A Late-Adopter's Guide to Baldur's Gate 3 - Part 1

On wringing every drop of dopamine out of the biggest RPG around.

Spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 ahead.

Thumbnail screenshot from here. (I thought a rotten little guy guiding you into the unknown was an appropriate reference for this post.)

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Introduction

There is hardly a soul on this paltry planet who hasn’t heard of Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s been the biggest video roleplaying game on the market for what feels like a long time now, and in fact was already a bestseller before it even released, having spent years in early access. Pretty much every RPG now feels like it’s trying to channel Baldur’s Gate 3, with varying degrees of subtlety and varying degrees of success. It casts a very long shadow, such that you have to ask - what is all the fuss about?

This is pretty much the question that got me to finally sit down and play BG3 this winter. Why did I resist so long? I love fantasy, and I love roleplaying games. I love (or at any rate, play) Dungeons and Dragons, which BG3 is based on. I’m even a fan of the original games, which were released in 1998 and 2000.

They are a) actually still very good in their own right (especially the second one), and b) games of historical note, having greatly influenced the history of roleplaying games since, forming the blueprint for many personal favourites.

So, on paper, I should have been an early adopter of BG3. However, due to a series of crushing disappointments in entertainment¹ and in life generally, I am always wary of the next big thing, which, combined with a fairly catastrophic aversion to novelty in general, led me to put off engaging with BG3 for a long time. I even preferentially played other new RPGs in the meantime, such as Owlcat’s Rogue Trader, which is 100% a BG3-like², before finally tackling BG3 itself.

And what did I discover, dear reader? Well, I would describe my BG3 experience much as Robert Graves described Shakespeare:

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

There is so much that I love about BG3 - it’s a truly unique and special experience, and it outclasses other RPGs in so many ways. Above all, I am amazed by the sheer amount of work and passion that has so obviously gone into this game, including (in fact, especially) the parts of it that most players won’t see on their first playthrough, if ever. It is an antidote to the timid, stingy and half-hearted approach taken by so many games in the genre, the worst of which won’t design an asset unless they plan on re-using it hundreds of times, let alone write a scene or character that isn’t mandatory. BG3, meanwhile, shows what RPGs can be. Of all the games I’ve played, it comes closest to realising the potential of the genre, which too often goes unfulfilled.

However, I have to say that I was not immediately blown away by BG3, and remained a sceptic for a good 20 or 30 hours of my first playthrough, during which time did not fly because I wasn’t having that much fun.

Here, I want to examine the various barriers to entry which kept me from getting the most out of BG3 initially, to share my own experience and to offer some pointers on how to get the most out of this very special game. In particular, I have in mind readers who may have bounced off of BG3 or otherwise struggled to get into it, as I did, or who simply haven’t got around to it yet. If someone as picky, truculent and generally difficult as me can (eventually) fall in love with BG3, then there’s a more than even chance that you can too, and I promise it’s worth the effort!

Barrier 1: It’s D&D

The great thing about this game is that it’s based on Dungeons and Dragons, but the flipside of that is that it’s based on Dungeons and Dragons. Having played D&D quite a bit in real life, I have to say that I’m of the opinion that it’s only the least bad roleplaying system, in the same way that Churchill considered democracy to be only the least bad system of government. Now, there are a lot of advantages to playing D&D via a video game, namely that the computer does the maths for you, and everything is represented visually in a way that is easy to read and make sense of. Combat also runs much more smoothly when only one computer and one player are making decisions, and not a bunch of dithering players and a harassed dungeon master struggling with the arithmetic³.

However, there are a number of difficulties associated with D&D, which hit especially hard in the opening sections of BG3:

1) Mechanical decision fatigue

This is something that pretty much every D&D player has experienced when creating characters and levelling them up. For most people, the fun in roleplaying games lies in, well, the roleplay, and not so much the admin, which generally involves poring over about ten different browser tabs at a time and having to think entirely too hard about rules which are not always clearly written, and may assume knowledge that you don’t have.

A necessary evil of D&D is that usually when you level up, you have to choose new spells or features, and the thing about that is that not all spells and features are created equally, meaning that there are pretty much right answers and wrong answers, which won’t always be immediately apparent. Therefore, you have to think quite hard, read quite a lot, and carefully weigh up pros and cons if you want your character to be able to perform well.

