Baldur's Gate III
It’s hard to miss our excitement this issue for the year 2020. We’re as delighted with this double-crit of a century as we would be if we’d been rolling d20s with disadvantage and been rewarded with that incredible result. Another big “20” that’s fast approaching is the anniversary of
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Released in September 2000, we’re especially pleased to know that
Baldur’s Gate III is scheduled to debut on Steam Early Access later this year in a fitting tribute to that occasion.
In
Baldur’s Gate III, Larian Studios (the team behind
Divinity: Original Sin) places the fate of the Forgotten Realms in your hands, as a malevolent presence intent on devouring its foes from the inside returns. Never let it be said that video games aren’t educational. When the first trailer for
BGIII aired in June 2019 many D&D players learned the term
ceremorphosis for the first time, as they witnessed the violent birth of a mind flayer. Producer Larian has now shown off the cinematic introduction to the third
Baldur’s Gate video game, and it adds another fascinating piece of lore about the illithids. The word many players will be adding to their vocabularies to describe a mind flayer’s enormous flying ship is nautiloid.
The action-packed movie that kicks off
Baldur’s Gate III sees the Sword Coast under attack from a deadly aerial assault. With dragon riders in pursuit, the tentacles of the mind flayer’s nautiloid ship snatch citizens from their own streets. Worse is to come, as those taken are implanted with “tadpoles” designed to hollow out their host and create new illithids in their place.
“Swen Vincke came up with the story of the mind flayers and the tadpole on an airplane. A few of us were flying to talk to the D&D Team about the story, the lore, and how we were going to implement fifth edition into our game. We had all been reading lots of D&D books and Swen had seen the image of the tadpole crawling into an eye. He said, ‘What if mind flayers invade Faerûn again?’” remembers Adam Smith, Senior Writer at Larian.
“But ceremorphosis is a quick process. On the first day your nails start dropping off and your hair starts falling out. We wondered if we could get away with putting players on such a short clock, because five days is not a long time in RPGs! To make it more fun, we decided that the tadpole in their heads is different.”
Having barely survived a crash-landing at the start of
Baldur’s Gate III, players find themselves stranded in the middle of an inhospitable wilderness. As far as they know, they only have a few days to get rid of the parasite before they sprout tentacles where there previously weren’t any. As they desperately seek a cure, it becomes obvious that a psychic link with the tadpole gives them new powers and some other unexpected benefits (including improved physical capabilities such as being able to jump further, as well as unique abilities for each character—being able to walk in the sunlight in the case of vampire Astarion). As these dark powers awaken, should players resist and turn evil against itself? Or embrace the lure of the power devouring them from within and see how far it will take them?
“The more you use your tadpole by selecting it from the options within dialogue, the stronger the influence of your tadpole becomes. But the more you use it, the quicker you unlock your powers,” says Larian Senior Designer Edouard Imbert.
“It’s that duality we’re introducing. It’s comparable to Bhaalspawn, which is a nice link to
Baldur’s Gate and
Baldur’s Gate II. We want players to be wary this thing is still inside them, and the fact that they can turn into a mind flayer is still there,” warns Smith.
To add to the chaos, a new cult known as the Absolute is on the rise. It quickly becomes clear that certain enemies you encounter within this faction also have tadpole powers, making them more interesting (and more dangerous!) opponents. Don’t be surprised when that priestess you’re facing off against suddenly uses telekinesis to drop one of the temple’s statues on you.
FIFTH EDITION RULES
One of the most impressive elements of
Baldur’s Gate III is the way it takes D&D fifth edition tabletop rules and applies them to a video game environment. Players will recognize the ability to move, take an action, and use a bonus action—with an expanded list of options available for that bonus manoeuvre. Yet the translation goes beyond the nuts and bolts of the system to include the roleplay elements which help make D&D such a rich experience.
“You will recognize everything from D&D but sometimes an adjustment has been made. We extended certain things and streamlined others. It is fifth edition for sure, only slightly adapted for a video game,” Imbert says. “It’s still problem solving in a narrative context rather than being solely combat based, which is a great cocktail for enjoyment. There are fights you can sneak around, you can use your Charisma and convince people to let you through and so forth. If you’re extraordinarily lucky with your dice rolls you may not fight a single time!
