At the 2023 Game Awards, many games were nominated for various categories. Particularly, Larian Studios’ game Baulder’s Gate 3 won the Game of the Year award. The other nominees for the prestigious award were Alan Wake 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Resident Evil 4 (the remake), and of course, Spider-Man 2. Every game shown at the awards were amazing in their own regard. However, the complaints from fans about Baulder’s Gate winning the game of the year are ridiculous. The decision was absolutely deserved, from the visuals and game play, to the character customization and outstanding characterization. I suppose now should also be a good time to give a spoiler warning for most of the plot and character backstories.

Let’s begin with some context of what Baulder’s Gate 3 is all about. It  starts with your character, either a custom character, a ‘dark urge’ character or one of the premade characters. There are some cutscenes showing a mutated tadpole being inserted into your eye by a creature with tentacles on its face. You eventually wake up in a grotesque ship. The walls and floor are made of flesh and to get to new rooms you peel back flesh doors. There are legged brains running around and  fires breaking out sporadically everywhere. While trying to make sense of your surroundings you meet a githyanki warrior, Lae’zel, and later you can save a half-elf, Shadowheart. Finally, you fight your way to the controls and teleport to a beach, crashing the ship. You survive only due to a mysterious force catching you at the last minute. Once you come to, the fleshy debris and flames from the crash surround you and you can find Shadowheart on the beach not too far from you. Ultimately, your goal is to find more companions and figure out what the tadpole in your head is, either trying to get it removed or embrace the powers it gives you.

As much as I’d love to explain the entire plot, we would be here forever. However, the rest of the game consists of three acts. Act One lets you either help the goblins which is considered evil  or help a grove of druids and tieflings which is considered good. Act Two is comprised of of you traveling to Moonrise Towers, where a cult is centralized, either through the shadow lands or underdark. After you either help the cult or eradicate it you head to Act Three which is where you finally make it to the city of Baulder’s Gate. Here you can either help the new dictator of the city or kill him, and then you will get to the final battle. In each act there are a plethora of interesting side quests that can completely change the course of your game, give you rare items, more companions or make your current companions more powerful. Throughout the story there are many major decisions you can make that can change the story each time you play as well.

Now, with the basics of the plot out of the way, the character stories are where I think the game truly shines. While there are ten companions and even more non-player characters with rich narratives, I’ll only focus on two: Gale and Shadowheart.

Firstly, Shadowheart is a half-elf cleric. While she is a cleric, it does not mean she is morally good. She has no problem with being rude to people or following you down an evil path. Asking her about herself leads to dead ends as she avoids questions, eventually with enough trust with her she tells the player that she has lost most of her early memories. When you first meet her, she has a small artifact with runes written on all twenty sides of the dodecahedron. She is secretive about it and gets upset if you press her about it. The goddess she worships is the Goddess of Darkness, Shar. She is nervous about revealing her worship of Shar, thinking the player will be upset at her for it. While in Act Two, you have to navigate through an abandoned temple of Shar, where Shadowheart can complete trials for her goddess and ultimately earn the rank of “Dark Justiciar”. When she earns this rank, Shar calls upon her to help take out a corrupt Mother Superior in one of Shar’s places of worship. If you take her to the Mother Superior and take her out like Shar asks, Shadowheart will be given a presence with Shar. During this, two people are revealed to her, shackled by runes. This is the final trial, Shar explains before restoring all of Shadowhearts memories. The people in front of her are her parents and they tell her they are so happy to see her. They call her by her birth name, Jenevelle, to which she insists that isn’t her name. Shars final request is for Shadowheart to kill her parents. If she does this, Shar is proud of her and once again takes away the memories of who her parents were and all of her life before Shar. This leaves the player as the only one who knows the truth of her past. From there she goes on to take over the position as Mother Superior, becoming the leader of Shar’s cloister.

On another hand, Gale is an adult human wizard who you find near the crash site in act one. He is stuck in a waypoint, and you can help him by pulling him out.

Right away he shows his vast knowledge by explaining where the tadpoles come from, the tentacle-faced alien you saw on the ship. They’re called mind flayers and he tells the player that unless the tadpoles  are removed you and all your companions from the ship will turn into one as well. While venturing with him, he will eventually reveal he has a ‘condition’, though he refuses to tell you anything specific. He requests an item imbued with magic to consume and urges the player that lives will be at stake if he fails to consume something. He is thankful if you give him an item and ask a few more times throughout the game, noting how each one is less and less effective. Eventually, he stops the whole group and confesses he needs to explain in detail about his condition. Gale reveals when he was a young wizard prodigy the Goddess of Magic, Mystra, made him one of her chosen and mentored him personally. Gale wanted to truly impress Mystra after she denied him further access to the weave, the origin of magic. He attempted to bring her a dangerously powerful tome, containing magic from a different source than the weave. However, before he could, the tome expelled an orb of magic from the Karsus Weave, a weave artificially created by a greedy wizard of the past. When Mystra found out about his actions, she cast him away, revoking his title as chosen and refusing to speak with him ever again. That is the reason behind his consumption of raw magic from items, and explains how the items are not working as well anymore. Later, just before Act Two, you encounter a renowned wizard and mentor to Gale, Elminster. He speaks to Gale, explaining that Mystra sent him. As Elminster explains his visit, that Mystra will consider granting forgiveness to Gale if he uses the orb to destroy the Cult (and himself along with it), Gale is conflicted. Before leaving, Elminster casts a spell that stabilizes the orb, giving Gale the choice of when and where it detonates. For the rest of the game, he juggles with struggling to accept his possible early death, and feeling slightly melancholic about all of it. The game can end with him blowing up the orb, but that’s not the only way. If you have Gale craft a new Karsus Crown, the item the greedy wizard made, you can encounter Mystra and surrender it to her. She will then remove the orb and cast him down to the mortal realm again. His entire history with Mystra is more complicated than how I have explained it, however I didn’t want to take up too much of your time.

Overall, for the 2023 Game of the Year award could not have been given to a better game. Baulder’s Gate 3 is revolutionary in both how replayable it is and the rich character stories. While all the games nominated were amazing in their own right, it is hard to debate that the award should have been given to a different game.

Works Cited

Baldur’s Gate 3 Wiki, Baldur’s Gate 3 Wiki, 14 Aug. 2023, bg3.wiki/.