We got a new look at Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay today in an extended 88 minute livestream with Swen Vincke, broadcast as part of Wizards of the Coast's D&D Live 2020 event. In this scenario, seemingly set early in the game not too long after the events of the original gameplay reveal, the player character and his party are travelling through a goblin-infested countryside. There's plenty of combat and also plenty of dialogue. At one point, the party is visited by a merchant named Raphael who is quickly revealed to be the devil from the recent trailer. The highlight of the stream in my opinion is when Swen has Githyanki companion Lae'zel go on a solo mission to basically take the piss out of the rather entertainingly written goblins. At many points the player has the option to use his Illithid tadpole powers to seemingly psychically dominate them, although this is said to incur some sort of cost.

Eventually, Swen asked viewers to vote on whether he should attempt to take on a powerful hobgoblin or instead travel into the Underdark. Despite his best efforts they chose the latter, and so the party made its way to the nearest entrance, travelling through a spider-infested cave, down a pit into the Underdark proper, and eventually into a Myconid village, which is where the stream ended.


The stream was directly followed by a two part interview with Swen on the IGN Summer of Gaming broadcast. IGN also wrote a summary of their impressions of the game, and Swen was interviewed by GameSpot as well.


I think I can say that most of us are impressed by what we saw of Baldur's Gate 3 today. The graphics are great, the writing seems entertaining, and the level design in particular is spectacular, making constant use of verticality. The D&D ruleset means that many of our biggest issues with Larian's previous games are no longer a factor. And yes, the game's dialogue options are written normally now. This is probably going to be a good one, folks.