'Baldur's Gate 3' is the game of the year, and game of the Moment
GLEN WELDON, HOST:
Baldur's Gate 3 was the most acclaimed video game of the last year. It recently took home the coveted Game of the Year award at the Game Awards. But what makes it so beloved? Well, in it, your character and companions you choose embark upon an epic quest that takes you through dangerous wilderness and dark dungeons, endless caverns and abandoned temples which turn out to be not all that abandoned. As you go, you're confronted with choices - many, many choices - that change the game you're playing in ways big and small. I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about Baldur's Gate 3 on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.
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WELDON: Joining me today is James Mastromarino. He is a producer for NPR's Here And Now and leads NPR's gaming coverage. Hey, James.
JAMES MASTROMARINO, BYLINE: Hi, Glen.
WELDON: Welcome. Welcome. Also joining us is one of our producers here at POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR, Liz Metzger. Hey, Liz.
LIZ METZGER, BYLINE: Hello, Glen.
WELDON: Baldur's Gate 3 basically maps the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons onto the mechanics of video games. You choose a race - human, elf, dwarf, etc. You choose a kind of character to be - a wizard, a fighter, a cleric, a rogue, etc. Those choices determine your abilities - how strong you are, how many spells you can learn, how good you are at picking locks or charming the pants off people you meet. As you progress, you gain experience and get more health, more magic, more skills. Yet there's always an element of chance that's determined by a roll of a here-virtual digital dice.
To be fair, there have been hundreds of video games that riff on Dungeons And Dragons and other role-playing games like this, including Baldur's Gate 1 and Baldur's Gate 2. What's different about Baldur's Gate 3 is that the technology has finally developed far enough for the game to faithfully reproduce the deep complexity of the D&D tabletop experience. And then there's the sheer scope of the thing. This world is wide, and a host of factors determine what parts of it you'll encounter. That's why any given playthrough can be a completely different experience than the one before. Baldur's Gate 3 is available for Windows and macOS, PS5, and Xbox X and S.
Liz, I'm going to kick off with you. First tell me what character you're playing as, and then tell me what you thought.
METZGER: So when I'm playing this game, I'm a big girl. Like, I am going to be throwing things. So you're going to see me as a Dragonborn. You're going to see me as a half-orc.
WELDON: Yup.
METZGER: And I love to be a paladin first and foremost because I love a little bit of both.
WELDON: There you go.
METZGER: This game really has bewitched me body and soul. I am just so immersed in this beautiful, beautiful world that really makes you feel like you are the master of your own destiny. And I know video games are all about being the master of your own destiny. You are a hero. You are these - you can be whatever you want to be in this group of four adventurers taking on the world, trying to figure out what's in your brain. And it's not good. And it's fun, and it's silly. I never really got into D&D because I feel like there's a really big hurdle for knowledge of what I felt like I needed to know to play with people who are good, and doing silly voices in front of my friends makes me very nervous.
WELDON: Sure.
METZGER: Playing this game really made it so simple. And it is a game that I'm playing by myself. It is a game I'm playing with my friends.
WELDON: Yeah.
METZGER: I can't believe I can do and defeat and lose in...
WELDON: Oh, yeah.
METZGER: ...So many different ways. And, boy, am I losing. I am save scumming. I am having so much fun. I cannot believe that this is a game that really rewards you playing it so many times. There is just so much to do. The world is so big. The actors are great. What a game, I tell you. What a year. We are so blessed.
WELDON: (Laughter) So that's a qualified pro I guess I would take. No. And just you mentioned save scumming. That is a practice that this game really encourages, which is just every time, like, a leaf blows in the distance, you're like, I have to save now.
METZGER: (Laughter).
WELDON: I have to save this game right now because something's happening.
METZGER: I have not perceived it.
WELDON: Something is going to happen.
METZGER: There is something bad about to happen (laughter).
WELDON: All right, James, same question to you. Who are you playing as, and what do you think?
MASTROMARINO: We have a lot in common, Liz, because I also played a Dragonborn paladin for my first run, though I just...
METZGER: Delicious.
MASTROMARINO: I know. I had lightning breath. I was romancing everyone in the party but ultimately fell for Shadowheart. What's funny though, is, as you said, like, the possibility space is so wide. And I just recently started as a bard and realized that I completely missed my true calling. Like, playing as a bard in this game basically allows you to, like, charm your way through almost any encounter. Like, you're not very good in combat, but nobody expects you to be.
WELDON: Sure.
