Baldur's Gate 3 | Games of the Year 2023
This article discusses a minor spoiler, an item unrelated to the main quest appearing in the game's Act 3. Read at your own peril.
This is the least and most surprising Game of the Year piece I have ever written.
Coming into the year, I knew Baldur's Gate 3 would be my Game of the Year. It's the latest title in my favourite franchise, following up on my favourite games of all time.
But I also knew The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would be my Game of the Year. This is my favourite franchise, and the follow-up to my favourite games of all time... Right? Surely it is.
By the time Baldur's Gate 3 came out, I had poured 155 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, having replayed another 100+ hours of Breath of the Wild in preparation. These were pretty much the only games I had played by the time August arrived. I got a Zelda tattoo this year. That's how much I love this series.
Meanwhile, I had been following Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 closely since its reveal, had the privilege of getting access to events surrounding its development, had done a couple of interviews with the team, played its Early Access builds, and while I didn't want to admit it to myself, it wasn’t clicking. I was worried.
What if it didn't live up to my expectations? What if I got bored of it because I had already played it in Early Access? For most of Baldur's Gate 3's EA, I had trouble reconciling my idealised vision of the franchise with Larian's title. A sort of cognitive dissonance. Maybe it was its gameplay similarities with Divinity Original Sin, a series I never played in-depth for some inexplicable reason, or the absence of pausable real-time combat, or really just my own memories getting in the way.
Baldur's Gate has been a core part of
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