Baldur's Gate 3 - Review - Fantasy RPGs Just Leveled Up - Future Hall of Famer

what is happening everybody James Hancock here I'm back to review the PC gaming phenomenon Baldur's Gate 3 which came out last Thursday I've been playing it like a madman ever since and I saw a stat over the weekend that this game has just taken off like a goddamn rocket there were over 800 000 people playing it at the same time or Peak concurrent players or whatever the uh the phrases that they use and the game hasn't even come out on the PS5 yet it wanting to come out on the Xbox until sometime like late into 2024 it's not available on the Mac it is already a complete and total runaway success but my predicament or my dilemma was I didn't really know when I was supposed to actually do the review because I'm used to reviewing movies and shows you go see the movie you watch the show you offer your thoughts but with a game as vast and complex and intricate as Baldur's Gate 3 I don't know how deep into the game you're supposed to be before you review it I mean the Early Access version which I reviewed a couple weeks ago that was easy I cleared the Early Access version a couple times offered my review I went [ __ ] crazy but now I I checked my stats I've played this game for 144 hours and I think about a hundred of that was in Early Access so I also you have to take into account of the 44 hours I've played in the new game a lot of that was kind of going over the original terrain that was offered in the Early Access so probably about 24 hours in actual like new content that wasn't available earlier this summer but my party's now level eight overall and I've got 16 out of 53 achievements so I don't know what's the cut off for review in the game but I feel confident when I say this is my favorite media experience that I've had in any way shape or form and calendar year 2023 like it beats any show beats any movie beats any novel it beats any UFC Pay-Per-View event like I can my media diet consists of a lot of variety but goddamn Baldur's Gate 3 I found it just to be enthralling and some of the best money that I ever spent was buying a PC just to play this game I played early access to my Mac and I heard a couple days before the release of the game that it would not be available on the Mac at release I was like well then I guess like even if I have to sell some organs I'm gonna go buy a goddamn PC and holy [ __ ] not only does the game look a thousand times better on the PC but I feel like I've been postponing becoming a PC Gamer my entire life I started using Max in the late 80s and I just basically got sucked into the Apple world and never looked back and every once in a while the game would come along that I would miss as a result of not being a PC Gamer but now I know what everybody's been talking about for all these decades like consoles are great but PC games are better and I know that's horribly snobbish and elitist to say but it's just a completely totally different experience and given the way that I'm obsessively playing this game once again I'm 144 hours in total I'm easily going to hit a thousand or more meaning that the money that I spent on the PC is actually relatively inexpensive entertainment per hour invested in the overall platform and the last time I felt this excited about a game was when Eldon rank came out last year when you're in that state where everything about your life becomes a total inconvenience like eating sleeping bathing they're all so annoying all you want to do is play the game until your eyes start to feel like sandpaper but God damn it is so worth it because when it comes to Fantasy experiences when it comes to RPG experiences it's almost like larion Studios was like a DJ taking request because everything that I want from an RPG experience specifically a strategy based RPG a game that is based on Dungeons and Dragons It's almost like they went into my brain and took requests for like every single thing that I want to see in a game from the high level of customization of the characters I mean it's a perfect adaptation a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and I don't even really like 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons I like first and second edition this game will make you a believer in fifth edition but more importantly than all the gameplay and the strategy and the combat and the combat is glorious I'm like physically unwell and unhappy anytime I'm not in combat all I want to do is just enjoy that 3D chess but there's an emotionally engaging story here that's hard to put into words because every single decision that you make changes the stories not like they came up with like a story like a novel and you just kind of walk through it beginning to end it's one of the most malleable and flexible and improvisational stories I've ever seen where no matter what choice you make the acting is incredible the story is incredible like all these incredible story beats that like will pay dividends way down the road I'm gonna love is how this game perfectly reflects the taste of the player if you want to be the most pure and Noble Paladin that the world has ever seen and help everybody that you come across well then the game will will reward you for that and it'll adapt and you'll meet people deeper down the road that'll respond to your earlier actions or if you just want to be the most sadistic kinky depraved [ __ ] imaginable it will adapt to that as well