Baldur’s Gate 3: Gameplay reveal at PAX East 2020

At PAX East 2020, Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay is revealed to the world with Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke on deck to showcase it, accompanied by Jesse Cox. After quite an impressive cinematic with a light touch of gore, we dive right into the character screen.

We can see there’s character customization, though for the presentation, we are taken along with a premade character. You can expect a variety of races, with halfling, halfdrow and standard human being some of the other choices you can get. There are 6 classes shown for this presentation: wizard, cleric, fighter, ranger, rogue, warlock. Astarion also has a sub-race of high elf.

There are dialogue choices present, with some requiring dice rolls as checks, just like regular Dungeons & Dragons. It seems a bit of a shame that your point of view character isn’t voiced when they regularly are, so we’ll see if this will change for the future.

The combat system is quite interesting, working like how a tabletop session would be. You’re allowed to toss anything on hand – even your boots! – and shove enemies off high places. You can interact with the environment, like setting your bow on fire, or casting a spell on terrain and see how it reacts. At one point, Feather Fall was used to jump off a tall cliffside, and no fall damage was taken thanks to the buff.

The camera seems quite free, allowing you to look around the visible areas. This should be incredibly useful in combat, which at present, has values taken directly from the book. As Swen demonstrates in the first battle, it can be quite brutal, so an easier and/or more balanced mode is definitely in the works. Hilariously enough, it would seem that NPCs you meet can refer to a prior death as in the case of a recruitable character, though we wouldn’t know how far that applies while the build is still in early access.

Incidentally, friendly fire is possible, so do be careful. You can toggle the turn-based mode at any time, so you can use it to sneak up on enemies for initiative! It’s also helpful if you need to make your way out of a trapped room. As you might expect, sticking to the shadows means it’ll be much easier for you to sneak around.

Setting up camp seems to be a toggle button, so you can rest at any point. You can chat up with your companions, as well. Your characters are fairly independent from each other, as they can be in separate places at the same time. So you can explore different areas of the same place, or have another character enter combat first before the others. Restatting companions will be possible, with class changes under discussion. Check out the various UI elements!

A lot of things possess HP values, which is something you can consider exploring in the game proper. Right now, discussion will only be on the revealed companions, so if you were hoping for certain cameos or NPCs, no information on that is currently available. There’s also the question about alignments, which are made to sound not strictly black and white, but nevertheless, a character with a Good alignment will prefer to leave if you make too many decisions they are displeased with. No projected date has been given for a playable early access build, only stating it to be rolled out after bugs are ironed out.

As it is, it seems quite exciting, so we’ll look forward to more gameplay reveals for Baldur’s Gate 3 or news of a publicly playable build! Watch the full presentation below: