Baldur’s Gate III (PC, £49.99)
Verdict: Game of the Year (so far)
In this land of dungeons and dragons, it’s the squirrels that impress me the most. I’m leading my group of oddball adventurers – a grumpy cleric, a sulking vampire, a flamboyant wizard, and a confrontational feline gremlin thing – through a druid grove when I notice one of the bush-tailed rodents on the ground.
My mouse pointer hovers over it for a second, then I realize it’s possible to communicate with the thing. like i do
The view is enlarged; the squirrel fixes me with his adorable eyes; and then… it pounces on one of my feet, which it then scratches and bites. ow!
At this point I have a choice: try to kick the damn thing, or watch it for a while longer, or just walk away. I choose the middle one. There are other options.
After a little more clicking and a few on-screen dice rolls to check if my character is up to the task of communicating with squirrels, the creature and I reach a respectful kind of relaxation. time to move on.
Game of the Year: Squirrels aren’t everything Baldur’s Gate III has to offer – they’re just a tiny, furry part of a huge, intricate and complicated game
Where? Across the path, a bard is doing something close to singing with a pair of squirrels at her feet. This time I’m a little more cautious as my foot is still burning and decide to click again. The squirrels don’t attack. Instead, they cover their ears to protect themselves from the bard’s shouting. Ha!
Squirrels aren’t everything Baldur’s Gate III has to offer – they’re just a tiny, furry part of a huge, intricate and complicated game – but in a way, the squirrels encapsulate what makes the whole experience so great. And believe me, this game is really great; certainly one of the standout releases in what has been a standout year for the medium and perhaps one of the best I’ve ever played.
Because the squirrels show how much effort was put into everything. There is hardly anything that cannot be clicked on, that does not reveal a secret, that does not surprise and delight. And that’s over dozens of hours of narration and gameplay.
This is quite literally a monumental achievement from the creators of Baldur’s Gate III, Belgian developers Larian Studios. And it’s attracting a corresponding crowd: Steam, the largest PC gaming platform, saw a peak earlier this week of almost 815,000 people enjoying their own playthroughs at the same time – one of the highest totals ever recorded.
In a way, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Although the official, proper release of Baldur’s Gate III happened last week, it’s been out for much longer – almost three years longer, in fact, in a playable but unfinished form known as “Early Access”.
Many thousands of players have tried this ever-improving version, no doubt inspired by the fact that Larian had previously created two of the best fantasy RPGs of the past decade, Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel. They probably knew from the start it was going to be great.
I say “probably” because I didn’t join those Early Access players. I paid for access, I even downloaded Baldur’s Gate III onto my computer, but I really couldn’t bring myself to play it in any version other than the final version. I waited until I had to review it for the paper for the first time last week.
The reason for this faint-hearted behavior is that Baldur’s Gates I and II, which came out back in 1998 and 2000 (and weren’t made by Larian, by the way), were two of my favorite games growing up. The nerdy teenager loved spending time in their fantasy setting, a place called Forgotten Realms originally created for Dungeons & Dragons tabletop sessions.
And so the success of Baldur’s Gate III – artistically and commercially – came as a surprise to me. Not only did I refuse to follow real-time development, I felt there could only be so much suspense for a belated sequel to some dusty turn-of-the-millennium classics. Shows what I know.
However, now that I’ve completed the game, I’m much better informed. And I can also see how skillfully Larian has managed to combine the expectations of old Baldurians like me with the expectations of modern players like me.
Basically, Baldur’s Gate III is much the same as its predecessors: you still need to gather a party of adventurers, send them through a sort of bird’s-eye view landscape, and occasionally engage goblins, bandits, and owlbears in combat. There is still a lot to read, not least the words of many of the characters you talk to.
And you must still uncover a doomsday conspiracy, this time involving the insidious menace of the mind-interfering Mind Flayers, who also happen to have infected you with one of their larvae.
Fun: Baldur’s Gate III is pretty much the same as its predecessors: you still need to gather a party of adventurers, send them through a sort of bird’s-eye view landscape, and occasionally engage goblins, bandits, and owlbears in combat
But my goodness, the ambition of the thing! Instead of the cleverly drawn 2D landscapes of old, the world of Baldur’s Gate is now a more or less continuous 3D space. You can literally walk over hills, over valleys, through bush and all that – plus zoom in and out.
Virtually every building contains secret levers that open hidden passageways that lead you to new, beautifully lit areas to explore and conquer. It’s exactly what I dreamed of adventures as a young nerd.
And the fight has also increased in scope. Perhaps the most controversial change, at least among die-hard followers, is the replacement of the original games’ then-innovative combat system – where you could pause the process, issue orders to your band of misfits, and then watch as the sword swings, the flamethrowing action being carried out by new one – with a more methodical, turn-based system that’s closer to XCOM games, for example.
but i love it Precisely because it is more methodical, the new version adds an extra layer of tactical intricacy to every fight. You really need to think about the placement of your little digital friends and how their strengths and weaknesses overlap each other.