“We’re bringing that sense of immersion from the roleplaying tabletop experience. In our excitement to tell a story we’ve made sure our characters have names and personalities, even when they fight. One gnome may cry out if you kill the other gnome because that’s his brother!”
As faithful as the translation is, Imbert recognizes that not every element of such a massive roleplaying system could make the transition into the game.
“We had to limit a few spells because some don’t work as written in a video game. For example,
wish is a very powerful spell it was difficult to translate. Or as a related example, as a druid you could choose to wild shape into any animal you’ve ever encountered, but realistically for our game we had to choose which those would be.”
COMBAT READY
One area that has been carefully integrated is fifth edition combat. However, gamers who have ploughed hours into the original
Baldur’s Gate series of games should note that the combat style is changing from real-time with pause to a turn-based system. “We’ve proven with our
Divinity: Original Sin RPG games that a turn-based system works and is a lot of fun, so I fully support the decision to swap,” says Imbert.
Combat differs slightly from the tabletop rules with the expanded number of bonus actions available to choose from. The Larian team found it was more fun from a video game perspective if players had several potential actions available on their turn.
“You can shove someone to trigger a Strength saving throw, pin them down with your arrow, then move away. That’s the kind of cool combo you want the players to be able to carry out. Turns are now team based, so it’s not the turn of your character, it’s the turn of your team. That allows you to switch between characters so you don’t have to wait for one to finish their turn before you can do everything with another,” says Imbert.
The ability to throw an item as a bonus action also led to a classic D&D moment during the live playthrough
Dragon+ was invited to. While running from two opponents, Vincke used his action and his movement, then wondered if he had something in his inventory he could hurl at his pursuers: “I’ll throw my boots at them,” he said, causing howls of laughter when they connected with the target and caused a few points of damage.
This being a video game world, certain combat options also needed to be smoothed out during playtesting. Goblins, it turned out, were an especially nasty creature to come up against because of their built-in mobility during battle.
“Goblins have Nimble Escape, which allows them to ignore an attack of opportunity. I was very eager to implement that in
Baldur’s Gate III, but we quickly realized that it was a real pain for the players. I decided to change it so that only goblin rangers have Nimble Escape but goblin melee opponents don’t,” Imbert says.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS
Another element of D&D that has been cleverly integrated into the game is the ability to use your environment. Taking an elevated position at least 2.3 meters above a creature will give your character advantage on their attack role. As with
Divinity: Original Sin II, there’s also the potential to use surfaces to aid you in combat, drenching them in grease to slow your enemies before setting them alight to injure them. You might also dip your sword or arrow into fire to do additional damage or spread those flames even further.
“If you walk right into a major fight in
Baldur’s Gate III, it’s going to be hard. I’m not talking about those popcorn moments where you kill three goblins and feel good about yourself, I mean the more difficult encounters. The elevation of areas in a level, alongside sneaking and hiding in the shadows, is a tool we’ve given the players to prepare for an encounter. To fight the strongest opponents, you’re sometimes going to have to use that level design,” Imbert suggests.
“For the first time ever in a game we have destructible platforms. You could shoot the bridge and have someone fall to their death in the chasm below. It’s an insta-kill, which is good if they’re a major enemy. But you’ll also lose all the gear they had on them.”
TIME WAITS FOR NO MINSC
The question every fan of the
Baldur’s Gate series will be asking themselves is: will we see a few familiar faces from past games? “Fans of
Baldur’s Gate and
Baldur’s Gate II are going to look at our game and have certain expectations. Some of those expectations we’re going to completely shatter. We’re set 100 years after
Baldur’s Gate II and we are taking everything in the Forgotten Realms D&D books as canon,” Smith says, the earlier playtest confirming that Volo is in the game. “We don’t want to take away the expectation that they might meet this or that character again. But we’re not going to change timelines or do anything crazy to introduce anyone, we’re using the lore very respectfully.”
“Making
Baldur’s Gate III is a dream come true. If you talk to people who make RPGs for a living, they have either come from a D&D background or have played six or more D&D RPG video games. This is such a huge deal for us that a lot of us fell off our chairs when we realized we would be working on it. It’s a big challenge but we are so confident in our team and our technology that we know we can pull this off,” Smith says.
Baldur’s Gate III will be available on Steam Early Access later in 2020. Gather your party and subscribe for Baldur’s Gate III updates at the official website.
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