Larian Studios attended PAX East today, and finally gave audiences a first good look inside the gameplay– and plot– of the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3. Playing through the beginning of the game, Larian's big gameplay reveal included a positively wild opening cinematic, a primer on character origin stories, many examples of combat and exploration mechanics, and a brief glance at the beautiful environments of Baldur's Gate 3.
Fans got a hint of all that earlier today when a series of screenshots from the Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay demo was leaked online, but Larian's actual presentation goes much more in-depth. While there's over an hour of content for viewers to digest, here's an easy overview of everything the PAX East presentation revealed to audiences.
Plenty of fans are looking to see what kind of game Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be, and whether it'll take after the original Baldur's Gate saga or Larian's previous and highly successful Divinity: Original Sin 2; judging by the gameplay demo, the answer is "both." Like Divinity, combat is entirely turn-based, meaning Baldur's Gate's old real-time with pauses style of combat has officially been retired, and even though the default camera angle in-game is isometric, like most CRPGs, there's an alternative third-person angle for those who want it. In a change from the old Baldur's Gate games, thanks to the huge improvements in technology since 1998, players can now converse with NPCs up close and take advantage of the game's stellar graphics.
The other fascinating thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is how much it strives to play like an actual game of Dungeons & Dragons; not only is combat turn-based, but there's a DC, or "difficulty class," for everything. So, even if a character's persuasion skill is high, the game AI still rolls for an attempt, and if there's a natural 1...then it really doesn't matter how high the character's skill is. That's part of the excitement in D&D, and seeing it translate into a CRPG based on the game should be interesting.
In addition to DCs, Baldur's Gate 3 also has all the races, spells, and general mechanics of D&D– though according to Larian, not everything will be immediately available in the game's early access release. Many things will be added as early access goes on and upon the game's full release, including bonus playable races, more party members, and more NPCs.
Larian's gameplay reveal showed off a very promising introduction to Baldur's Gate 3, and because of the sizeable time-skip between the past games, it looks like something that both super-fans of the old saga and newcomers alike can easily get into. Time will tell how Larian builds off of this impressive start.
Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to PC and Stadia, scheduled for an early access release in 2020.