In fact, I can’t wait to try Baldur Gate III’s cooperative multiplayer with real friends. So far I’ve only been a single player – that is me –.
Plus, if you don’t like it, you have options – lots of them. As I said before, 2023 will be a vintage year for gaming, but perhaps RPGs in particular. We already had the mechanically dense masterpiece The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom. In just a few weeks, on September 6th, Starfield, the new game from the creators of Skyrim, will be released.
In fact, Starfield might provide an interesting counterpoint to Baldur’s Gate III; As it is, it’s a space adventure that offers more through simulation – the feel of planets under your feet and guns in your hands – than through storytelling. Marvelous aside, Baldur’s Gate III might even seem dated. In the right sense. A real author’s experience.
As for me? I’m excited about everything. But I’m also aware of those squirrels. What if I decided to kick this warlike little one? What if I had done a thousand other things differently? What if… what if… what if? There’s only one answer to that: I have to keep going back inside to see everything Baldur’s Gate III has to offer.
Good thing the RSPCA doesn’t seem to be active in the Forgotten Realms.
games too…
Atlas Fallen (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £49.99)
Verdict: sinking sands
“I don’t like sand. It’s gross and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.”
There’s a quote – an Anakin Skywalker classic – for the Star Wars nerds.
But that’s how I feel after playing Atlas Fallen last week. This is a game set in a fantasy world that is very… desert-like. They look at the sand, glide across the sand and are frightened by the animals that burst out of the sand. I’m done with this.
It’s not just – or even mostly – the sand. Atlas Fallen mistakenly looks like the archetypal game of the year 2023. It puts you, an enslaved person with a fancy new magic gauntlet, on a mission to save humanity from corrupt gods.
“Fantasy: Atlas Fallen” is a game set in a fantasy world that is very… desert-like, writes Peter Hoskin
You have to explore a fairly open map, embark on quests and master some semi-challenging, action-packed stages. In fact, when I think about it, it’s like a low budget version of this summer’s Final Fantasy XVI.
And less efficient too. While most of my issues with Atlas Fallen have to do with how standard it is, it also commits some downright sins. The storytelling and dialogue is shockingly clunky – especially during opening hours when you’re supposed to get to know your character and others. While the actual character designs are shockingly clunky.
Admittedly, there are places where Atlas Fallen impresses – and almost threatens to make his mark. Traversing the dunes is great fun, from the first to the hundredth time.
But on the whole I would stay away from it – at least until it can be found somewhere cheap. Remember: poor old Anakin has been spending too much time in the sand. And we all know what happened to him.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £32.99)
Verdict: Episodic excellence
There was a time about a decade ago when the developers of Telltale Games, although actually quite small, felt they were the greatest in gaming. Her Walking Dead series, based on the popular comics that in turn became a popular Teevee show, was a very special kind of choose-your-own-adventure, er, adventure — with clever stories, nuanced characters, and terrifying meaningful decisions.
Then Telltale versions of everything quickly followed: Game of Thrones, Batman, Minecraft, Guardians of the Galaxy…even the Borderlands video games got their own Telltale video game. Maybe the studio did too much, but in any case, something clearly went wrong. In 2018, Telltale filed for bankruptcy.
The reason I’m mentioning all this is because Telltale — or at least, after some behind-the-scenes financial maneuvering, the trading name “Telltale” — is back now, five years later. A few weeks ago the first playable episode of the first new Telltale series in years was released. The second comes out this week. Three more to follow through September 21 to complete the story.
I’ve played the first three episodes – and in a way, it’s like Telltale never went away. This new series is also based on an existing universe: the science fiction books “The Expanse”, which have also been adapted for television. It offers the same old dynamic where you get to choose your own adventure: tag your starship’s senior officer, don’t you? And the characters remain just that: real characters worth spending time with.
And yet I’m pleasantly surprised. In the years since Telltale’s disappearance, there’s a sense that others — like the Life is Strange series or last year’s underrated As Dusk Falls — were doing similar things better. Or they certainly added new elements to the interactive story experience.
While not necessarily better than those games, The Expanse does offer its own innovations. In the first episode, there is an extended spacewalk sequence that takes your character, Camina Drummer (the name I’m told will mean something to fans of the books and the TV series), through a dark and abandoned warship navigate to find it the central McGuffin of the story. What could have been random and superfluous – what does that do in a game that’s mostly about making conversational choices? – is rather a wonderful change. And beautiful too.
All I can say for now is that it will get better from there. So welcome back, Telltale – whether it’s really you or just a shell operation that just looks like you. The suits have chosen to let your adventure continue.