In BG3, the admin is somewhat streamlined, again because the computer is doing much of the work for you, and when you level up it presents the decisions to you in a fairly logical and accessible way. However, the tradeoff is that you have to make those decisions for every character in your party, every time you level up, not just your own. So, levelling can feel like a chore, and if you make the mistake of choosing a useless feature or weaker subclass early on, you may have to do yet more admin by resetting the character’s class and going through all of the steps again.

It gets easier and more enjoyable as your familiarity with the game grows, and you might even want to experiment with different classes later on, but it takes a while to get there.

2) Low level D&D combat is suffering

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that it takes a long time for D&D combat to start being fun. Specifically, it’s a) quite hard and b) tedious anywhere below Level 5, which is when many classes get extra attacks or better spells, and start to perform better. In practice, this makes combat feel far less frustrating, because missing a single attack no longer means a character’s whole turn is wasted. Spellcasters also get exponentially stronger and more versatile at higher levels, and are able to cast more spells before they need to rest.

So, the fact that BG3 starts at Level 1 is not great. In Larian’s defence, they are clearly aware of the pitfalls of the combat system at lower levels, and offer many options in the early game to mitigate these difficulties. For example, if we look at the goblin camp in Act 1, it’s possible to avoid much of the combat by infiltrating the camp (double-underlined; you really want to infiltrate first, it’s much more fun), and when it comes to a fight there are many options to tip the scales in your favour:

• It’s quite easy to convince some ogres to fight for you, who you can summon as needed.

• Lots of grenades and grease bottles⁴ can be found in Act 1, which are useful for crowd control in lieu of better spells.

• If you explore and take your time, the game is very generous with potions and scrolls, which provide many useful magic effects early on.

• You can lure enemies below hanging braziers and then shoot the chains to bring them crashing down on their heads.

• Some important enemies are placed near chasms they can be pushed into⁵.

• It’s possible to poison the goblins’ drinks before fighting them.

• The goblins’ caged spiders can be set loose.

• You can rescue the druid Halsin for a powerful ally.

• If you infiltrate and pretend to cooperate with the cultists, you can lure the leaders into an ambush, rather than taking them on in their base.

The point is that there are many options to make dealing with the goblins easier, and I really wish I had known all of this during my first playthrough. I was playing as an Oath of Vengeance Paladin⁶, and I think I got a bit too in-character (who could have foreseen that?), and therefore decided to attack the entire camp head-on instead of infiltrating. The upshot of this was that I missed out on a huge amount of fun and plot-relevant dialogue that adds greatly to the experience, and for the longest time I had no idea who or what the Absolute even was (‘and at this point I’m too afraid to ask…’), which is a problem when the entire plot is about fighting the Cult of the Absolute. My tactical illiteracy and lack of knowledge also made the fighting much harder than it needed to be.

Of course, the fact that combat is so un-fun to begin with makes it all the more satisfying when you do hit Level 5 and start to feel like you’re finally getting somewhere, but it takes a while to get there, and in the meantime the options are to suffer or find ways around it. I wonder if D&D combat is less than thrilling by design, as it encourages players to be creative, to roleplay, and to find alternative solutions to problems, and true to this design BG3 does offer many creative approaches in the early game, if you know how to look for them.

Wild that the goblins in this game have good skin and full heads of hair. Source.

3) The D&D setting

Another thing about D&D is that the default setting, Faerun, is kind of a peculiar one. In the game’s opening hours, the player is bombarded more or less non-stop with Proper Nouns, to the point that it can be kind of hard to get immersed in the setting if you’re not already familiar⁷. Illithids, Tadpoles, Tieflings, Druids, the Absolute, Githyanki, Elturel, Avernus, Vampire Spawn, Vlaakith, Mystra, Netheril, Sylvanus… The proper nouns come thick and fast in the opening chapters, forming a kind of mental fog that can push you away from the setting and make it difficult to relate to these characters.

Lae’zel is literally me (clueless about the setting she’s in).

