My journey with has been an eventful one. First I fell off of the game because 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I hate playing at my PC, then I switched to Xbox and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:lost access to my PC campaign, then I started a co-op campaign with my partner and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:immediately hated it, then I 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:started a new solo campaign⛄ and finally, afte🦄r a long weekend of playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and doing nearly nothing else, reached the third act.
Now I get what everybody means when they say that the third act feels like a different game from the first two. When the game first came out, people were often saying this because of the many technical issues alongside a general dissatisfaction with the way certain narrative arcs concluded. But it’s now six months after release, and after a lot of hard work on Larian’s part, a lot of that has been patched and changed. The core of the act hasn’t been altered though, and it’s the clever writing that makes this final third feel so different. Baldur’s Gate 3 pulls off a risky gambit of establishing the rules of the game throughout the first two acts, and then using your e🐻xpectations o༒f the medium against you as you begin barrelling towards the end.
Making Rules
Video games,𝔉 like any medium, have their own specific design languages and rules that players assume will be present across every game. Some of these are basic, and some are more complex. For example, people assume you’ll be able to save a game, that certain buttons will always be used to confirm selections, that the controls you use in the game will always stay the same, puzzles always have a solution, following main quest lines will progress the story, and so on.
Most imp🧔ortantly though, players usually as⭕sume that when they’re told a mechanic works a certain way, it’s not going to change part of the way through. Very often, these rules are taken for granted, and it’s easy to forget that these things are intentionally implemented by developers because it’s what players expect.
It’s the same within each individual game, as well. Every game sets up its own specific rules, indicates what’s possible within its constraints, and that frames the way the player sees the rest of the game. Your expectations of what ca൩n happen later is informed by what you believe to be possible within the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is notorious for the am🍃ount of freedom it gives its players to be creative in how they solve problems, and also for how swiftly 💟it punishes people who don’t think their plans through. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is no exce🌠ption. One rule it establishes is that your camp is a safe space. You can voluntarily go there for a long rest, and very often those rests will lead to story progression, whether that progression is in the form of Shadowheart and Lae’zel swinging at each other, or a hot, winged devil popping up out of nowhere to bully Wyll. You’ll be treated to cutscenes, but you’re not going to have to sleep with one eye open in case you get ambushed in the middle of the night. Another rule is that while NPCs may lie to you, you’ll generally be allowe🐟d an insight check to see if you pick up on it. You believe that while NPCs will lie to you, you can trust the game to tell you the truth.
Breaking Rules
Then you get to the third act, and you’re immediately thrown off balance. From the moment you leave the Shadow-Cursed Lands, something is off. You start the act in your camp without voluntarily choosing to go there, and that’s one rule broken. You might not know quite what you’re supposed to do since you were just plonked there against your will, but after a little wandering and chatting with your companions, you might go for a long rest. Another rule is broken here: your camp gets attacked by githyanki, which has never happened before, and you didn’t even know it could happen.
And then the shapeshifters are introduced, and everything grows even more unsettling. Narratively, we see that the shapeshifter and Bhaalist Orin the Red intentionally uses her powers to disorient and threaten characters like Gortash, who will voluntarily admit to your party that Orin is trying to freak him out. ♛Those shapeshifters violate another unspoken assumption: people are not who they seem to be.
The thing is that you, the player, didn’t even know that shapeshifters were in the equation or existed at all in this world. You’d assumed that yes, people might be lying to you, but they aren’t disguised as somebody else. Now, anybody could be a shapeshifter, manipulating and toying with you. From the cheerful smith who ꧑offers to make you a weapon specific to you, to the people who stay at your camp and break bread with you, anyone could be a shapeshifter. You have been in constant danger the whole♏ time, and you didn’t even know it.
In that same vein is the person livin💛g in your Astral Prism, who turns out not to be the cute blue-haired girl I painstakingly created, but a big, tentacled Mindflayer who calls himself the🌸 Emperor. Even the person who the game presented to you as your Guardian has been hiding things from you the whole time, and you may not feel like they have your best interests at heart. Depending on how much you trusted them, this can feel like a huge betrayal – yet another rule broken and another expectation subverted.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was designed to give players the space to develop those expectations, and then it intentionally subverts them. It’s all in service of making the player feel as paranoid and distrustful of the game as your character is of the world they live in. It ramps up the drama and the stress, telling you that yes, anything can happen, and the developers ar﷽e willing to break the rules that you, the player, took for granted. It’s rare to see games of this scope take risks like this, and I absolutely lov🅘e it.
Trying To Be Good With An Evil Party Is Impossible In Baldur's Gate 3
Minthara and Astarion, theꦛ two devils on mꩲy shoulder.
