Baldur’s Gate 3 – Party-Based D&D Role-Playing Game
Something is growing in your skull, and the ship that put it there has just crashed. Baldur’s Gate 3 starts at that point and leaves the rest to the player: who deserves trust, which fights are worth taking, and whether the parasite is a curse to cure or a source of power to use.
Combat runs in turns, conversations depend on d20 checks, and the campaign keeps a running record of how both went.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
Scenes that fork on a dice roll
Larian has said the game holds 174 hours of cinematics, and the figure makes sense once you notice how often a conversation splits. A failed Persuasion check can turn a negotiation into a brawl, while a passed one can skip the brawl altogether. Party members respond to what you decide, and those responses carry into later scenes.
Game of the Year at three ceremonies
- The Game Awards 2023: Game of the Year, one of six wins that night, with Best RPG and Best Multiplayer among them.
- Steam Awards 2023: Game of the Year and Outstanding Story-Rich Game.
- Golden Joystick Awards 2023: Ultimate Game of the Year, at a ceremony where Larian also took Studio of the Year.
Difficulty you can tune
Explorer, Balanced and Tactician can be switched from the pause menu at any point, and a rough fight does not force a restart. Honour Mode sits at the other end: it has to be chosen when the campaign begins, allows one save slot and ends the run if the whole party falls. Custom mode lets you mix individual settings.
Story and Lore
The campaign opens aboard a nautiloid, a mind flayer ship that has taken the player character and other captives and implanted each with an illithid tadpole. Githyanki dragon riders attack the vessel, it warps through the planes, and it finally comes down near the River Chionthar. Within days a tadpole turns its host into a mind flayer, which sends the survivors hunting for a cure and pulls them into a far larger conflict. The parasite also grants strange abilities, and how far to lean on them becomes a running choice.
- Act 1 – the Emerald Grove. The crash site leads to a druid sanctuary where its druids, a group of tiefling refugees and a goblin horde devoted to the Absolute are on a collision course. The act closes with a march toward Moonrise Towers.
- Act 2 – the Shadow-Cursed Lands. A region swallowed by magical darkness, with the Last Light Inn as one of its few safe havens and Moonrise Towers as the cult’s stronghold.
- Act 3 – the city of Baldur’s Gate. The loose threads meet in the city, where the cult’s leaders are waiting.
Forgotten Realms lore runs underneath the plot. The cult answers to the Dead Three, the gods Bane (tyranny), Bhaal (murder) and Myrkul (death), who act through mortal Chosen and steer the Absolute from the shadows. Veterans of the earlier Baldur’s Gate games will recognise them.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Each combat turn is divided into movement, an Action, a Bonus Action and a Reaction, and d20 rolls decide hits, saving throws and skill checks. The same dice logic covers picking a lock or talking a guard out of his post. Long rests cost camp supplies, and that limits how often a wounded party can stop to recover.
Positioning does much of the work in hard fights.
- Shoving costs a Bonus Action and deals no damage by itself, but a well-placed one sends an enemy off a ledge for good.
- Ranged attackers get an edge from high ground.
- Pools of oil, water, blood and poison react to fire, cold and lightning: a burning surface hurts everything standing in it, and electrified water hits every creature touching it.
Character creation draws on twelve classes: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard. Eleven races sit alongside them (Elf, Tiefling, Drow, Human, Githyanki, Dwarf, Half-Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Half-Orc and Dragonborn), most with subraces of their own.
The final major patch gave every class an extra subclass, among them the Hexblade Warlock, Swashbuckler Rogue and Bladesinging Wizard.
Characters and Factions
Six companions double as Origin characters, meaning each can also be played as the lead. A seventh Origin, the Dark Urge, exists only as a playable lead and never shows up unless chosen.
- Astarion, a High Elf Rogue, is a vampire spawn on the run from the master who controlled him for centuries.
- Gale is a human Wizard and former Waterdeep archmage. The Netherese orb in his chest could level a city.
- Lae’zel is a Githyanki Fighter who must prove herself to Queen Vlaakith before her own people execute her.
- Shadowheart, a High Half-Elf Cleric of Shar, had her memories wiped as part of a holy mission.
- Wyll is a human Warlock and monster hunter known as the Blade of Frontiers. A pact ties him to the cambion Mizora.
- Karlach, a Zariel Tiefling Barbarian, escaped the Hells with an infernal engine in her chest that runs hotter by the day.
- The Dark Urge has a class and race set by the player. Their memory holds nothing except a trail of blood, and a voice keeps urging cruelty.
Four more companions arrive later: Halsin, the Wood Elf Archdruid of the Emerald Grove, and Minthara, a Drow paladin who is one of the goblin camp’s three leaders, along with Jaheira and Minsc, who both return from the earlier games. Jaheira is a Half-Elf druid; Minsc is a human ranger who travels with a hamster named Boo. That makes ten companions in total, and romance with them is an optional thread rather than a required route.
The cult itself is run by three Chosen: Enver Gortash for Bane, Ketheric Thorm for Myrkul and Orin the Red for Bhaal.
- Emerald Grove druids and tiefling refugees. Neighbours in the same sanctuary and a problem for each other in Act 1. The refugees were exiled from Elturel and are trying to reach Baldur’s Gate.
- Goblin forces. A horde devoted to the Absolute, commanded from the goblin camp.
- Githyanki. Warriors who attack the nautiloid in the opening scene and whose society Lae’zel belongs to.
- Harpers, Flaming Fist and Zhentarim. The Harpers and the Flaming Fist, a mercenary company that now serves as the city’s police and military, share the Last Light Inn in Act 2. The Zhentarim, also called the Black Network, keep a hideout beneath Waukeen’s Rest.
Editions
Larian’s site lists three versions: Standard, Digital Deluxe and Physical Deluxe. The boxed Physical Deluxe Edition is sold separately through Larian’s own store.
Standard contains the Baldur’s Gate 3 base game. The Digital Deluxe Edition includes everything in Standard, plus the Divinity Bard Song Pack, Exclusive Dice Skin, Mask of the Shapeshifter, Cape of the Red Prince, Lute of the Merryweather Bard, Needle of the Outlaw Rogue, Bicorne of the Sea Beast, Paintings from Rivellon and the Adventurer’s Pouch. It also adds an original soundtrack, an artbook and character sheets, all in digital form.