Play your own story with the RPG masterpiece Baldur's Gate 3

What kind of game is Baldur's Gate 3? The gameplay is obviously contrary to the mainstream game market, but before its launch, the early version had sold as many as 2.5 million units. After it was launched, it broke through the sky and set a number of records. It not only surpassed the super high ratings of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda and the sequel Tears of the Kingdom this year but also caught up with the well-known Harry Potter game "Hogwarts Legacy". "The record set by "The Game" has become one of the most played stand-alone games on Steam at the same time this year.

There may be many players who are not familiar with this game or have never played a similar cRPG, so they are not sure whether "Baldur's Gate 3" is the type they will like. There may also be players who know what the battle system of the game is. Turn-based, or because you feel that the game looks too complicated, you are put off. Next, we will introduce to you the various mechanisms and elements of the game and their relationship with the "Dungeons and Dragons" board game. What exactly is the game playing and how is it different from other games? I hope that friends who have never played it can understand what is special and fun about this game. Players who have already played it may also be able to see some little information that they didn't know before.

Before you understand the game "Baldur's Gate 3", you need to have a basic understanding of the worldview and mechanism used in the game, D&D (Dungeons & Dragons). In the early days, game consoles and computers were not yet popular. The board game "Dungeons and Dragons".Conceptually, it is similar to the existence of current video games. It is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRPG). It has a detailed worldview setting and rule manuals that allow players to use their imagination with their friends or family. Come play the hero in the game and embark on an earth-shattering fantasy journey in a fantasy world.

In the game "Dungeons and Dragons", in addition to the participating players, there is also a Dungeon Master (DM).The city lord is the role that tells stories. Through narrative, players can understand the situations they encounter in the game, and at the same time, they must give players the next goals. It also provides rewards for players to achieve their goals, but the purpose of the game is not necessarily to win or to clear levels.Instead, the players and the city lord enjoy the game process together and see whether they want to cooperate or hold each other back to challenge the levels set by the city lord. Even if they fail, the failure may be very funny and interesting. These imaginative experiences with friends in a fantasy world are where the ease and fun of "Dungeons and Dragons" lie, and Baldur's Gate 3 is exactly the game that can immerse players who have never been exposed to D&D. You can also experience the ease and fun of works similar to D&D.

Just like when playing the D&D board game, you must first fill in the character card and create a character. When you first start playing "Baldur's Gate 3", you must first create a character that belongs to the player (choosing a preset character is not recommended for the first time), which is just the creation of the game. The interface requires not only pinching people but also a lot of things to choose from. Let’s not talk about ability points. There are 11 types of races, 12 types of professions, and as many as 46 types of profession branches. Even private parts you can choose from all of them. If there is a choice barrier, just creating a character can take several hours. Some players may start to think that the game is so complicated and troublesome when they reach this point, but you really don’t need to think too much, just think of it as time travel. Go to another world and imagine what race you would like to be and what you would look like if you were reincarnated into another world today. Which profession do you think is the most useful or cool, just choose it based on this way of thinking.

Except for the appearance, which cannot be changed currently in the game (it can be changed in the future), the rest, such as abilities or races, can be remade or changed at will during the game (through mechanisms). After the character is created, a guardian immediately appears for the player to pinch. It may seem confusing to get to this point in the game when you first start the game. Without spoiling anything, I recommend that you make the guardian look the most attractive, beautiful, or handsome you think. This appearance will make the experience of the next plot much more comfortable.

The story and mechanics of Baldur's Gate 3 are based on the worldview and rules of the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons and Dragons. After you have a character, you will start venturing into this different world. , but what is the motivation for taking risks? The game gives players a very simple and clear goal at the beginning. At the beginning of the plot, the player has a parasite stuffed into his brain by some kind of monster. If he does nothing, he will turn into a monster sooner or later, so taking out the parasite from his brain becomes the reason to start the adventure. But the game is very similar to the "Dungeons and Dragons" board game. They only give players a goal and how to achieve that goal under the rules and structure. According to the various choices and behaviors made by the player, the process in between will vary from person to person. Every time you play, everyone's experience will be very different.

One of the ways players encounter problems during their adventure in "Baldur's Gate 3" is through dialogue. Different dialogue options may trigger different routes or solutions. But what is special about this game is that even if the player chooses the corresponding dialogue result, the result may not be what he expects, because many dialogue choices in the game must rely on rolling dice to determine success. Everyone can fully experience the key fun of D&D. Life is all about gambling, and dice determine life and death. A simple explanation of this mechanism is the concept of comparing big and small when players make decisions. You need to roll a 20-sided die (1d20) to determine whether it has passed. If the number is higher than the required number, it is a success. Relatively low means failure. You can increase the probability of success through different methods in the game, but there is also a 1 in 20 chance of success or failure.