and I've played a Million RPGs where they create the illusion of choice where you basically have dialogue options that make you sound either nice or mean but the story more or less stays the same this game your decisions have Stakes they matter and you cannot it's not just like one kind of bad guy that you can choose to be you can be deceptive and have like plots and schemes and that sort of thing or you can be just like a rampaging Barbarian or a total sadist but what's fascinating to me is that no matter how many strange decisions you make you can't break the game you're creating a new narrative it's a different narrative meaning that every time you play the game it's going to be a completely different experience I mean the best example I can think of without giving away any major spoiler from the plot there's a character named lizelle who's basically like the poster child for the game she was featured in all the early cinematics the game opens with her she's the first person to join your party she is one of the main companions that you can have in this game well as soon as my party got Beyond The Early Access stage and I started making my own decisions and exploring the game even though I didn't realize I was doing this I accidentally created a situation where due to her background and her allies and that sort of thing she turned against me tried to kill me and I had to kill her I was like wait a second I thought she was like The Unofficial star of the game apart from the player and now I've got like two-thirds of the game left to go and she's not going to be part of the story and for a second I panicked I was like Dad [ __ ] up did I break the game I was like no you didn't break the game this is just the story that you are telling with the game this playthrough and the next time you play through it the higher difficulty setting you'll make different decisions and you'll use her to better Advantage you'll do better Justice to that character but that's what I love is how there's no Safety Net in terms of what story you're telling the game truly treats the player like a collaborator and a story where you're telling the story together and that's such a unique engaging experience compared to the passive experience of watching a show watching a movie and I love shows and I love movies my first and only love in this world is Cinema but I get why there's some people who only play PC games and don't give a damn about movies and what the story is dynamic and Rich and rewarding and satisfying as this one it's only a matter of time before more shows and more movies to start to borrow from and lean heavily upon games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 is technically a very old IP Baldur Skate 1 came out in the late 90s Baltimore is either 90s or early 2000s but anyway those are some of the best PC games ever at that time they were the best adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons we had ever seen and if you look over my shoulder see a bunch of first and second edition Dungeons and Dragons books I've been part of DnD since like the early 80s when that cartoon first came out my brother sucked me in I know D D backwards and forwards and I can say with confidence Baldur's Gate 3 is the best version of d d we've ever seen like I love animation I love live action I love all these different formats nothing comes close to Baldur skate 3. it is just [ __ ] awe-inspiring it says rich and complex as like a great fantasy novel and what makes the game particularly satisfying is that we're going through a very strange phase right now where the fantasy genre has a lot of TV adaptations and almost all of them are horrendous like I love fantasy books and I love seeing so many authors getting their books adapted into shows but the reality is The Witcher is awful Lord of the Rings the rings of power is awful The Wheel of Time is awful the one exception is House of the Dragon based on uh Fire and Blood which is also over my shoulder I love the fantasy genre I could I could consume the fantasy genre day and night the rest of my life and feel very satisfied but it is unsatisfying when you see so many writers and so many filmmakers getting the fantasy genre I won't say wrong just failing to execute like there's no wrong version of fantasy fantasy can be anything it's it's in the name it's a fantasy but the fantasy genre we've got so many great examples where it's absolutely thriving and I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 makes all these shows apart from House of the Dragon seem so painfully irrelevant and incompetent and ham-fisted and just boring and generic Baldur's Gate 3 is alive it is electric it is like it's open to so many incredible possibilities and every minute that I spend not playing the game feels like a minute wasted even talking about how much I love it in a video like this and what's unique to this is that I've gotten over the hump of like freezing up and wondering what's the best thing to do in a game a lot of times if you're playing an RPG like Fallout 4 or Elder Scrolls V Skyrim or whatever the case might be or like [ __ ] like how do I maximize my storytelling choices to get the best gear the best cut scenes the best Etc and with this I'm like you know what I'm just gonna let this Saga be whatever it is and the next time through it'll be a completely different Saga and there are many many times where you have decisions where there are two kind