It’s also higher fantasy than Tolkien in that gods and devils are literally everywhere, people become gods on a semi-regular basis, and it’s entirely possible to have a relationship with god in a very personal and literal way. For example, the party wizard’s ex is literally the goddess of magic, and we all just kind of accept this, because this is the kind of thing that can happen in Faerun. In a way, gods in this setting are just people but more so, and therefore the actual mechanics of worship and divine magic can feel rather mundane, and transactional rather than transcendant. You pray to a guy you 100% know exists and who can actively communicate with you if he so chooses, and as a quid pro quo he powers your spells. It’s a bit of a strange dynamic. Where’s the belief? Where’s the uncertainty? Where’s the existential dread?⁸

What I will say is that the elaborate proper-nounism and god-ism eventually pays off dramatically in many characters’ personal storylines, and indeed in the main story. We do kind of need to know who the Githyanki are and who Vlaakith is for various pivotal choices and payoffs in the final act to carry weight (to say nothing of Lae’zel’s personal journey, which I loved). Likewise, we sort of need to know the difference between a vampire spawn and a vampire lord for Astarion’s storyline to make sense, and we need to know about Shar and Selune for Shadowheart’s story. It’s just unfortunate that the game is quite front-loaded with terminology that is not always defined clearly and straight-away, although this is certainly a justifiable trade-off, the alternative being a non-stop deluge of mandatory exposition, which no-one would enjoy.

Barrier 2: IOMO (Inevitability of Missing Out)

The amazing thing about BG3 is that there are countless optional encounters that are entirely unique. The fact that so many of these encounters are easily missed is incredible, as an indicator of how much freedom the game gives you and the sheer amount of work, thought and attention to detail that went into development. It also makes the world feel so much more alive and real, particularly on new playthroughs as you run into entirely new creatures, people and scenarios, discover secrets, and stumble across new information about characters you thought you knew.

The disadvantage of that is that it’s very easy to miss out on amazing encounters that enrich the whole experience, particularly in the early game.

For example, some things I missed in Act 1 on my first playthrough:

• Interacting with the druids at the grove. This meant that I missed out on: a key scene in which a little girl is threatened by a druid’s snake familiar; a story hook which would have led me to the swamp area where an important recurring villain lives; a challenging encounter featuring tree monsters and mud devils; and the revelation of a conspiracy involving a druidic secret society. I also missed out on an encounter with Nettie, a druid healer who sees euthanasia as the only solution to the player’s parasite infection, and whose comments on the matter add a lot of plot-relevant context. Also, it turns out the girl I saved from the snake was a recurring character, who had some really poignant and memorable scenes a good 20 or 30 hours later, and is an ally in the final battle.

• Meeting the Tiefling refugees. I did this a little bit in my first playthrough, but I kind of assumed they were throwaway characters who would not be recurring. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost all of these characters have personalities and stories, and several appear in all three acts. For example: Zevlor, the group’s leader, is a disillusioned veteran who has lost his faith; he breaks down and either flees or collaborates with the cult in Act 2, but has a redemption in Act 3, and can take part in the final battle⁹. There is also Alfira, a bard who is mourning the death of her teacher, and can sing a unique song if the player helps and encourages her at their first meeting¹⁰. Then there’s the arrogant wizard-apprentice Rolan, who returns in all three acts, learns hard lessons, is a narrative foil to certain other arrogant wizards in the game, and can be another ally in the final battle. There’s also the thieving urchin Mol, a would-be warlock who is snared in a pact by the devil Raphael, an important villain in the main story¹¹. In short, the Tieflings are 100% worth your time - if it has horns and it’s at all talkative, it’s probably a recurring character.

• Fighting harpies near the Tiefling camp. These creatures have a unique design, a unique song which they use to lure in their victims (and which has effects in combat), and never appear elsewhere. If the boy they are preying on survives, he is yet another recurring Tiefling in subsequent acts.

• Finding Withers’ tomb in the starting area’s chapel. This is a much better introduction to a very special Gandalf-like undead character, who is important to the plot (particularly in the Dark Urge storyline), and also provides important mechanical services.

• Speaking to the dead. You can find an amulet in Withers’ tomb which lets you do this as many times a day as you wish. It’s a huge benefit, as many corpses throughout the game can be questioned for unique dialogue, which is often very memorable and haunting, and can reveal secrets.

