Sometimes, a girl just has to sit in her chair, deal with the pain of “monthly visitations,” and play video games all day. Yesterday, I was that girl. And while being that girl, I finally beat Baldur’s Gate 3, after a month of playing through its full single-player campaign.
In total, it took me about eighty hours—seventy, if you don’t count the ten or so I spent backtracking because I was a silly willy and forgot to cure the shadow curse. Considering how the developers at Larian Studios said that a “truly” full playthrough of their game could easily take more than 100 hours, I certainly can’t speak on the entire breadth of this game in totality (yet …). However, those 80 hours felt so much fuller than other games that have easily taken me longer to complete.
Truly, I enjoyed every minute of this playthrough and was completely blown away by how the game wrapped itself up. All the loose ends managed to tie themselves up so intricately that I was left feeling as though I’d really accomplished something—which, to be clear, is something most games really struggle with! The writers for BG3 truly did something special with this game from start to finish, and I wanted to showcase that with this article.
**Obviously, the spoilers here are MASSIVE, so I implore you not to read unless you’ve either beaten the game, or you truly don’t care about getting spoiled. You’ve been warned!**
“All’s well that ends … not as bad as it could have”
So, for the sake of space and time, I’m not going to cover the final battles. They’re great, and it feels great to have your end-game powers really put on display, but we can save that for the Act 3 guide. For this article, I just want to focus on the true ending state for me.
Once the battling concludes, you and your companions regroup at the city docks. With your tadpole finally gone, you can all speak to one another as freed individuals … for better and for worse.
We started with Orpheus, who was unfortunately turned into an illithid in order to win the fight (I say “unfortunately” even though I asked him to do it—oops). He knighted Lae’zel, gave her his dragons, and begged us to end his life, because he couldn’t bear to continue on in the form he’d swore to defeat all his life.
Unfortunately for Orpheus, we all agreed that he’s objectively sick as hell, so I convinced him to continue to watch his people thrive from afar. And this, he found acceptable. While I was sad, I couldn’t do more to help the gith. At this point, I was confident that Lae’zel could toe the line quite well on her own.
It was then Gale’s turn to figure out his life, and he was the one I was most uncertain of. Throughout the campaign, he and I had a magical rivalry going on, and after I pulled some f-boy nonsense with him, I wasn’t sure he’d be open to doing the wisest thing possible. I thought he’d go off to find the Crown of Karsus and try to become a god after all.
Thankfully, he still had some trust in me and even offered to continue traveling together. PHEW. White boy crisis averted.
But I guess we needed at least one white boy crisis to end the day on, because poor Astarion then realized he couldn’t survive in the Sun anymore, and had to run away in a rather undignified way. I was pretty bummed by this, and liked to think we’d still find a way to see him after the fact.
Then came the moment I was dreading: the moment Karlach’s engine would give out, and she’d die in front of us. Her heartburn started to act up, and so I ran to her and tried to give her some comfort as she went down. This was the moment that finally got me to start tearing up, because good god, her quest is written so well, and so tragically.
But then, I was truly surprised, delightfully so, when Wyll interjected at the last possible moment to beg her to return to Avernus with him. I didn’t think the game would do this: Once Karlach’s personal quest was completed, she was pretty determined to die a noble death instead of return to the place that had her shackled for ten years. I didn’t want to take that away from her. Yet, since Wyll had decided to pursue his own path and go hunt devils anyways, it only made sense that she get another chance at life, and with her best friend, no less.
What really got me was the line of dialogue, “You won’t have to be alone anymore.” That was her whole MO, the “f***ing loneliness.” Then, she and Wyll head to Avernus together, with a cutscene that the devs created post-release to give us Karlach-lovers some extra eating:
Yas.
Finally, somehow, my wife and I still had enough energy to get all sapphic overnight, and in the ensuing pillow-talk, she mentioned how she was still sad about losing her parents and wasn’t sure what she’d do next. I thought it was a given that we were going to stay together, but apparently, I had to say it out loud for her to believe me.
And I mean, I’d make fun of her for that, but honestly, mood.
Why I’m so impressed by Baldur’s Gate 3
Although Act 3 was buggy and laggy to the umpteenth degree, and on a technical level I’d say the game was far from perfect, I just couldn’t believe how well every little quest detail somehow weaved into one another by the game’s conclusion. When the devs stated that genuine, authentic choices would matter majorly in this game, companion approval be damned, I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe that.
But it’s true. Even if the companions don’t always like what you have to say to them, or even if they’ve seemingly made up their minds, they can be swayed by very natural changes in scenarios, as well as by your example. Astarion had the lowest approval of all my companions by the end of the game (at “Very Good”), yet because I’d both stuck by his side and stuck by my morals throughout the whole campaign, he listened to me when it mattered most. He didn’t sacrifice all the vampire spawn, he killed his old master outright, and he was thankful to live a life as a free, regular-shmegular vampire. He did all this, even though it came to bite him in the ass in the end. If this were a game like Dragon Age, he would have turned his back on me, because the arbitrary “approval” rating would have dictated he do otherwise.
Wyll and Karlach were also a great surprise, because I simply wasn’t expecting the writers to care enough to weave their stories together like that. I didn’t think I’d influenced Wyll all that much throughout the course of the game, yet in hindsight, of course I did: I continually advocated for his freedom against Mizora, even when it seemed to put his father in peril, and when it finally came time to decide what he’d do with this freedom, I let him choose on his own. He consequently chose to be a free adventurer, the “Blade of Avernus,” who’d hunt devils and fiends for the good of the Sword Coast.
With that free, adventurous spirit in mind, it’s no wonder he was able to convince Karlach to join him. And I’m so glad he did, because Karlach truly was a gem in this game, and I was genuinely preparing myself to mourn her death.
I’ve been lucky enough to play some pretty fantastic games this year, but after all this, and at this point in the year, I feel comfortable enough saying that BG3 is absolutely, without a doubt, my Game of the Year. It was everything I wanted in a full release and more, and while I had to pace myself during Act 3, I never once grew sick of it. I think this is a game everyone could enjoy, and I’m confident that this will be remembered as one of the greats of the 2020s. At the very least, it’s certainly earned a spot in my personal Top 5 list!
Now, if you excuse me, I need to plot my Dark Urge playthrough and get right back into it …
(featured image: Larian Studios)
Published: Sep 11, 2023 04:27 pm