Baldur's Gate 3 Wins Game of the Year at the Game Awards

This game richly deserved every award it got. What an absolute masterpiece! And the best part is that we got to enjoy it without any of the “best practices” of the gaming industry, like an inflated initial price, micro transactions and loot boxes. It was just one fee upfront, and you got hundreds of hours of riveting gameplay in return.<p>On a personal note, this was the first time in my life I got to play a game at launch. The hype and excitement of playing alongside everyone who was discovering the game at the same time as me was magical.

I joined a multiplier lobby on ps5. To my surprise, there was voice chat, and I spent the next eight hours playing through most of act 1 with some friendly fellows from across the world.<p>Eventually there was a sex scene, and the host graciously enabled the setting to let us all watch.<p>&quot;Multiplayer voyeurism&quot; wasn’t on my bingo card for 2023, but it was an interesting experience.<p>When I was 11 or so, I used to play StarCraft 1 custom games. Some of the maps rewarded the players by revealing a smutty image in the minimap if you won. It was funny seeing everyone suddenly go idle for a couple minutes after winning the map. Usually everyone disconnects right away. Somehow this reminded me of that.

I feel… mixed about BG3. Mostly it’s 5e’s fault. The combat is bad. The stats used in game are really stupidly balanced. The game is very easy and full of cluttersome mechanics that don’t matter much. Divinity 2 was way better as an rpg.<p>The romance has basically no agency and it’s weird that multiple side characters want to fuck you out of nowhere before the person people are identifying as your partner. Frankly the sexual tone of the game is super weird. It’s very tame despite how horny everyone at least for the characters I chose.<p>The story doesn’t offer you many forks to branch off of. Act 2 is particularly disappointing in this regard.<p>Act 3 is kind of slog of ticking off boxes and losses the appeal that Act 1 offered imo.<p>Stopping leveling up at level 12 near the beginning of Act 3 was super lame.<p>Several character arcs felt extremely underdeveloped (mol, Arabella, zevlor, karlach).<p>It’s still pretty good though. Good writing and good production values can carry it. Divinity 2 with BG3 production values would have been much better though imo.

I feel like there must be something odd about me, because I just could not get into it. Campy story&#x2F;unfunny humour, slow paced&#x2F;turn paced combat, confusing UX with a million options&#x2F;choices, and unclear overall guidance of what to do at any time. Maybe I&#x27;m too old for these games.

It has been such a blast to play this with some friends. It&#x27;s been like DND sessions without the stress of remembering things or DMing too hard. It&#x27;s actually been difficult to get them back to the table because of just how well polished everything in this game is. Really a pretty excellent intro into TTRPG though one must bring a little bit less save scuming and realism to a real DM.<p>What an incredible piece of art that team made.

The only problem I have with BG3 is now it has (hopefully temporarily) ruined everything I&#x27;ve tried to play after. I just started in on Rogue Trader and so far I&#x27;m enjoying it so I hope the &quot;Nothing can compare to BG3&quot; phase has passed for me.

Really good game, I would give it an 8&#x2F;10. But the fact that it&#x27;s considered a &#x27;masterpiece&#x27; is more of an indictment to the industry at its current state rather than saying much about the quality of the game itself. I had a lot of gripes:<p>1. Last act was mostly a chore<p>2. The plot was a mess, you don&#x27;t have to tie everything into a single path ending up having to come up with ridiculous shenanigans. Also they threw every part of Forgotten Realms lore into a melting pot.<p>3. The writing was quite disappointing most of the time as well. I can&#x27;t stand characters in a medieval setting saying &quot;Wow&quot; multiple times in a row or &quot;f*ck&quot; and acting like emotionally stunted teenagers. Also the fact that every companion wanted to have sex with my avatar for no reason was very annoying.<p>4. Even though it&#x27;s praised for its polish, it has a LOT of bugs. Some of them game breaking or locking you out of storylines&#x2F;options.<p>Mind you, BG2 is my favorite game of all time.

Something I want to highlight here: no DRM of any kind and support for LAN connections.

Larian studio is really a great story. From community-funded beginnings with Divinity, its success yielding Divinity II and both of those putting Larian in a position to get the BG3 job I assume is really motivating for independant gaming studios. All the praise is well deserved

Glad Alan Wake 2 did so well. Brilliant game.

2023 has been the best year for me in gaming. I was a &quot;patient gamer&quot;, always trailing the latest games by about ten year. But, being a huge fan of BG2, I couldn&#x27;t not play BG3 at launch. So I picked it up and immediately dumped 100+ hours in. It was so good I couldn&#x27;t put it down.<p>After that I thought, why not try some other &quot;newer&quot; games? Since then, I picked up and played Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty, Persona 5 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Each close to 100 hours, and each far exceeded my expectations. What a blast! Thank you, BG3.

It&#x27;s also a victory for DRM-free because the game was in early access on GOG during development.

I&#x27;m kinda bummed that they didn&#x27;t get the music category award too.

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I feel like the only person on the internet who doesn&#x27;t like BG3.<p>The turn-based combat made the game really tedious. The 3D camera made me want to throw something at the monitor. The story is awful. The companions are unlikable and hypersexual. The environments are often so over the top they wrap around into boorishness. The reddit-style humor (like the &quot;poop knife&quot;) was just completely inappropriate. The unfinished state and constant patches made me feel like I was doing QA for free.<p>I loved BG2, but this wasn&#x27;t what I wanted at all.

It helps that Baldur’s Gate 3 is the safest way to get laid (or even married) in 2023. I found those romantic quest lines quite satisfying.<p>Even without the sex and romance, I would rank it as the best single player gaming experience for me, since Arkham Asylum.

I&#x27;ve played dos and dos2 and I liked them(well I enjoyed dos&#x27;s combat system more than dos2 but I loved playing them both in general), I&#x27;ve never played any DnD games, should I buy bg3?

Big3 stage mass walkout in protest against rising standards?

Pikmin is a strategy game? Damn, there are not even mentions of any strategy game in there.

i have a feeling we&#x27;re going to be seeing a lot more bears in videogames in response to this

No Linux support yet? I suppose I&#x27;ll wait until the game is finished before I buy it.<p>Its nice companies give us such obvious indicators of quality.

Once they release a version for MacBook M3 I’m going to buy a MacBook only for that :)

I love RPGs but I think this got more praise than it deserved. At its best it is a telltale game. At its worst, it’s a slow walk through bugs, bad dice rolls, save scumming, and watching the developers, fix everything all over again, only to create new bugs every time.<p>I got through act one and didn’t want to play anymore. There were too many bugs, and the game is an active development as if it were in beta. The game was in beta for years before it got to this state.<p>Save scumming 75% off the time because almost everything needs a 15 or higher, or spending an hour on a 20 roll treasure chest, or needing so many successful swings to complete a battle is not my idea of fun.<p>Loading a save took over a minute sometimes<p>I thought it was sloggy and buggy.<p>The characters were fawning over me, although I barely talked to them.<p>Dragon age origins did it SO much better.