of rival storylines going at the same time and you want to pursue both but it's impossible where they're in direct conflict like right now I've got a very important decision to make about an NPC where I have one quest line to killer which is part of my origin story because I'm doing the uh I think it's called like the dark hunger storyline or the origin story for my character and then I've got another major storyline where I need to use her to push the story forward and save a bunch of people and it's like well I can't do both but I'm gonna I mean obviously with multiple saves I'm gonna try and take both storylines as far as I can before to make a major decision but I love like chewing my nails and having like real stakes and consequences to my decisions and you might be wondering rightly at this point who is responsible for a game as fascinating as this one larion Studios there are Belgian video game developer and publisher they're founded in 1996 by zven vinc if I'm saying his name correctly this guy's my [ __ ] hero you can tell like from his interviews and the way he walks around the studio in armor like he's the world's biggest d d nerd and uh he previously made a name for himself with um Divinity original sin one and two which were very popular but not nearly on the level of uh Baldur's Gate 3. but what I like about his approach to the game he very clearly is playing or making the game that he wants to play and everybody else is invited to go along for the ride and I always love storytellers like that like an author who writes the book that they want to read and everybody else is invited but in the end they're the audience or a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino has spoken many times about how he makes movies that he wants to see everybody else is invited but first and foremost he is the audience that he is trying to satisfy and I feel like Sven is doing the same thing here and God damn he's being rewarded for his uh for his instincts and his tastes and his preferences and clearly a lot of people see gaming the same way that he does I mean if you have 800 000 people doing something at the same time paying like 75 bucks for the privilege that is a [ __ ] cultural phenomenon and I think it's only a matter of time before layering Studios is mentioned in the same breath as like from software or like the reverence that like BioWare and Bethesda were uh were referred to back in the early 2000s larion Studios has arrived and the whole gaming industry is going to change as a result and much like with from software this is a game that's completely pure in its intentions and there are no distractions I was playing Diablo 4 recently and it drove me [ __ ] crazy just so many times they try to like squeeze you for additional money it's like you know what [ __ ] you I just spent like 100 bucks on this game stop trying to squeeze me for in-game purchases I feel like in-game purchases are a blight upon Humanity they're a complete and total distraction I know the corporate overlords of a lot of these developers insist upon them because they're trying to maximize the profits but I feel like one another way to maximize profits is to just make a really good game like Eldon ring was the best game of 2023 and there was none of that in-game squeezing none of that [ __ ] and Larry in studios holy [ __ ] they're justifiably earning the love and loyalty and Adoration of hundreds of thousands of Gamers and it wouldn't surprise me if that number's in the millions by this time next year and what's incredible to me is how fresh and unique and new and original this story feels and these characters feel like Forgotten Realms has been around for a long time in the 1980s like all this classic Keith Parkinson paintings I was like God damn forgotten gnomes was cool and I started reading the books and I started playing some of the games and some of the earliest d d like PC games or Mac games were set in the Forgotten Realms and over the years like I would say I like the Forgotten Realms but I'm obsessed with like dark sun and ravenloth and some of the other fictional settings but Baldur's Gate 3 because of the I guess the personality of the original characters have created specifically for this game it feels like its own its own creation even though this is a very very mild spoiler but as you're walking along you will bump into very famous characters from The Forgotten realm setting there's one character I won't say who but who's so powerful and so famous and he's been around for so long I bumped into him just kind of wandering on nature I was like oh I know exactly who this is ordinarily I probably would have tried to like pick his pocket or push him around or kill him or whatever but I was like no this is an NPC that I want to befriend because he's going to be very influential moving forward but you don't want to know a goddamn thing about Forgotten Realms to enjoy this game it might even make you enjoy it more because this whole landscape is going to feel so exciting if you're experiencing the Forgotten Realms for the first time and as you're playing this game you get an idea of what it must be like to be a player sitting at the table at a tabletop RPG session run by Sven and I I mean once again I said before like it was like a DJ taking request he includes so many ingredients that I wanna that I would want to include as a dungeon master and a Dungeons and Dragons campaign whether that's traveling