feedback during that time.

As a result, the game's beginning turned out to be as staggering as possible. Naturally, maintaining that initial benchmark becomes very challenging with such expansive world dimensions focusing on interactive interactions. There's always a shortage of time somewhere, and compromises must be made. My playthrough took 80 hours, but my overall impressions were mixed. I spent most of that time on the first half of the game, where, in my opinion, the most exciting discoveries and beautiful solutions are. I trudged through the second half forcibly, kept taking breaks, and finished two other games before I wrapped up Baldur's Gate.

The six-year development of the franchise, born in the 90s, culminated in a significant and well-deserved success for the studio. The increased attention brought hordes of new fans to Larian Studios, discussing a genre they were unfamiliar with just yesterday as if it were a 21st-century revelation. Someone could tell that Baldur's Gate 3 is the best game in history. While the game is one of the year's standout releases and opens up a new genre for many players, an extra year or two in alpha development could have made it even better.