A simple but uncertain process. Let the dice-rolling mechanism run through the entire game. Although this kind of gameplay that leaves the results to luck may be a bit unfamiliar to some players, but precisely because of this randomness, the game process will be full of freshness and uncertainty of predicting what weird things will happen next. and a sense of wonder.

Even if you unfortunately fail, you may start a completely different route, or encounter a super unexpected plot development. When the player cannot fully control it, it will really feel like he is experiencing an unknown adventure. Another solution to the problems encountered during the adventure is the battle that almost all RPG games have. The same dice mechanism is also used in combat as in board games, except that players no longer need to manually roll the dice, and the game system will automatically convert it into a probability of hit. Although the battle is turn-based, it is not as rigid as you cut and I release a move. The rich combat mechanism in the game provides players with infinite possibilities. In addition to more than 600 spells and moves that can be used, Combining different moves or matching them with elements on the floor can create additional effects.

The game also has terrain height differences, weight, weaknesses, etc. designed. Even the items on your body and the terrain objects in the environment can be used as matching options in battle. For example, you will slip when walking on the ice, and fireballs will be thrown on the ice. It will melt into water. If you throw an oil bottle first and then a fireball, you can ignite the entire area or directly use boxes on the ground or teammates as weapons to hit the opponent's head. If the enemy is standing very close to the cliff, you can directly hit the opponent. Push it down to kill. But the enemy is also quite smart. If you don't stand in a good position, you may be the one who falls. Just these basic movements of pushing people, moving things, and throwing things can already create a lot of new tricks. Pushing people can not only push enemies but also push teammates without action points to the desired position. You can even smash health bottles into teammates' faces, or push explosives directly into the pile of enemies. You can pick them up during adventures. A bunch of junk weapons, all of which can be used as a means of attack and thrown at the enemy (and can be picked back later). It doesn't matter if you don't have the commanding heights. You can move the box cover it yourself, and stand at a high place to snipe the enemy. It's accurate and painful (high places increase accuracy + throwing damage).

With a lot of brain power, the druid transforms into the largest owlbear and then uses spells to change it into a larger one. Using gravity acceleration (a similar mechanism), he can crush enemies with too much blood to death with these items and moves. The combination and use methods are different. Put players in combat, you can no longer just chop and chop, but in disguise encourage players to think more and try more. Make good use of the terrain or objects in the environment and what is available at hand to deal more fancy and higher damage than ordinary attacks. However, not all problems encountered can be solved through dialogue or combat. For example, in places where you might have to open a lock through dialogue, roll a dice, or defeat an enemy to pass, as long as you use a little ingenuity and observe the environment, coupled with moves and spells, you might be able to find different solutions.

Here we take a small side mission in the game as an example. The mission is for a female dwarf to ask the player to find her husband. His husband was stupid and misplaced his backpack and torch which contained the escape scroll. All of them were thrown out of reach, and the mushrooms exploded by the poisonous gas and were trapped in place, unable to move, waiting for the player to rescue him. As soon as these mushrooms came close, they would explode into clouds of poisonous gas, and there would be a chain reaction. Unfortunately, poisonous gas would explode when exposed to fire, so the torch he threw on the ground became a source of fire. If you walk directly in and trigger the poisonous gas cloud, the male dwarf will be blown up on the spot. The simplest and most brutal solution to this task is to throw a fireball at the poisonous mushroom and then cross your legs to enjoy the explosion scene like in a Michael Bay movie. , it’s very spectacular, and finally I go back and tell the dwarf’s wife that her husband was blown to pieces, which is considered complete.

However, if you want to save him, the game mechanism provides the player with several methods. First, after talking to the dwarf, he will say that there is a scroll in his bag but he cannot get it. If the player happens to have used a teleportation scroll (Traveling Step), there will be an option in the dialogue to throw it directly to him and let him teleport to a safe place. Another way is for the player to use teleportation magic or flight or jumping techniques to jump to the location of his bag, and then throw the bag to him. If the player can summon a pet, he can send the pet in (the pet will not trigger) and slowly move the bag to him. The magic character can even summon the hand of the mage. A monster that looks like a hand can push people and throw things. It can also be sent in and throw bags to him from a distance.

If none of the above options are possible, just look at the entire terrain and you will find that there is a jumping platform on the side of the cave. You can reach the location of the dwarf bag by slowly jumping along the platform. Just like this In small tasks, the game gives players solutions. There are already so many options, and this is just what we have discovered. There are definitely more ways that we have not thought of. The same game design logic is also applied to a large number of main and side tasks.