to other planes of existence or interacting with gods and demons where you can either do jobs for them or talk [ __ ] with them or have rivalries with them and that sort of thing and once again as I said before you can make the game as inappropriate and Savage as you like or not like the options are there and this is this game offers a rare situation where sometimes it's more depraved than even I needed to be like usually if I see a show or a movie based on a book that I love my guard well of course they're going to defang it they're going to declaw it they're going to tap the brakes every opportunity to explore the inappropriate content a show or movie will shy away from it and just make it an overall more bland unsatisfying experience with this game there have been a few situations where I'm like God damn like what is what is wrong with you people like this is so depraved and so disgusting there's some stuff in here where the realm of like torture and s m and like kinky sex Thrills all kind of get interwoven where as a player like if you are curious on the front it will reward you for your curiosity or if you're totally shocked and horrified well then you can just kill them and move on but it's so rare where like somebody who likes the Dark Side of fantasy like books by R Scott backer like the end of his second book uh um the warrior Prophet was so dark I was like that's this darkest fantasy can go we've looked into the abyss and now let's come back from the brink but there have been a few moments in this game probably because of the origin that it shows for my character or the uh the so-called dark urge storyline where something happened where I met an NPC who seems so sweet and so innocent I invited them to stay at my camp and I thought oh they're probably going to end up becoming a companion and join him a party like yeah yeah I found a I found one of the new companions that wasn't available in Early Access and once again I'm not going to give anything away but the next day as I woke up in my Camp I started having all these flashbacks and I got all these cutscenes and cinematics where my character had done some of the sickest most [ __ ] up [ __ ] imaginable I was like I was like God damn like everybody just calmed down like what what is going on here it was one of those rare moments where I felt like a story had no safety net below and I didn't really know where I was as a character or a player I wasn't on firm footing but it was just so delightfully unpredictable and I just couldn't believe what I was experiencing and that's a very rare wonderful beautiful thing where you feel like you're in the hands of storytellers who are out foxing you and outwitting you and giving you surprises and they're willing to go places that perhaps you're uncomfortable with that's it's Unique in the world of media and entertainment now for the rest of this video I'm going to talk about some stuff that might be described as like mild spoilers so if you've not played the game at all this is the point where you want to bail out but I do want to go into some detail about some of the things that I've enjoyed from this game then obviously once I've completely finished it I'm probably going to come back with like my final review but overall Impressions if you played the Early Access version and you played it to death and you feel like all right what does this game have to offer that I don't already know I'll say this even the early content feels fresh and new again so much so much has been modified and cleaned up and you can tell that Larry and every every step of the way was taking player feedback and modifying the game and I feel like this is something that Hollywood Studios should uh should learn from and where they could follow their example maybe if you're going to do a big giant expensive show like Lord of the Rings rings of power maybe bring in some viewers and customers and let them read some scripts or see some early cuts of episodes and get some feedback and pivot accordingly because larion doesn't have the the arrogance of saying this is the story that we're telling we're going to shove it down your throat and shut up and just take it and if you complain about it we're going to call you names it seems like they really wanted the the feedback and the input of people that are invested in the Baldur's Gate world because so much about the early part of the game has been changed and modified like zones of like slate modifications or new cinematics related to Companions even the art for your companions and that sort of thing it's all been slightly modified and cleaned up and even if you've played the Early Access to content to death and you're eager to get past it I would recommend you explore every single inch of it because you're going to need the levels you're going to need the gear that that early access content provides before moving forward like every time I think I'm starting to get maybe a little overpowered or starting to get a little too easy I'll bump into an encounter or puzzle or an environment where I just get my ass kicked Every Which Way imaginable so grind the levels Farm the gear and if you bump into a situation where you feel like you're getting your ass kicked way too easily a slight rethink on your strategies might make all the difference also so many of the NPCs you meet early on in the game have major story implications later in the game so you need to do the full interactions get