There have been a few gateways into Dungeons & Dragons over the last few years, but there could be an argument that Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best of the bunch. Unlike Stranger Things and Critical Role, BG3 is set in the world of Faerûn (DnD‘s world), much like the prior Baldur’s Gate games and other CRPGs in the late 90s and early 2000s, such as Neverwinter Nights. With DnD still being a massive name and BG3 benefiting from gaming being bigger than ever, it’s no wonder that 2023’s Game of the Year has turned many onto the tabletop RPG.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has also proven to be the perfect game for veteran DnD players, especially for forever DMs who haven’t had the opportunity to play many characters and classes throughout their sessions. The game is a masterclass in using DnD lore to tell a compelling story with wacky yet complex characters, and while BG3 has produced its own version of the “Matt Mercer Effect,” the co-op features replicate the DnD experience quite well. It gets people to care about the world of DnD too, in a way that many other popular products have been unable to.
BG3 Uses Concentrates On What Makes D&D Lore Interesting
It Avoids D&D’s Haphazard Lore Rewrites
DnD has suffered from wanting to add everything, and as a result, some of its lore can feel tacked on and haphazard. Baldur’s Gate 3 benefits from its three-act structure, keeping things open yet concentrating on what makes the world of Faerûn interesting, particularly the mind flayers and gith. Their conflict and lore are unique to DnD and provide the main narrative, alongside the Dead Three, and this proves that Baldur’s Gate 3 is determined to focus on what DnD brings to the table from a world-building perspective, rather than the more generic elements.
This brought DnD lore to my attention for the first time, despite playing the TTRPG since 2018. Back then, Critical Role was the major window into DnD, but that series uses Matt Mercer’s world of Exandria, and I began playing the TTRPG through homebrew worlds. I also began DMing with a homebrew world, and my group had largely ignored DnD‘s world of Faerûn, treating what had been written by Wizards of the Coasts as set dressing, rather than an actual world. Very little before BG3 gave me the sense that DnD lore was interesting enough to invest in.
Homebrew refers to anything made by players and not the official or third party publishers. A homebrew world would be a setting made by players for a campaign.
It felt to me like DnD was represented by its rules and monsters, rather than its world before BG3, when it started to get popular with 5e, which is when I got into the TTRPG. Critical Role is a good example of this, as is Stranger Things, which uses the names of DnD‘s monsters, such as the mind flayers, and has the cast play the game, but it isn’t set in Faerûn. Many from my group of DnD players (who joined during the Critical Role craze) saw the tabletop through another world and began to play outside Faerûn as a result.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Is True To The Gith And The Drow
It Keeps The Lore From Feeling Generic
DnD has begun to backpedel with some of its lore, making everything more homogeneous for gameplay and inclusivity reasons, although it feels like Wizards of the Coast has gone a little too far here. Baldur’s Gate 3 kept true to the lore of gith and drow, ensuring that their brutal cultures came across through Lae’zel and Minthara, yet these characters remained complex, rather than overtly evil. This made both races incredibly interesting, yet Baldur’s Gate 3 remains incredibly inclusive and has been praised as such since its release.
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It would have been easy to make the gith and drow feel like everyone else (as it sort of is in the current version of DnD, in my opinion) or to make them generically evil, but BG3 remained true to Faerûn’s lore. By doing this, Larian was able to present these races and cultures as alien without feeling like their representation was surface level. As a result, it becomes something that players want to explore through Lae’zel and Minthara, who Tav is likely to become attached to throughout the game’s story.
Lae’zel is a githyanki, a subrace of the gith, who fought the githzerai (another subrace) after earning their freedom from the mind flayers.
This rings true for me, especially, since I usually play the role of someone explaining an alien culture to friends, due to being Chinese and from somewhere with a vastly different mindset from most people in the west. That same level of curiosity feels like it is given to the player concerning drow, gith, and the latter’s war with the deadly mind flayers. These races feel like they are real and worth learning about, which I never felt could be said when they were presented in DnD through its books due to NPCs not being there to talk about their culture.
BG3 Got Me To Play Curse Of Strahd
Durge Opened My Eyes To Storytelling In Faerûn
Although the drow and gith got me interested in the lore of DnD, my first Dark Urge BG3 playthrough opened my eyes to the darker side of its storytelling possibilities. DnD‘s world had always been more whimsical and goofy in my mind, yet Durge played into the dark fantasy part of the lore through their struggles with Bhaal. It’s not something often associated with DnD, yet this clearly proved intriguing for most, since the complex, layered approach to BG3 proved more successful than the goofy, pure fun representation of the world seen in the Dungeons & Dragons film, Honor Among Thieves.
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While the DnD film was fun, it presented everything that I found generic about DnD, but BG3 allowed for an exploration of complex characters and rich cultures, something that I like from fantasy worlds. It seems that general audiences agree, since the DnD film under performed while Baldur’s Gate 3 is continuing its success with Patch 8 more than a year on. It helped me take Faerûn seriously as a fantasy world alongside Tolkien’s Arda and Elder Scroll‘s Nirn (which has strangely deep lore that isn’t presented very well in Bethesda’s titles).
This eventually culminated in me joining a Curse of Strahd campaign, trying to find the same level of dark yet engrossing storytelling found in a Dark Urge playthrough. Although I have tempered my expectations and won’t suffer from the Matt Mercer effect again, Baldur’s Gate 3 has made me excited to not only get into the world of Faerûn, but play DnD again. It has done the TTRPG a world of favors in a way that not even the widely popular Critical Role has been able to, and it is a shame that Larian won’t be making a sequel.
Developed and published by Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an upcoming role-playing game set to release in August of 2023. Players will create a character to embark on a large-scale journey and can do so solo or cooperatively with a friend. Combat is a turn-based style this time around.
- Platform(s)
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PC, macOS, PS5, Xbox Series X
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- Developer(s)
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Larian Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Larian Studios
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
