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There is a common opinion regarding 2023’s Game of the Year winner, Baldur’s Gate 3, that the storytelling and characters outshine the gameplay. While not necessarily shared by the majority of fans, this opinion still surprises me: I actually enjoy BG3’s gameplay, but I’m not that impressed with the story and writing in Larian Studios’ RPG.

Some context for the angry mob that’s about to draw the torches and pitchforks in the comment section: I am an old-school gamer. My references, in terms of RPGs, are the likes of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect 3, the Fable series, the first 10 Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, etc. You get the gist. These are games that, while experimenting with player agency and letting their decisions affect the game, still make story a central focus, even if it’s sometimes divided into a handful of branches.

To summarize: Your input as the player matters, but not as much as the folks who created and wrote this game. These games had a story to tell you. Baldur’s Gate 3? Not so much.

Larian’s take on the Dungeons & Dragons world has been praised for the freedom it gives players, which is done at least partly to compensate for the lack of an open world. The developers famously stated that the game has 17,000 endings, but in truth, this number is not representative, as it accounts for every small variation.Based on my experience of the game, that’s not something to boast about.

How much can you dilute a story with variations, branches, and alternatives before the story itself ceases to have meaning or impact? I would argue that Baldur’s Gate 3 gets pretty close to achieving that. Here are some examples.

I have previously written........

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