On Baldur's Gate III and New Beginings
Some gamers feel that Larian trampled the Baldur's Gate legacy and some people wonder why I chose to write a blog answers to both below.
This has got to be one of the most strange inaugural posts I could have chosen. I am writing this, having been struck by restlessness over a conversation my friends and I had over Discord. I am not referring to this article only, either. In a way, I’m writing this whole blog along with all the setup work that entails because of this conversation I had. Perhaps there is a part of me that needs to be right or special and feels this will finally reveal that hidden glamour to the world.
To that end, I named this blog “Hapax Legomenon” which is a transliteration from Greek that means a word that only appears once in a given body of works—an homage to my hermeneutics professor, wherever she is. I chose that name because I believe, for better or worse, that I possess writing that is one of a kind. Whether or not it turns out to be anything more than a vanity collection for all the arguments I wish I had made or something worth reading is up to me to accomplish and you to judge, I suppose. But it will be unique, whatever I pen down.
Speaking of, the actual topic of this blog post. My friends and I are constantly in a ceaseless debate about one video game in particular: Baldur’s Gate 3. This game serves as an interesting conversation for so many reasons, but the one in question is: legacy. I imagine most people who have played the hit RPG have not played the games that preceded it. I would go so far as to wager that the average gamer hasn’t even considered that it was a third entry. If they have, they likely googled the first two games and saw that they were old and moved on.
Maybe the issue is merely a problem of popularity. The video game journalists and YouTube stars aren’t talking about the first two. I’m not seeing posts in my Steam library about the awesome next update coming to Baldur’s Gate 1 or 2. I bet most reviewers haven’t played the first two entries in the series to completion, and if they have, they almost certainly didn’t insist that you have to play the first two before the third. As an aside, I’d agree with them. Having played BG3 all the way through and only a little of the first two, I can say I didn’t feel like an outsider. My passing familiarity with the returning cast proved more than enough for me, and Faerûn is quite plug and play.
That there, I’d argue, is the issue at the heart of this . Honoring the legacy of the series and creating an accessible title seem to be at inevitable odds. If Larian had made a game more like Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 they would’ve likely alienated and never acquired many of their new diehard fans (and their dollars, more on that later). By distancing themselves both mechanically and narratively from the originals they have created a more accessible experience that has proven extremely inviting and earned much praise. That decision, however, has left some of the most dedicated fans of the originals rather pissed off and even grieved.
This conundrum isn’t new, of course, there is discourse ad nauseam about reviving old movies and games and torching their legacy, see Star Wars for a prime example. Which is hilarious, of course, it’s perhaps the only series that I can think of that has done this twice. There are plenty of people who abhored the prequels in favor of the original trilogy. They said things then that are remarkably similar to the words people now reserve for the newest Star Wars trilogy or Baldur’s Gate 3. Curious to note is how the tone has shifted to embracing and praising the prequels, keep that in mind.
What is different between the discussion on Disney’s Star Wars trilogy and Baldur’s Gate 3 is that Baldur’s Gate 3 is almost universally beloved, it’s the highest rated game on OpenCritic on PC and third on all platforms as of writing (the story is similar on Metacritic at Rank 21 and 13 on Steam). Whereas the reception of the Disney trilogy is more mixed. I’d argue that you should not take a beloved series and spurn it by producing poor quality. If you cannot be certain the art you’re making is of a quality that is truly honoring the original, then don’t try it. That probably means we’d make less sequels across the board, that’s good! There is a good reason Half-Life won’t ever count to three, it’s unlikely it’d honor the first two, even if the idea of a third amazing game sounds fantastic.
Larian, then, seems to have succeeded where many have failed. They made a game that is widely considered to exceed its predecessors, which should be very honoring to the originals. However, just because a new continuation is excellent, doesn’t mean it has completely succeeded in honoring those that came before it. Even if you just compared any random screenshot between the first two BGs and the newest entry you’d notice stark differences. Some of that will be inevitable when comparing games decades apart in their creation and I haven’t even mentioned that the games were made by totally different artists. That said, there’s no doubt to me that Larian was aware of and interested in honoring the source material, so why would they choose to depart so severely? Why keep the Baldur’s Gate name if you’re just going to make an (admittedly amazing) game of a “totally” different kind?
