The nautiloid is a soaring ravenous monstrosity, a living eldritch aircraft and prison ship capturing hapless victims through its padded tentacles. Early Access release of Act 1.
Divinity’s magic-muting Source collars hardly compare to the illithid tadpole forcibly inserted through a hero’s eye in the intro. From this point forward, that tiny insectile horror serves as Baldur’s Gate 3’s unreliable narrator and Act 1 plot contrivance, connecting the player to other tadpole victims via psychic link. The number one priority is to get rid of the wretched thing as soon as possible and avoid a painful transformation into a mind flayer, heightened telepathic opportunities notwithstanding.
As a fully turn-based game eschewing BioWare’s formative real-time-with-pause predecessors, Baldur’s Gate 3’s combat greatly differs from its namesakes and Larian’s RPGs before it. The D&D 5e rules receive a meticulous reconstruction, introducing bonus actions, cantrips, spell slots, and movement systems unhindered by the action point economy found in Divinity. Playing an archer? Find solid cover, run into line of sight to let an arrow loose, then scramble behind cover again. Need to get up close with a distant foe? Use up a bonus action and activate the dash ability to cover more ground, sprinting into their personal space. Enemy spellcaster sticking to their high perch? Take a flying leap and shove them off their precious ledge into the waiting arms of frontline tanks.
Divinity’s complex systems are ittedly tempered by this adapted D&D ruleset, meaning that there’s reduced potential for wacky environmental chaos in the Forgotten Realms; for instance, no more triggering poison clouds into massive explosions with a carelessly thrown candle. Maybe this is because Baldur’s Gate 3’s systems feature a denser vocabulary of spells and actions up front, yet combat seems more straightforward in practice. This is likely to disappoint some ardent Larian Studios fans - and bear in mind that elemental interactions are still a factor, they've just been dialed down a bit - but creative throwing opportunities can still prompt fun shenanigans, and give the Mage Hand spell plenty of work to do.
Overall, though, Baldur's Gate 3 fights effectively shave down those hours-long especially brilliant in multiplayer, and much more engaging than staring at the screen and waiting as friends negotiate their individual turns one by one.
The main Baldur’s Gate 3 motivation is streamlining D&D’s formative systems while keeping a considerable level of depth intact where available. In that respect, this first chapter features a compelling assortment of side quests, diversions, and secrets which require multiple playthroughs to fully explore. In keeping with Larian’s catalog, it also features a twisted, morally murky, and well crafted fantasy drama, though it should be noted that its early hours are also much darker in tone than those of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Character creation works similarly to that game, though the prebuilt story heroes are currently dimmed out as starter characters in the EA release. Still, players have a slew of classes, races, subraces, origins, colorizations, and skill-swaps to shape new characters (which means players should actually get creative).
There are indeed bugs and glitches, though outright game crashes were few and far between in our testing. Some reported bugs may relate to system specs, and Baldur’s Gate 3 does seem to prefer a powerful PC rig for ideal performance. Certain bells and whistles whiff the landing - a dragon’s fiery breath filling the nautiloid’s helm looks acceptable in a cutscene, but also seems like placeholder for better special effects to be inserted later on - and multiplayer exacerbates visual bugs, like characters disappearing during cutscenes or camera angles obscured by NPCs. This is not an early access product presenting a single perfectly polished section of the full game to come, and it’s understandable that some eager fans are patiently sitting out the game’s initial months. Act 1 purportedly contains 20 hours of narrative to play through, and there’s no reason that anyone enraptured with Larian’s work won’t be organizing a few different saves or restarts of the available content; try and track down one Divinity fan who’s only experienced a single playthrough or experimental attempt at the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 pulls out all the stops in its cinematic interludes and character moments. These aspects continue to impress, full of ridiculous action set pieces and Hollywood theatrics, which feel like nice rewards for reaching certain junctures in the tale. Instead of being restricted to Divinity’s top-shelf voice acting paired with static character portraits, we now have full-on mocap with vibrant facial expressions alongside that best-in-class VO work, adding oomph to every side quest and distraction, and it’s a pleasure to be behold.
For some, the following statement may be heresy, but the most noticeable disappointment in Baldur’s Gate 3 is the lack of controller . Yes, CRPGs and controllers have not historically mixed well, but Larian itself set the standard with phenomenal controller integration in Divinity: Original Sin 2’s later life. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3’s zoomed-in camera is the perfect fit for some comfortable couch play with a controller in hand, and it’s a shame that it wasn’t ready in time for this EA launch on PC...especially when Stadia subscribers do have the option.
Some may cynically describe Baldur’s Gate 3 as a higher-budget Divinity with a D&D wrapper. While there’s no RTWP mechanic, Larian’s systemic refinements mostly work for the better, especially when using simultaneous turns in multiplayer. The three-dimensionality of the maps, snappier combat flow, phenomenal performances, and gorgeous graphics all work in tandem to present the type of refined experience for which the studio is known. Yes, maybe full price for what amounts to 1/5th of the complete Baldur’s Gate 3 experience seems too much to ask, but the quality and content on offer should prove hard for most fans to resist.
Baldur's Gate 3 is currently in Early Access on PC, Mac OS, and Google Stadia. A digital PC code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this preview.