those stories unlocked like it's very rewarding to do the full clear explore every single inch of the game but also take your time just to relish it and enjoy it like get get weird in your camp like there's one time where there's this giant party happening at my my Campground anybody's drinking and acting inappropriately and I just ended up taking all the gear off all my characters and just letting them run around naked for a while and obviously like none of the characters are gonna react to your being nude in game they treat you like you're still fully armored but they're all these like romantic subplots that you can explore with every member of the like of your party so like no matter what your tastes and preferences might be from a sexual angle this game will give you the freedom to explore that and uh yeah my relationship with the character Shadow heart has been very rewarding and I've got a big strong muscular Paladin I'm playing for my first playthrough and it's like basically like watching like soft core animated porn at times with some of the hidden sex scenes in the game and also there are hidden sex scenes in the game that are really hard to unlock no pun intended like if you want to know what I'm talking about look up uh the drow manthara where you have to make a very clear story decision early on in the game like really go to the dark side as an evil depraved character and even then you might not unlock that storyline but look it up on YouTube You'll see what I'm talking about but as far as like your race and your class and your party makeup is concerned this game gives you a lot of flexibility once you choose your race of your character that's kind of locked in but you have the option to respect your character not only respect your character and like change your ability scores around and that sort of thing what your skills are you can completely change your class as well as the class of the NPCs and I'm letting my companions keep their original class because I feel like there's certain story lines like Shadow heart worships the goddess Char and I feel like that wouldn't really wouldn't make as much sense if you were to change your class like a range or it still would kind of make sense you can still worship whatever God you like but I'm letting Shadow heart remain a cleric but I think I'm a next playthrough I'm gonna start messing around with some of those characters because a lot of the companions you don't meet until deep into the game like I'm still waiting for the Ranger and the Druid to be fully unlocked and playable with my parties so I'm playing right now with an oath breaker Paladin which is [ __ ] badass and tanky as hell really powerful and really useful fighting all the undead deep into the game but I'm using a starring as a rogue specked into assassin because a Starion is by far the best written character in the game he's [ __ ] awesome I'm using Gail keeping him as a wizard but I made him uh with the evocation Focus or the my spells on hurt my own party and lizelle sadly is no longer available as a companion because because as I mentioned before I ended up making certain story choices which turned her against the party and she came after me but I'm saving will and karlak from a next playthrough but anyways I'm using more of like a classic makeup this time of wizard cleric thief and Paladin I mean I could have gone fighter but I want Paladin and my next playthrough I'm probably gonna go like Barbarian Ranger Druid and warlock but another thing that's really important to keep in mind is there are five different kinds of gameplay you need to have available to you through your party you need to have somebody that's really good in conversations need to have somebody that's really good at interacting with the environment in terms of opening secret doors and like getting rid of traps and that sort of thing you need to have a great support character someone with like heels and Buffs and that sort of thing you need to have offensive magic and you need to have somebody who's really [ __ ] good at melee combat and so you need to make sure that at least one of your characters can play two of those roles otherwise they're gonna be aspects of the game where you just you're going to feel like you're getting like a subpar experience because you just don't have the proper party makeup for those challenges which is why I went with a paladin from a main character because I knew he could be the melee DPS but I knew he could also handle all the dialogue interactions due to his high Charisma but another really interesting challenge is trying to figure out how to keep all the various companions happy because a lot of the companions [ __ ] hate each other like they have subplots that are in like diametrically opposed to each other so much so like you'll wake up sometimes in your Campground and they'll be fighting to the death and you have to make a decision like how do I keep everybody happy so they can continue using them in my party but um if some of them don't make it to the end of the story so be it you can always hire a hireling and then respect them to have them fill certain roles if you get completely screwed and you lose your fighter or you lose your heel or whatever the case might be but in the end no matter how great a game looks no matter how great the storytelling is no matter how great the concept is in the end gameplay is everything and this game is just [ __ ] nailed the