Every conversation, every battle, every task or level is like the game providing an open-ended question to ask the player. How you will choose, how you will react, there is no so-called correct answer. How you want to play it depends entirely on the player. The more open your imagination is, the more fun it will be. The aforementioned are just the mechanics of this game. What shines in "Baldur's Gate 3" is the interaction between players and the plot and characters in the game. These interactions constantly prompt players to make choices. The consequences of these choices will continue to affect the subsequent judgments made by the player. For example, the main goal in the early stages of the game is to find a way to safely remove the parasite from the brain. But as the story progresses, you will find that there seem to be several ways to do this, and you will even learn the advantages and disadvantages of taking out the parasite. At this time, players have to decide which path to take based on the currently collected information and their preferences, or if some NPCs are successfully rescued.

Every conversation, every battle, every task or level is like the game providing an open-ended question to ask the player.How you will choose, how you will react, there is no so-called correct answer. How you want to play it depends entirely on the player. The more open your imagination is, the more fun it will be. The aforementioned are just the mechanics of this game. What shines in "Baldur's Gate 3" is the interaction between players and the plot and characters in the game. These interactions constantly prompt players to make choices. The consequences of these choices will continue to affect the subsequent judgments made by the player. For example, the main goal in the early stages of the game is to find a way to safely remove the parasite from the brain. But as the story progresses, you will find that there seem to be several ways to do this, and you will even learn the advantages and disadvantages of taking out the parasite. At this time, players have to decide which path to take based on the currently collected information and their preferences, or if some NPCs are successfully rescued.

Like the male dwarf mentioned earlier, or if you didn't kill certain enemies during the battle, but knocked them unconscious, you might encounter them again and have completely different plots and dialogues. These unknown possibilities will make players think twice before making a decision, fearing that the result will not be what we expect, although the game does not achieve the level of simulation that the day and night climate change NPC has a schedule. But most NPCs still have names and stories and will produce corresponding attitudes and feedback based on the player's actions in the game, not to mention the vivid NPC teammates who all have vivid personalities and obvious likes and dislikes.

A large number of plots and dialogues will also comment on the player's behavior, and each person even has his independent storyline. In addition, the development team has added excellent voice acting and many dynamic capture technologies to all these characters. cutscene. Even though some characters may be annoying in the beginning, as the plot develops and you communicate with them more and more, and you become more familiar with this character, you will gradually understand this character's thoughts. Then I got to know him better, got used to him, and even fell in love with this character. It is equivalent to replacing the real teammates in the D&D board game experience, allowing these lifelike game characters to accompany players on their adventures, creating an impressive and unique game experience together. The happiest thing is that the player's goodwill with teammates reaches a certain level. If the dialogues are all correct, the game will reward the player and turn on the restricted mode (a few can't), revealing a scale that is beyond OVER, comparable to love games.

Moreover, even monsters and animals can be conquered. These benefits make conquering these characters one of the key goals of many players during play. Because of this, players' preferences for these teammates or NPCs will change what they do during play. Out of choice. It may be because you want to please a specific character and start from their personality and standpoint. To put it bluntly, you can tell people what they say and tell ghosts what they say.

"Baldur's Gate 3" is like this, allowing player choices, NPC feedback, and plot development to be interrelated and interactive. By connecting various mechanisms one by one, players slowly realize that the big and small decisions made in the game will affect the game world. The entire game world seems to be alive, and the player's mentality begins to change, and he will care about the characters in the game and what happens to them. The character you control feels like you have truly become a part of this world, ultimately achieving the most realistic experience of role-playing.

Just like in the Dungeons and Dragons board game, a good DM can not only vividly depict interesting stories, but also can make everyone involved have fun. No matter how wild ideas the players come up with, the DM can always come up with a way to deal with them without any limitations. Larian Studios, the developer of Baldur's Gate 3, is like a very enthusiastic and competent DM city master who has written a super exciting and magnificent story for the game. It allows players to have fun and immerse themselves in the game, and at the same time, within the maximum allowable range, it perfectly integrates the decisions and branches of choices that most players may make into the entire game process. Not only does it not limit the player's imagination. On the contrary, the more curious you are, the more interesting it is to play. It's a bit like the original advertising slogan of Paradise, achieving things you normally wouldn't dare to do.

Finally, I would like to give another recommendation. If you have the opportunity to play Baldur's Gate 3 with real-life friends and four people, the game will be a completely different experience. It’s blinding and chaotic, but also joyful.