It’s been postulated that they were “forced” to by D&D IP owners Wizards of the Coast, but Sven admits they chose this path to popularize their turn-based RPG system to everybody. This shocked me to discover. I love Larian, I think they make really amazing games, it’s really hard to oversell just how incredible DOS:1, DOS:2, and BG3 are. But this feels almost unbelievably calculated and heartless. It added some validity in my heart to my diehard BG1&2 friends when they described their experience as a surreal nightmare in which everyone blindly praises a game that murdered the ones they loved. Is this the inevitable doom for everyone who loves movies and games that receive posthumous continuations?
Yes, but maybe that isn’t so bad, which I’ll get to in a second. For now, it’s worth saying that this is inevitable. It is very appropriate for a company in a capitalist system to see a market (a desire for Baldur’s Gate) and sell what that market desires for profit. For Video Games and Movies it becomes even more promising, both require insane amounts of resources and manpower--they are huge investments. Capitalizing on an IP's success (Both Baldur’s Gate itself and D&D at large) provides a confident pathway to ensure you’ll get high ROI (most of the time). Larian made BG3 to fund the kind of art they’d like to keep making. They tried their own IP to immense success and wanted the fuel to do more. For this reason they’ve milked the Baldur’s Gate and D&D cash cows and abandoned them to make different games.
That sounds bad, but it really isn’t at all. First of all, Baldur’s Gate 3 departing from some of the series norm, such as older rulesets and Real Time with Pause, made it accessible to many more fans. There are tons of people who tried these kinds of games for the first time on Baldur’s Gate 3 that have now become long time fans. Second, modern paint is welcomed, in my opinion. I will never finish BG 1 or 2, I suspect, even though I have tried. They lack too much of the incredible amenities I’ve come to expect from video games two decades later. No matter how good the original two games are narratively, and I admit they are probably extremely good, they are imprisoned by their era, their obtuse D&D mechanics, and their appearance. Baldur’s Gate 3 lacks none of these weaknesses.
I could overcome those issues, potentially, and I might try again after this. If not only because they are apparent RPG masterpieces and I, again, should be just the kind of nerd for that. Baldur’s Gate 3, in a way, let me in the door by paring away all that chaff and lowered the barrier to entry. In doing so they also made an incredible game that, while not honoring it perfectly, seriously pays homage to its titanic and legendary predecessors. With that, I think it’s worth concluding by letting Sven defend the choice to deviate from series norms himself from an interview he had with a Polish gaming company. It’s been helpfully translated by a now deleted redditor. Link to the original here and the translation here.
What has been the reaction of fans to the fact that you are working on a brand like Baldur's Gate? Have they been very positive about what you've done with the world? Or do they need convincing that it's worth investing their time in?
“Opinions are divided. So there are fans of the original games who wanted it to be an exact continuation of that storyline - this is not the case and some are disappointed. Others, however, changed their minds after trying the game. We had testers and there was one particular girl among them. She came from the other end of Ireland, so she had to travel for several hours before she got to the office and tested the game.... She said: ‘I signed up because I wanted to tell you: how dare you!’. She left, thanking us and saying: ‘I was very happy with what you guys did with the city. I was so happy, going in there. I was afraid, but you really did the series justice, because for the first time we can see it all in 3D.’ So that was a very big compliment. When it comes to nostalgia and older gamers, there will always be people who are not happy with how it was handled. The same goes for everything else - from Star Wars to anything else you can imagine. But if you let that get in your way, nothing will happen anymore. Those things I mentioned at the beginning, the ones we aspired to, the ones we wanted to pay respect to - I think we succeeded. The vast majority of players say yes, some say no, and that's fine."