MASTROMARINO: You can insult people. And they handcrafted, like, dozens of insults that are, like, unique and voiced to throw out in combat. You get unique dialogue options based not only on your class and your background, but your subclass.
WELDON: Exactly.
MASTROMARINO: I'm now playing as a character called The Dark Urge, and the whole...
WELDON: We'll talk about that.
MASTROMARINO: ...Gimmick of the Dark Urge is that you have, like, violent thoughts. It's a completely new experience, and even though I'm trying to still be a good guy, I'll get into some really awkward situations where...
METZGER: Oh, James.
MASTROMARINO: ...I have to hide a body from my party, for example. So there's just no end to what you can accomplish in this game. And it really does kind of emulate the ideal D&D campaigns I had in my head growing up reading all these D&D books because I was a super-nerd, of course.
WELDON: Look. I'm playing right now on my first playthrough as a high elf wizard who stays in the back and throws fireballs. His name is Gnate with a silent G, and he's a himbo. I made him super-buff. There's no reason...
METZGER: (Laughter).
WELDON: ...For a wizard to be super-buff, but I made him super-buff anyway and incredibly hot. Now, I don't want to brag, but the fact is I created this game. And Larian Studios, who are the, quote-unquote, "creators," will be hearing from my representatives.
METZGER: (Laughter).
WELDON: Now, granted, I created this game in 1980 when I was in seventh grade at a lunch table in Stetson Middle School in West Chester, Pa., when I said to my friends that I played D&D with, could we just get a computer to do all this...
MASTROMARINO: Yeah.
WELDON: ...So we could just see on the screen what the DM is describing and then the computer does all the math and keeps track of all the rules? And then we could just do the fun bits. This game is D&D - nothing but the fun bits, D&D without math. I mean, for some of us - say that soft that it's almost like praying - without rules lawyering, without having to deal with a fellow player who's spending the entire session sulking because the DM was mean to him or trying to kill everybody they see - now, there is actually - as you mentioned, there's a dark urge, which is kind of that. But I am looking forward to the dark urge playthrough later.
This is just the fun bits, as you mentioned, Liz, immersion in the world. Other games have done that, but as you also mentioned, your approach to any given encounter - I mean your literal approach, whether or not you sneak in or come from the high ground or whatever, is entirely up to you. And I've talked to you both about how I get stuck in video games all the time, and I immediately look up the solutions because I do not enjoy that sensation of frustration. This game has confounded my passion for cheating because whenever I go online to my usual haunts for how to deal with this or that, the game is so layered and multidimensional that I can't find the answer because it's like, oh, just have your druid cast a spell. And it's like, well, I don't have a druid in my party, IGN. And I'm a little sensitive about it. Thank you very much.
And it's fascinating because I am reading about quests and characters. I'm 50 hours in. I've never heard of these people or these encounters. And when it comes to dialogue, you guys mentioned this, but the writing is so on point. And as a gaming mechanic, the responses I can make offer a real range of choices because as you said, James, it's not just who you are but what you are, what race you are, what...
MASTROMARINO: Yeah.
WELDON: ...Your subclass is. Not to dump on Starfield again, but I felt like playing that game - in every dialogue, I could respond as a complete evil D-bag edgelord or a simpering, goody two-shoes sub. And there was nothing in between. Here, depending on who you are, you have you have access to six or seven possible responses that will completely alter the game. A dialogue can shut down or open up an entire questline, send you down a different path. Now, I am playing this on my own. I want you guys to talk to me about the multiplayer experience. Liz, how's that work exactly? Can you play with somebody on the same couch, or does it have to be somebody far away?
METZGER: So it's all online, which is so lovely. I think I love a game that can stand by itself, but the idea of, like, finding joy and creating it together is something that's just so fun that - it feels sometimes when you're playing multiplayer games, you're like, we're just going to do a shooting game. We're just - I guess you could do Minecraft. But, again, like, this is a game that's so gorgeous and so for exploration. So I am, like, able to tell my friends - not just make Astarion obviously unlock everything and be like, OK, well, like, you need to not stand there. You need to back up right now. There's so much fun I have found in my friendships playing this game because it is like a D&D campaign, and some of us are a little farther than others. You're like, do not go upstairs. Last Light Inn - do not go upstairs.
WELDON: Yeah.
METZGER: I think it's a really great and seamless game. Sure, it was a little clunky in the beginning days, but, I mean, what game isn't? We're spoiled to even have this game at all.
WELDON: Right.
METZGER: It is just excellent for both friends and not.
