{"id":47487,"date":"2019-07-06T19:05:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T23:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=47487"},"modified":"2019-07-06T22:02:05","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T02:02:05","slug":"baldurs-gate-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=47487","title":{"rendered":"Baldur’s Gate III"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was expecting many things to happen in the year of Our Lord 2019, but the announcement of a third entry in the\u00a0Baldur’s Gate<\/em> series<\/a> was not one of them. After all, the last entry in the series, the\u00a0Throne of Bhaal<\/em> expansion, is now old enough to buy cigarettes in most states. There was said to be a third game in the series planned back in 2003Working title The Black Hound.<\/em><\/span>, but it was never made, and is now consigned to the history’s what-if pile alongside a third Black Isle FalloutAlso never made, working title Van Buren<\/em>.<\/span>.\u00a0Since then, Beamdog (developer of the BG and BG2 enhanced editions) has occasionally made noises about making a sequel, but their resources were never equal to the task.<\/p>\n

But lo, it has returned. A franchaise last seen in 2001. That was a whole different era. Having Baldur’s Gate\u00a0<\/em>III<\/em> announced at this late hour makes me feel unmoored from linear time. It’s like if Al Gore ran for president, or Phil Jackson suddenly announced he was getting Shaq and Kobe back together again. For RPG fans of a certain age, Baldur’s Gate<\/em> is one of the four gospels of the Infinity Engine era, along with the two\u00a0Fallouts<\/em> and\u00a0Planescape: Torment.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know this much: if I can't romance a Mind Flayer, the game will be an unmitigated failure.<\/div>
I know this much: if I can't romance a Mind Flayer, the game will be an unmitigated failure.<\/div><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What’s more, it’s to be made by Larian Studios, a developer with both a strong pedigree and a healthy reserve of audience goodwill. Given all that, I should be more excited than I am. That’s probably partly down to the lack of gameplay footage, or indeed any kind of information at allLarian is not even willing to say whether the game will be turn-based or real time with pause.<\/span>, but it’s also down to three questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Is the Baldur’s Gate <\/em>series\u00a0as good as everyone remembers it being?<\/li>\n
  2. Is Larian the right developer for this game?<\/li>\n
  3. Is today’s world as interested in\u00a0Baldur’s Gate\u00a0<\/em>III<\/em> as we think it is?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The fanboy in me answers all three of the questions with an enthusiastic “yes!”, but the cranky old goat in me craves longer and more detailed answers. My attempts to find those answers will be the subject of this upcoming Saturday series of posts. Of course, they can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be answered at all.<\/p>\n

    Art from the planned tabletop prequel campaign, called 'Descent into Avernus.'<\/div>
    Art from the planned tabletop prequel campaign, called 'Descent into Avernus.'<\/div><\/p>\n

    Answering each is also best accomplished by looking at certain games: the\u00a0Baldur’s Gate<\/em> series, the\u00a0Divinity: Original Sin<\/em> series, and the\u00a0Pillars of Eternity<\/em> series, which is closest thing to a “modern”\u00a0Baldur’s Gate<\/em> to be found. So thorough and detailed will be my analyses that at the end of the series, I will successfully predict BG3’s metacritic score to within a margin of error of three points.I may be overestimating my own powers of prognostication.<\/span><\/p>\n

    As luck would have it, I was planning to replay the series before the E3 announcement, and am currently polishing off the last bits of BG2 and getting my opinions on it in a row. Next week we’ll start with that. There’s also the possibility that in the course of writing this series new information about the upcoming game will come to light – if so, I can cover that as well. See you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was expecting many things to happen in the year of Our Lord 2019, but the announcement of a third entry in the\u00a0Baldur’s Gate series was not one of them. After all, the last entry in the series, the\u00a0Throne of Bhaal expansion, is now old enough to buy cigarettes in most states. There was said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47487"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47571,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47487\/revisions\/47571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}