• Speaking to animals. You can get this ability early with some classes, but the game is very generous from the start with potions that let you do it all day regardless of class. If the bard Volo is rescued, you can buy them from him whenever you like. The animal dialogues in BG3 are often better than human dialogues in other games (coughVeilguardcough), and offer unique quests, funny and emotional moments, and insights that you would otherwise miss out on.

• Infiltrating the goblin camp (double-underlined again). This offered many great interactions which flesh out and foreshadow the main story, and also many funny moments.

• Discovering a Myconid colony in the Underdark. These telepathic mushroom people are very strange and memorable, with a variety of fantastic character models, and can give the player quests and valuable background on the Duergar who are the area’s main antagonists. There are also a few recurring humanoid characters in their camp.

• Discovering a deserted steampunk wizard tower in the Underdark, complete with automated defenses, a unique, intricately designed robot character, and the sad story of the tower’s absent owner.

• Finding the first volume of the Orpheus book in said tower. These books offer important foreshadowing for the main plot, and are also connected to Lae’zel’s personal storyline.

• Encountering a pack of hook horrors, a classic D&D monster, here given an excellent Skeksis-like bird/insect creature design. The horrors are led by a feral wizard turned cannibal, whose corpse can be questioned with Speak to Dead for some unique dialogue.

I could go on, but I think a thousand words on what I missed out on would be overkill (and yet still not enough). The point is that BG3 has a truly incredible amount of special content which can so easily be missed, and to get the most out of it, it’s best to take your time, explore, talk to people (/corpses/animals) and to be always on the alert for quest hooks and for unexplored areas of your map.

A hook horror in-game. Source.

Looking back, it seems that I definitely got tunnel vision throughout the early game, and became obsessed with accomplishing the main goals at the expense of exploring, experimenting, and having fun. I was always in a hurry to move on and see what was next, rather than meeting the game on its own terms.

To an extent, this is because I play a lot of video game RPGs, and as such I take for granted their usual limitations. Most RPGs don’t reward exploration with special discoveries to anything like the extent that BG3 does, and are far more limited in terms of the number of paths, solutions and varying outcomes that they offer to players. They also tend not to feature as many recurring characters. As such, a veteran RPG player feels less incentive to question NPCs, assuming that most won’t re-appear outside of the area where you first met them, and is also less inclined to explore, expecting more of the same forgettable enemies rather than unique monster encounters. BG3, meanwhile, is a very different beast, and comes far closer to simulating the creative potential of tabletop RPGs, which (at least on paper) are far more flexible than video games, limited only by the imaginations of the players¹².

To be continued…

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1. See the Star Wars sequels. Also, most things that Netflix gets its grubby mitts on. Also, Peter Jackson shitting up his legacy with The Hobbit trilogy. Also, what happened to Dragon Age. I could go on, but I won’t.

2. And a pretty good one at that, complete with brainworms, problematic love interests, and more space pirates than you can shake a stick at. I really enjoyed it.

3. Other things BG3 is mercifully free of - scheduling issues, real-life politics, powergaming, murderhobo-ing, unequal treatment, people looking at their phones…

4. Grease is a fun effect in this game, which causes enemies to slip and fall over. Very useful for crowd control.

5. You don’t necessarily want to throw Minthara into the chasm, although maybe you do.

6. Regular readers will be entirely unsurprised by this, given my hater ways.

7. I was familiar with bits of it, but only vaguely. My RL D&D experience has largely been in other settings, and the old BG games were a bit more ‘find out why the iron is bad’ and less ‘investigate the Cult of the Absolute to save the Tiefling refugees from Elturel, and cure your Illithid Tadpole before you transform into a mind-flayer.’

8. While I have criticised The Witcher and ASOIAF here, I still do kind of prefer more agnostic fantasy settings, in which the characters have no more objective insight into the nature of their universe than we have into ours, and therefore faith or lack thereof have much the same definitions as in real life.

9. His PTSD is strongly alluded to in his post-ending letter to the player, and is thematically relevant.

10. I did this in my second playthrough, which made it all the more impactful when, um, something bad happened to her.

11. Again, extremely thematically relevant, particularly if you have Karlach and Wyll with you when encountering Mol and Raphael in Act 2.

12. In practice, not always the case, but that’s the ideal.