There are inventions of pleasure that pass before the eye and leave no shadow upon the memory. And there are others, rare and singular, almost unholy in their perfection of effect, that take hold upon the imagination like a fever, and will not let it go. Baldur’s Gate 3 belongs, without question, to this latter and more dreadful company.
I sat before this strange invention as a man might sit before some vast and curious device, doubtful whether to admire its design or to shrink from the depth of its intention.
Of Its Design
The invention itself is wrought with prodigious care, a web of decision within decision, each passage branching into others without end, until the player becomes an author of his own misfortune. Nothing here is mere show. Every door, every word exchanged with a stranger, every small act of mercy or cruelty, seems to travel forward into consequence, as though the whole edifice were governed by some grim and watchful intelligence that forgets nothing.
I confess I have rarely met a work of this description so free of the false economy common to its kind, wherein the appearance of freedom is granted, but the substance withheld. Baldur’s Gate 3 grants both, lavishly, almost recklessly, as a rich and eccentric uncle might grant a fortune to a nephew he does not entirely trust.
Of Its Personages
The company one gathers about the self in the course of this endeavour is drawn with such singular life that I found myself, more than once, brooding upon their fates as I might brood upon the fate of a correspondent long unheard from. Each companion carries some private wound, some melancholy history, and the unfolding of these histories is managed with a delicacy that many a writer of my acquaintance might envy.
There is horror here too, of the true and ancient sort, not the cheap starting of nerves, but the patient, enduring dread of change working upon body and spirit together. The affliction that lies heavy upon the travelers in this tale, the small dreadful worm’s dark promise, is handled with a gravity that recalls the finest terrible inventions, rather than the trifling terrors of lesser works.
Of Its Faults
I will not pretend the invention is without blemish. There are moments when its parts seem tried beyond their own ambition, passages where the great number of paths seems to test the very frame that supports them, and small oddities among its imagined inhabitants, who occasionally stray where sense would not have them stray. These are the eccentricities of a genius too vast to be perfectly tamed, not the failures of a mean or fearful production.
Yet I judge these blemishes as I would judge a strange mark upon an otherwise excellent portrait, evidence of a hand that dared greatly, and mostly triumphed. The pecuniary and imaginative daring required to raise a world of such scope, and to see it through without fearful yielding, deserves to be recorded as extraordinary in the history of its art.
A Concluding Word
I have read of prizes given for excellence in this curious modern art, and I am told Baldur’s Gate 3 has claimed no small number of them, including the highest honor of its year. Having passed many hours in its company, I do not wonder at it. It is a rare thing to meet a pleasure so thoroughly aware of the human heart’s darker chambers, and so willing to let the player go freely through them.
If I have dwelt too long upon its virtues, let it be understood that they are not easily exhausted, and that a review too brief would do this singular achievement a wrong bordering on the criminal.