Baldur's Gate 3
Setting new standards.
MOVIES
- The plan was to watch Dune: Part Two this weekend, but testing positive for Covid and feeling terrible as a may have ruined those plans for a week.
- Even if a trip to the cinema doesn't work out, there are plenty of other movies I can watch while resting at home, like Poor Things maybe...
GAMES
- As my post for the best of 2023 might have given away, I like Baldur's Gate 3 a lot and even just saying 'a lot' is a severe underestimation of just how much I like it
- It's very rare that games come along to set new standards, usually taking what is already established as 'the best' and taking things a step further.
- With this game, Larian Studios didn't just take things a step further, they took things so much further forward that this game is going to cast one hell of a shadow over all role-playing games for years to come.
- I don't want to repeat that post linked above, but the sheer volume of options the game gives you to interact with not just its gameplay, but also its narrative is genuinely staggering.
- I'm honestly not sure that there's going to be a game of this size that feels so reactive to player choice again for at least a decade, with only Larian themselves looking like contenders to do so.
- I had to force myself to uninstall the damn thing so I could move on to other games in my (very, very) large backlog, because otherwise I know I'd just keep playing Baldur's Gate 3 over and over again.
- Seriously, I've put over two hundred hours into this game and I am fully aware that there are still vast amounts of the game, especially interactions between characters, that I haven't seen yet.
- For that to be the case in such a narrative heavy game is mind-blowing to think about, and a credit to just how much work Larian put into making the damn thing.
- Every conversation has a cinematic camera to make every interaction feel important, even if it's just a single line being delivered by an entirely unimportant NPC who plays no part at all in any story!
- The care and detail that has into every aspect of this game is medium-defining in some respects, although I hope other developers don't break themselves trying to match this game.
- Baldur's Gate 3 looks great; the score is incredible; the motion capture and performances are phenomenal, as is the material the actors have to work with; and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- Can it be overwhelming? Absolutely, especially at the very start of the game.
- Fortunately, everything has tooltips to tell you what it does, and the combat is turn-based so you can feel free to take as long as you like before making any action at all.
- The best thing though, is how much you can feel free to experiment with your actions, items and even the environment itself, and the game will most likely let you do whatever you're thinking of.
- Is it perfect? No, there are little quibbles that will crop up over the course of the gam such as how bloated and difficult your inventory can become to manage, but little more than nit-picks for me.
- It would be frustrating sometimes to be in a battle that would've been easier with certain other companions, but that's not really a fault of the game.
- If anything, the most frustrating - and also most compelling - part of the game is that you simply can't see all of it in one go and you're always left wondering how events might've unfolded by taking a different option.
- And the developers keep adding new stuff to the game too, making it even easier to tailor things to how you want to play, and that's not even getting into how many mods already exist for it too.
- One last note is that this is very much a game for adults when you consider how much violence, blood, gore, swearing, nudity and explicit sex scenes are in the game
- And just to point out that all those things listed feel proper for the tone of the game, and feeling like they belong in the world and story that's being told, rather than being included for shock factor.
- Baldur's Gate 3 is a staggering achievement in gaming and the fact that I only have nit-picks from literally hundreds of hours of insanely reactive gameplay and story-telling is just ludicrous. [10/10]
TV
- No new TV shows started yet, but I will be picking up the Star Wars stuff again soon, going back to finish Clone Wars first before heading on from there all the way up to the soon-to-be-released Acolyte, which will almost certainly be fully out by the time I get to it!
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