WELDON: Yeah.
METZGER: Also, romancing other characters in front of your friends can be fun. It can also be so silly and embarrassing. But I'm really enjoying that. It's such a joy.
WELDON: James, are you doing the multiplayer?
MASTROMARINO: Oh, absolutely. And there actually is couch co-op. You can sit down with two controllers and play on the same screen.
WELDON: You can.
MASTROMARINO: But...
METZGER: Oh.
MASTROMARINO: I've also been playing online because my wife saw me dumping dozens of hours into this game and wanted to capture some of our time together back. And so she got it, and we've been playing together. We ran through one major playthrough, and now we've started another...
WELDON: Good lord.
MASTROMARINO: ...At my insistence. And we're having a great time back at it again. And it enables you to do hilarious things. Like, you can direct part of your party to go and - for example, my wife was also playing a rogue - steal from a temple that I was donating to to get blessings so that we could do it without losing any of our actual stuff. So there are things about the game that a real DM might, like, scratch their chin about...
WELDON: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: ...But the game's systems just allow you to roll with. And because of that, it encourages you to kind of fill in the gaps narratively in your own head. So, like, I was a very permissive paladin who was totally willing and down for nearly anything, so long as it didn't, like, cross over some core tenets, I suppose. Anyway, this game is really about experiencing all of these characters and stories just teeming in this universe to explore. It's funny that you mentioned Starfield. That is a game that touted its hundreds of explorable planets.
WELDON: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: Baldur's Gate 3 is much more constrained. It's really just about a city and the wilderness around it, and yet its characters are so meaningful that they contain multitudes. And when you multiply that by the online community that celebrated the game and by the friends you can actually share it with, it just gets all that much better.
WELDON: Yeah. Now, a big part of this game - again, not for me, but for others, I gather - is romancing your fellow characters, the members of your party. For me, it's been a very high school experience because there are characters who have made overtures that I have no interest in, and the ones I am crushing on have no time for me at all. I have basically thrown myself at this hot druid, and he has flirted back, but I can't close that sale. Talk to me about the romance aspect of this.
METZGER: Well, Halsin is notoriously difficult, Glen. I have experience.
WELDON: Halsin is a druid.
METZGER: He is a druid. He is also difficult to romance. You have to do so much work for this. The romance functionality of this game is also what is really fun to see online as people talk about all these characters that they're romancing and doing well or not so well with. Personally, I love Shadowheart, but my heart belongs to Karlach. I said, I'm a big girl. I love a big girl. I think she's so cool. Her heart's - she's flaming. She's too hot to touch. You can't even love her, though she wants to love you. I think she has a really cool storyline.
WELDON: Yeah.
METZGER: Honestly, all these characters have such cool storylines. They all have such crazy, cool side quests. It's wild that you feel so much closure and also, like, there's so much to learn about them that is just built in to your road of who you are as a character, but who you are as a party.
WELDON: James are you - how's your love life?
MASTROMARINO: (Laughter) So I was playing this with my wife, so we did have that experience of romancing people...
WELDON: Cheating.
MASTROMARINO: ...Side by side, different people. I fell for Shadowheart with my first playthrough. Now, as a bard, I think I'm going to go for Lae'zel, who comes off very hostile in the beginning of the game and then comes on to you really quick if you catch her eye. Lead writer Adam Smith has talked about how they wanted to give these companions a feeling of more agency, that they weren't just these slot machines that you pull...
METZGER: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: ...Enough times until they reward you with sex or a relationship. Instead, they come to you, and often, they come to you really hot and heavy. That was my experience. I'm sorry, Glen, but I was the popular kid somehow...
WELDON: OK.
MASTROMARINO: ...In my party.
WELDON: Good to know.
MASTROMARINO: I had to turn down just about everyone to stick it out with Shadowheart.
WELDON: Should we do some service journalism? Should we give some people some basic advice for beginners? I mean, it is a truth universally acknowledged that you want a mix in your party. You want a spellcaster who can do damage from a distance. You want a healer. You want what's called a tank, someone who can deal and take out a lot of damage. You probably also want a rogue because there are parts of this game which become Lockpicking: The Game. And without a rogue in your party, you're going to be missing a lot of stuff. Do you have any other advice?
METZGER: I'm doing a playthrough where we're, like, big and bold. When we're going to get into the range area, we're going to be in big trouble. So I think, like, you really just need a healer.
WELDON: Yeah.
