One fight involved teleporting imp creatures who garrote my party members before carting them off to separate locations, preventing spellcasting and forcing everyone to fend for themselves. It's like each one is carefully crafted to make me want to scream at the Dungeon Master, "You bastard!" And I mean that in the best possible way. When it was time to put our clothes back on and roll for initiative in combat, Baldur's Gate 3 never failed to impress me with the care and thoughtfulness with which the encounter design was set up to torture me. ![]() The main villains, about whom I will spoil as little as possible, are just as richly written, with complex motives and their own individual brands of malice that inject new and greater threats into the last third of this epic-length adventure. There are plenty more where they came from, and they all have elaborate background stories and the capacity to significantly grow and change. I had flings with the dour cleric Shadowheart, the arrogant wizard Gale, and yes, the stoic Halsin, who can turn into a grizzly bear, among other creatures. The cheerful, eager tiefling Karlach, who has basically a demonic bomb instead of a heart, quickly became my best friend. Let's Partyįirst among this delightful cast are your companions, a motley crew of multilayered, interestingly flawed characters who both grow and sometimes regress over the course of the campaign. I assume many of the actors involved must be responsible for more than one of these bit parts, but I can't tell just by listening like I can in some areas of Skyrim. There are dozens of random gossipers on street corners who are just as enthusiastically and professionally portrayed as the main cast, and rarely sound too similar to each other. It's downright astounding how much voice acting Larian has crammed into these streets, and how good nearly all of it is. Almost every citizen you’ll encounter there has something to say about the unfolding events, and nosey exploration is consistently rewarded with new lore, new loot, and new quests. That’s exemplified by the city of Baldur's Gate itself, a hub full of life and adventure that came around to awe me anew, even though it took me 90 hours to reach the titular setting. Larian’s incredible attention to detail also extends to the area design and writing. There's not a bit of awkward lip-syncing to be found. ![]() ![]() The variety of high-fidelity, performance-captured, expressive faces everyone can make is shockingly good for a game of this type, with hundreds of characters rather than a small, core cast who can be directed like they're in a live-action production such as The Last of Us. I've rarely experienced so much joy just looking at the beautiful, flame-haired elven ranger I designed outside of Final Fantasy XIV. And I just love the art direction on every humanoid, enemy, and even the outfits. Each of the 12 classes have at least three specializations that play quite differently, with wizards and clerics getting even more to choose from. This character creator is one of the best I've seen outside of MMOs in a long time, featuring 29 different subraces with unique abilities and models (if you count all the different colors of dragonborn, at least). There's a huge amount of freedom in who you can be in this world, as well.
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