Baldur’s Gate 3’s Patch 5 shows off the game’s defining principle

polygon.com:

As a storytelling medium, games are strange. In my day job, I tell students that the medium-specific dimension of games is that they respond to our choices in real time: you press a button, Mario jumps. You choose a line of dialogue, and a scene can suddenly turn violent or comedic. This means that games, especially narrative-focused ones, are simultaneously a way for us to tell a story and a way for us to be told a story. Clara Fernández-Vara and Matthew Weise, in talking about world-building, call the world of a game a “story engine”: by creating a fleshed-out and engaging world, the designer builds story potential, which the player then “actualizes” through their play.

Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 is a perfect example of that in action: We can and do get heavily invested in making choices during play that matter to us, creating the story of “our” Tav as we go along. On the other hand, part of what makes that interesting is that a good chunk of the story — the overall plot, the setting, the supporting characters — has been made for us and is outside our control. We have fun playing our Dark Urge as a cutesy, murderous maniac, but also enjoy hearing bitchy twink Astarion mutter “I’m going to fucking kill you” at us after we force him on stage with a clown, or taking a shot every time the Klingon-esque Lae’zel calls someone an indecipherable githyanki neologism (“It is Wednesday, is’tik.”).

With the recently released Patch 5 for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian added an epilogue that thoroughly shows off this “tell your story/hear a story” dynamic.

[Ed. Note: Spoilers follow for acts 2 and 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3.]

Set six months after your party kills a giant, floating, princess-tiara-wearing brain and saves the city of Baldur’s