Highlights
- Former BioWare developer David Gaider praised Baldur's Gate 3 as a worthy successor to Baldur's Gate 2, commending the game's resurrection of the original's feeling and the love put into its creation.
- Despite being only available for PC currently, Baldur's Gate 3 has been a massive success, with over 875,000 simultaneous players on Steam at its launch, and potentially even more on GOG.
- Gaider acknowledged that Baldur's Gate 3 is not perfect, citing bugs, issues with romances, and a lack of a better epilogue. However, he still considered the game a monumental achievement for the industry, proving that characteristics such as a silent protagonist and turn-based combat can still succeed in modern titles.
The former BioWare developer David Gaider recently played Baldur’s Gate 3 and defended the game as a worthy successor to Baldur’s Gate 2. Several critics hailed Baldur’s Gate 3 as one of the best RPGs of 2023, but it’s always reassuring to see someone who participated in the development of the franchise having such a positive opinion about the title.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest successes of 2023, despite only being available for PC at the moment. The game managed to have over 875,000 simultaneous players on Steam during the height of its launch. Considering that the title was also launched on GOG, the actual number of players may be even higher.
Now, the former BioWare narrative designer and writer David Gaider, who is known for working on many popular games, including Baldur’s Gate 2, gave his opinions about the new title. Gaider affirmed that Larian’s new game resurrects the feeling of playing BG2 in every way and that a lot of love clearly went into creating the game. He also cited that Baldur’s Gate 3 succeeds despite having some of the characteristics that he often heard were incompatible with modern titles, such as having a silent protagonist or turn-based combat. However, Gaider did not think BG3 was perfect. He cited quite a few bugs, the construction of the romances, and the lack of a better epilogue as some aspects of the experience that could be improved.
Gaider worked on BioWare from 1999 to 2016, being a writer for titles like BG2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins. After leaving the company, he worked on Beamdog for two years and then co-founded Summerfall Studios, which released Stray Gods recently. Stray Gods is an urban fantasy RPG about singing and was delayed to avoid clashing with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3.
At the moment, BG3 is only available for PC, but it’ll be out for PS5 in September. Unfortunately, the development for Xbox seems somewhat troubled as the title would need gameplay feature parity on both of Microsoft’s consoles, and the Xbox Series S did not appear powerful enough for Larian Studios to offer split-screen co-op. However, Microsoft recently allowed Larian to move forward with plans to launch the game on the console without the feature to speed up its release roadmap. Hopefully, there’s still a chance that Baldur’s Gate 3 could include a split-screen mode on Xbox Series S in the future.
Baldur's Gate 3 is out now for PC with a PS5 version releasing on September 6. An Xbox version is also in development.
