Veteran Bethesda Game Studios developer Bruce Nesmith, who worked on RPG genre gems like Skyrim, thinks that Baldur’s Gate 3 is “at the very top” when it comes to games based on Dungeons & Dragons – and there are good reasons why.
Speaking to FRVR during a recent podcast, Nesmith reveals as much, admitting that he’d say Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best attempt so far at faithfully computerizing the D&D experience. “I would absolutely put, right now, Baldur’s Gate 3 at the very top of the list.” He also praises Baldur’s Gate 2, a title that released in 2000. “That was two dozen years ago, and that was a fantastic game; I loved the heck out of that game.”
What makes Baldur’s Gate 3 stand out, though? One thing that certainly helps is how the current D&D ruleset was “modified to fit the necessities of the video game environment, so it’s not rigorously true to Fifth Edition,” according to Nesmith. “I think that’s wise,” states the RPG veteran. “Different play systems have different constraints and different needs, so you have to do different things for that.” As a fan of both D&D and Baldur’s Gate 3 myself, I get it.
“They put in as much as the actual 5E rules as they could functionally manage and still make a quality game, so it felt like what you’re familiar with, and that included turn-based combat, so that it felt like the turns on a tabletop game, so you could sit and think about things for a while – you didn’t have to get all hurried about making your decisions,” as Nesmith explains. That’s not the only part of a D&D game that Larian Studios aced, however.
“They tried to make as many decisions have meaning as possible while still telling a coherent story that came to a specific conclusion,” too. Nesmith shouts out some other wins on the Baldur’s Gate 3 developer’s part: “the quality of the graphics and the voice acting.” Although they’re “also wonderful things,” the rules and decision-making “are what really sold it. That’s what really said, ‘That’s as close as we’ve gotten to tabletop role-playing on a computer.'”
Not only does Baldur’s Gate 3 have a strong “synergy with the 5E rules, that really made it work,” but Larian Studios isn’t ashamed of its source material: D&D. “Obviously, they loved this project, they loved the game, and that came through. And they didn’t try to hide behind anything.” As Nesmith describes, that hasn’t historically been the case when it comes to video games based on D&D.
“One of the things that happened in the earlier years of role-playing games on a computer is that you’d often get a lot of inappropriate comedy poking fun at the game instead of poking fun with the game… and the monotonous grind of doing repetitive activities in order to get yourself up in level, and neither of those things are there in Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s absolutely comedy, but I never felt like I was grinding, not even once.”
I have to agree with Nesmith here. I love Baldur’s Gate 3 and am a dedicated frequenter of the Forgotten Realms via tabletop – Larian Studios undoubtedly got pretty much everything right with its digital iteration of the decades-old RPG.