METZGER: You can have someone who can do some stealth, but really, you need a healer if you're going to be big and bad. The big thing, also, is switch out your party members often because you get approval rating with them. The whole thing is if you want to romance someone but, like, you don't want Wyll in your party but you want to romance him, you need to make sure you play him because that will make it easier later.
WELDON: Oh, interesting. I haven't been switching out my characters 'cause I got this good, mixed party, and so that's maybe also affecting my love life. James, what do you - have any advice?
MASTROMARINO: This is one of my objections with their design, actually...
METZGER: Woah.
MASTROMARINO: ...Because the original Baldur's Gate games had a party of six.
WELDON: Oh.
MASTROMARINO: So they've turned it down to a party of four because they think that's an easier thing to balance. It also is much more like what most D&D parties are like. Think about trying to get five people into a room to play D&D - four players...
WELDON: Yeah. There's that.
MASTROMARINO: ...And one DM. Like, that, itself, is kind of a big party. But it does mean that you miss out on all the banter that happens between characters. Characters are constantly reacting to what's going on. They're sniping at each other. They start to like each other a little bit more. It's fascinating to see how they develop between each other, not just with you.
WELDON: Right.
MASTROMARINO: And you miss that if you aren't constantly cycling through them. So I cheated on PC. This is the other advantage. It's very easy to mod it, so I just removed the party limit. So now we are getting nonstop dialogue and nonstop character moments, which is really what I'm playing the game for.
WELDON: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: And then some other hints, so you do need a good party composition. That's why Astarion is so popular. He's the default rogue. Apart from just his incredible witticisms is that if you don't have someone to stop you from trundling into, like, a boulder fall trap...
WELDON: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: ...You're just dead. Nine...
WELDON: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: ...Times out of 10. Like, you can heal and tank your way out of that, but I would not recommend it, especially if you're going somewhere scary like the Underdark, where, for a while, I was just getting exploded and poisoned left and right. But if you have somebody like Shadowheart, any cleric that can cast a spell called Spirit Guardians is probably going to do amazing work for you. And just have fun. Experiment.
METZGER: Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: If you need to turn down the difficulty setting, then absolutely do so. There's just so much range of experiences that you can get out of this thing, and that's why more and more people who I've never heard interested in games or in D&D are turning on to this...
WELDON: Right.
MASTROMARINO: ...Because it really opens your mind to a whole world that you may not have even realized you wanted.
METZGER: Yeah.
WELDON: All right. We've been singing this game's praises - anything that didn't hit for you, anything that didn't quite work, any caveats?
MASTROMARINO: There aren't, perhaps, enough ways to relate to characters beyond going to bed with them. Like, you'll get to befriend many of them, but often, a way to, like, actually progress your story with them will be, like, sexual or romantic. If you're asexual and you want to just, like, have an asexual but really tight bond with someone, that might not be what the game is, like, written for you to do, for example. Even though I was really into Shadowheart for, like, two-thirds of the game, by the last third, there wasn't really much to do. Like anything, I mean, there's room for improvement, and I can't wait to see how Larian continues to improve their game and how people coming after take the lessons from this game.
METZGER: My only issue is I'm so tired of being in the blighted village. I'm so tired sometimes of having to go through every single little crate, and then I'm like, oh, look - some lockpicking stuff. Oh, look - a rotten tomato.
WELDON: A rotten tomato. Yeah.
METZGER: So that's my only little - like, my little thing is, you know, being a bit of a thief myself, it is a slow slog. But you know what? It's in pursuit of a greater good.
WELDON: One thing this game did for me that I did not expect it to do was it kind of put a new, fresh gloss on D&D itself...
METZGER: Yeah.
WELDON: ...For me because, like, you know, I - sure - you - Magic Missile, it's a first-level spell, and it's really boring and like...
METZGER: Yeah.
WELDON: ...It's got a silly name...
METZGER: Oh, yeah.
WELDON: ...And I never really thought it could do anything. Holy crap. That's a very powerful spell. There's all kinds of stuff like that, like, spells that I've always thought, like, that's a little silly. This game has...
METZGER: Yeah.
WELDON: ...Figured out how to make them incredibly useful and incredibly enlightening and incredibly fun. Incredibly fun is kind of the take home I think you're getting from this conversation. We want to know what you think about Baldur's Gate 3. Find us on facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. James Mastromarino, Liz Metzger, thank you so much for being here.
MASTROMARINO: Thank you, Glen.
METZGER: Thank you, Glen.
WELDON: This episode was produced by Hafsa Fathima and Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.
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