As mainstream RPGs were drifting too far from their roots, a resurgence of more traditional types emerged with modern twists. It could easily be argued we weren’t getting anything like the kind of RPG that made the early days so exciting. Storytelling had increasingly become the focus at the expense of agency, and while the term RPG can mean a lot of things these days, the whole point is in that name, it’s about role-playing.
Larian Studios, a development team based in Belgium, had long championed the RPG genre’s heritage, even though it began with a canceled game adaptation of the German tabletop RPG The Dark Eye. The studio soon gave birth to its own Divinity series. For a decade-plus, Larian worked on PC and Xbox Divinity games, mainly working in the action RPG space. But in 2014, it released its breakout game, the CRPG-infused Divinity: Original Sin, and followed that up with a sequel in 2017. These games were highly revered and formed part of the 2010s resurgence in classical-style RPGs, such as Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity.
It laid the groundwork for Larian’s biggest project yet. The studio would get the keys to Baldur’s Gate, the Dungeons & Dragons game series set in the Forgotten Realms. BioWare had been the developer behind the first two entries and their expansions in 1998 and 2000, respectively, and while there were expansions, spinoffs, and enhanced editions of the series over the next two decades, culminating in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, a true sequel to Baldur’s Gate II had not materialized in nearly twenty years.
Larian Studios used its experience with Divinity: Original Sin as an outline for developing Baldur’s Gate 3, but it drew greater inspiration from the latter series’ own heritage as a tabletop game. Dungeons & Dragons was a massively popular phenomenon in the 1980s and had spawned an empire that naturally led to video games. However, as with the RPG genre itself, time had diluted the connection to this past, and games based on D&D tended to behave less and less like their tabletop counterpart.
However, in the 2010s, Dungeons & Dragons re-entered the public eye as a part of a broader revival of tabletop games. When would be a better time for D&D to return to its roots in video game form?
Baldur’s Gate 3: Bringing Classic RPG Action to the Table
In Baldur’s Gate 3, the player character begins the game trapped on a Mind Flayer ship and infected with a parasite that will eventually turn them into a Mind Flayer. On their journey, they encounter others in the same predicament and, together, seek a way to cure themselves.
This is a neat setup with a clear focus point, but in true tabletop fashion, Bladur’s Gate 3’s adventure can take you into all sorts of sidepaths and situations that weren’t in the original plan. Baldur’s Gate 3’s embraced tabletop in many ways, but the most obvious and prominent way it did this was in its use of the dice roll.
The dice roll has long been the link between player choice and a world beyond the player. Scripted stories are great, and you can bring a lot of emotion, drama, terror, and more from that, but the uncertainty of a dice roll can turn even a mundane moment into something magical.
To maximize the impact of choice and chance in Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian turned the previously real-time series into a turn-based one. It slowed things down just enough to give players the full weight of their choices and the consequences of every dice roll outcome, bad or good. Tied to the game of chance in a dice roll is the freedom Baldur’s Gate 3 offers. No character is protected by plot armor, not even your party. This means curiosity rewards players; even if the outcome is terrible, it doesn’t have to be the end of your story. In fact, it could just be a new beginning.
Even this only scratches the surface of the tabletop experience Baldur’s Gate 3 utilizes. The narrator comments on most of what occurs, describing specific interactions in detail, much like a Dungeon Master would, providing players with the context to help make their choices.
But it wouldn’t be apeing a tabletop experience if you couldn’t bring a friend into the fray. Co-op allows you to bounce off each other’s decisions and throw extra wrinkles into an already unpredictable journey. All these things combined make Baldur’s Gate 3 a bridge between physical and digital role-playing, as well as being a reminder of the joy of discovery and wonder the RPG genre can bring.
Check out our RPG Hall of Fame articles on Undertale, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy VII, and Demon’s Souls.