gameplay the way that the battlefields are like 3D chess with interactive puzzles and a high level of difficulty it's so addictive just a little things like having Gail cast magic Missile this wasn't as evident in their Early Access but now the way magic missiles will kind of curve around a corner or curve up and over buildings and still hit people it's just a delight to watch I just want to keep casting magic Missile over and over and over again because it's so fun to watch in action and the challenge is legit like I'm playing it on the medium setting right now just as I learn the game and like learn all the ins and outs but I still have total party kills all the goddamn time and I feel like if you're not having total party kills from time to time the game just simply isn't challenging enough and the best surprise for me is seeing how some zones that initially just feel like mentally exhausting or headache inducing or unnecessarily complicated suddenly become your favorite zones once you figure them out like I had that experience during early access with grim Forge where I felt like God damn like this place is so difficult to navigate there's so many traps and there's so many hidden Pathways to go it's like it seems overly complex but now that I've memorized Grim Forge it's my favorite Zone in the game and a similar thing happened as soon as they got beyond their Early Access and I started going through this mountain pass and looking for this kind of gith Yankee hidden base it's like finding this hidden base is so unnecessarily complex and so unnecessarily challenging however once I found it and explored the story options in there and made a lot of bad decisions suddenly became my new favorite place in the game because I was like interacting with gods and like having having crazy companion interactions but I feel like any game that gets you over the hump where they're able to turn you from frustrated into a Believer is doing something very special at any rate I think that's all I have to say right now about the game at this stage I'm gonna have more to say when I've completely fully cleared the game and I'm gonna have a lot more to say about the role of gaming moving forward as a source of fuel and inspiration for film and television I feel like film and television is about to get into a stage where they're going to be borrowing from games the way they used to borrow from novels or from plays like if you look at Hollywood in 1930s they were adapting books and adapting plays all the goddamn time like movies have gotten sloppy seconds routinely throughout its history I just think they're going to be getting sloppy seconds from a different form of media moving forward and I'm so much more excited about what the fall has in store for us when it comes to gaming than I am from movies like obviously like Dune part 2 might not even come out this fall due to the strike however we've got Blasphemous 2 coming out at the end of the month we've got armored Core six from uh from front software coming at the end of the month we got Starfield coming up next month and then cyberpunk 27 2077 the DLC phantom phantom Liberty is coming out the end of September and then we have Lords of the fallen in October like that's a ton of really potentially really interesting games all coming out over the next two months and I think all of them are possibly or potentially really interesting fuel for future film and TV adaptations but in spite of my excitement my cautionary note is this is how Industries Collapse by losing customers to the rivals or rival forms of media like if film and television can't keep the fantasy nerds and the Sci-Fi nerds satisfied with cool shows and cool movies they will slowly but surely drift over to the Rival platform like if you can't make a science fiction maybe as interesting as star field well then you might lose those science fiction fans for good or if you can't deliver on a fantasy show and make it as satisfying as playing Baldur's Gate 3 well people would just invest hundreds of hours into Baldur Skate 3 and obviously film a television as I mentioned before they're passive it's a different it's a different media entirely and so it has different criteria and has different emotional needs to satisfy but I feel like film and television are facing a an existential crisis this fall as I mentioned before I'm much more excited about the world of gaming has to offer this fall than the world of film and television I look forward to reviewing all the above mentioned games in due time but at this point I need to wrap up this video thank you so much for sticking with me all this time if you're already playing Baldur Skate 3 if you're already part of the converted I hope you enjoyed my perspective and I look forward to hearing your thoughts below and if you haven't played a computer game in a long time who knows maybe I've uh convinced a few people to dust off their PC and take Baldur's Gate 3 for a test drive you will not regret it but thank you so much for watching this video If you enjoyed it please consider hitting that notification Bell to be notified about future content and if you want to talk more hunt me down on Twitter at geeking up but thanks again for watching but more importantly as always onwards and upwards

Channel: Geekin' with James Hancock

Views: 9,275

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Id: yHN-VEgzAJo

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023