Baldur’s Gate 3‘s party is drawn together through the fickle bands of fate. All are infested with mind flayer tadpoles, which will turn them into the eldritch brain eaters eventually. Still, each has a big ego, their own agenda and secrets, and many of them are brash and mean. Throughout the first act, BG3’s party members will start to kill each other. Knives at the throat, a dance of blood, the kind of intensity that can blossom into hardened, fierce love. But these moments are all too few. By game’s end, the entire party can gather for a feast, toasting each other, celebrating success, with no one left behind. In its move from early access to release, and with each subsequent update, Baldur’s Gate 3 lost more of its bite.
The RPG‘s premise is rife with drama – each of your party members in Baldur’s Gate 3 is subjugated in some way. Shadowheart is a devotee of the fickle goddess of darkness Shar. Wyll is a hero and adventurer, but subject to his devilish patron. Gale has a hunger for magic, which, unless sated, will kill him and everyone else. Astarion is the thrall of a vampire lord back in Baldur’s Gate. Karlach’s heart is a ticking time bomb, a present from her devil overlords. Each is then further subjugated by the tadpoles themselves. The possibility of transforming into a mind flayer makes each of them desperate. They need each other, even during conflict. Without help, all of them may die or else succumb to someone else’s control.
At first, that necessity heightens the game’s dramatic conflict rather than softens it. Shadowheart and Lae’zel draw blades over a mysterious artifact which protects the party from transformation. Wyll believes Karlach to be a devil soldier rather than a tiefling conscript. Furthermore, if the player character massacres refugees or lays waste to safe havens, some party members take umbrage with that. Choices that can alienate party members are found throughout the game. Still, what’s missing from BG3 is a strong sense of internal tensions, of individual party members wanting different things to the point where those emotions explode into consequences.
It’s most apparent in act one because all of the characters are new to each other and have the frictions of unfamiliar relationships. By act two, goals become more aligned. Some characters can give up their problematic alignments and the group can become more unified. By act three, the party is fully allied and also acts alone. Each character is more or less siloed off into their own quest.
Some, like Lae’zel and Gale, remain relevant in the main plot to the very end. Astarion, Shadowheart, and particularly Wyll and Karlach, are less fortunate. This segmentation means that opportunities for the party to talk to each other are scarce. Reactions to each other’s quests are reserved for single lines of dialogue, far from the realm where disagreement (or affirmation for that matter) would have meaning.
This is not to say that BG3 is free of tough choices. By the game’s end, one of the party must become a mind flayer (or else let the powerful Emperor have his way). This is a sheer, unbendable choice, with no easy way out. Someone must turn themselves into a creature hostile to most life, and will bear the burden of that until they die. Karlach will volunteer to become one The player character is always at the center of the story, a fact that has only become more true as the game has gone on. But again, this is a choice individual players must make for themselves and not one NPCs can force on them.
It is true that early access (and the subsequent bevy of updates) turned BG3 into an even-more-pleasurable tactics game. Larian enlivens Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition’s sometimes stodgy design, Act 2 in particular is filled with intriguing encounters, and updates added more ways to play with difficulty, even more strenuous hard modes.
It’s not as elegant as the studio’s previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2, but it remains a thrilling tactics game for the ages. However, the same things that sharpen BG3’s tactics, dilute its drama. Updates expand the fan-fictiony epilogue, make party members less mean to Astarion, and let players recruit the formerly evil-restricted Minthara. The prickliness found in early access has been sanded down to nothing. Encapsulated in that final decision, Baldur’s Gate 3, over its creation, has become nicer, tidier.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has an edge of dark fantasy, particularly if you play as the murderous Dark Urge, but the game’s end it turns prim and cosy. If you play your cards right, everyone can be happy (except maybe the Emperor). Of course, Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t have to be a blistering tale of interpersonal conflict and the party can come together in the end. But even Lord of the Rings, novels about a loving unity between various peoples, about the small and foolish proving their mettle against the mighty and wise, has Boromir.
Though noble, though redeemed, he sets forth on an act of callous, selfish cruelty, which defines him even in death. He is one of the trilogy’s most compelling characters because – not in spite of – this fact. Even kind, selfless Frodo takes the ring for himself by the end. He is saved from that fate only by the cruelty of another wretched creature. Perhaps it is unfair to compare a CRPG to one of the most beloved works of fantasy literature, but the comparison serves to indicate that stories such as these can have this interpersonal, uncomfortable friction and still be empowering, even joyful.
And it’s true that characters in BG3 can be selfish and cruel. Astarion can ascend to immortality, murdering thousands of vampire thralls like him in the process. Shadowheart can murder the Nightsong, giving her prestige and rank within Shar’s cult, and rendering her cold and heartless forever. But these things are explicitly telegraphed as evil and cruel, not only to Astarion’s and Shadowheart’s victims, but to themselves, a submission to the control and abuse both have suffered. It is rare that a character in Baldur’s Gate 3 can make an unwise choice without your approval or even for good reasons.
We all know how much other people can change us. But we also know how little of an effect our actions can have, how unmovable and stubborn other people can be. That is as human, as agential, as anything else. Let the player change other people, sure, but let them change the player, too – let them be stubborn and mean, and let them sometimes make choices the player can’t understand. None of that makes a player less meaningful of an agent; it just makes them a more human one. Games like Pathologic 2, Pentiment, and Disco Elysium prove that this is possible. Baldur’s Gate 3 is all-the-more frustrating for how close it gets and how far away it falls.