Baldur’s Gate 3, released by Larian Studios in August of 2023 is a Dungeons and Dragons based strategic role-playing game, with an open world and ‘go at your own pace’ kind of missions.
Players start on a Nautiloid ship in the sky where an octopus-like creature is bringing something that looks like a parasitic leech up to you and having it burrow in your eye. Next thing you know, you are brought to the character creation screen. You are given the option to play as a custom character (create your own backstory for your character and play as them!) or the origin characters such as: Astarion, Karlach, Shadowheart and The Dark Urge. In this section if you pick the custom character, you will be able to pick your own race and class; depending on what you choose it will give you different dialogue options later on.
After you proceed with your character and the guardian you make them, you will be shown back on the ship coming out of the unlatched pod you were put in. After that cut scene you are able to make your way throughout the ship, finding two companions there and even more secrets, and that is just the prologue! There is much more to encounter; a single play-through can take over 100 hours!
That amount of time might scare you off, but trust me when I say there is enough content to keep you entertained throughout the entire play-through. There are multiple ways to go through the main quest and paths you can take that can lead to many different endings and funny lines from Astarion (and other characters) such as, “You couldn’t wait 10 seconds before being an absolute freak?” It’s a very story-rich game jam packed with twists along the way, Baldur’s Gate 3 is my favorite game of all time and I cannot recommend it enough for everyone into Dungeons and Dragons (or not) to play!
