Thank you Larian Studios for providing the code for Baldur's Gate 3.

The scene opens in a dark room, all around the sides of that room are what look like pods, and in the center a large object that is shaped like an onion. A section of the wall opens and in floats a Mind-Flayer. As the creature approaches the center of the room, one of the pods open revealing a captured female Githyanki. The Mind-Flayer continues past, paying no attention to anything but what lies in front of it. It lands in front of the large object and holds out its hand. The object opens, exposing a pool with what look like tadpoles swimming inside of it. The Mind-Flayer reaches in and takes out one of the tadpoles, then turning its attention to the Githyanki approaches her. The tentacled monstor holds the tadpole near to the Githyanki's eye and it comes alive, attaching itself and then moving in behind her eye. Once its job is finished, the Mind-Flayer turns and heads back to the pool, pulls out another tadpole and brings it over to you. At this point you can see what nasty little creatures these are as it attaches itself to you.

Thus you are introduced to the opening of Baldur's Gate 3, after that opening scene and a few more minutes of cinematics, you are finally brought to the character creation screen. The game is based on Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (D&D 5e) rules, and if you are familiar with those character creation will be familiar. If you have never played or know the rules of D&D 5e, the character creation is very easy and the system will make suggestions on what options to choose. There are a lot of options to possibly choose from. The choices that you have to chose from are Name, Gender, Origin, Race, Class, Background, and Abilities. You do have some character design choices, but some of those are limited as well, like voice.

Name and Gender are pretty self-explanatory, you can name your character whatever you want and then either pick male or female or "non-binary/other". Background gives you proficiency with certain skills, giving you a small bonus in them whenever you use them. There are eleven races that you can choose from: Elf, Tiefling, Drow, Human, Githyanki, Dwarf, Half Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Dragonborn, and Half-Orc. Each race provides different bonuses to the character, like humans get a +1 to all stats, and elves get immunity to sleep and +2 to a specific stat. Most races also have sub choices, like if you choose elf, you can either be a high elf or a wood elf which change the bonuses that the race gets. I have not tried all the races, but each one I have tried has had these options. Then you get to choose your class; there are twelve classes to choose from: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Depending on which option for class you choose, it will give you stats based on what the class requires and allow. You are free to change the stats afterwards, so you can make a wizard that has high strength if you so desire, though you will hurt all your other stats. It will also allow you to add a +2 to one of your stats and a +1 to another stat.

Another option that you will be given instead of making your own custom character, you can choose one of the pre-built characters. Each of the characters already has a storyline they are involved with and goals that they want to pursue. It is not necessary to pick a pre-made character in order to follow their stories as these are the main characters that you can end up recruiting during the story if so desired. Before you decide, each of the characters also have a small movie you can watch to get a feel for the character and find out how they ended up where they did when you run across them in the world. They also have an optional character called the Dark Urge, this character is custom but throughout the game it will provide different options that are usually rather violent in nature.

Once you finish with your character build, you will be given control of your newly created character. The beginning area is designed as a tutorial for how the game mechanics work from interacting with objects or people, to using the functions of your quick bar at the bottom of the screen. As you go along icons will appear along the side of the screen with options to check out the tutorials; this gives you the freedom of stopping to read the tutorial if you so desire or just skip it entirely if you already know how the mechanics works; however, some of the tutorials will pop up in the middle of the screen if you get to an area that you cannot get past without using certain skills. Once you get through the tutorial area, then the game really opens up to its full potential.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a true open world RPG, and almost every choice you make will affect it one way or the another. Do you want to help save a group of refugees, or do you want to help slaughter them? Do you want to talk your way into a goblin town or do you want to rid the world of these goblins? Do you help save a druid sanctuary or do you help their enemies find and destroy it? All these and more are valid options that you get to choose while you make your way through the world. You will find allies that will help you in battle and ones that will help you outside of battle. You can romance your companions or you can make them hate you if you so desire. There is very little that you cannot do in this game.

A vast majority of the characters throughout the world you interact with will only give one line and you will not have any speaking options but main characters and companions will have many. Depending on some of your creation choices, some characters will have extra options for dialogue. Some characters you can persuade to tell you secrets or intimidate them into doing so. You can talk your way into a hostile area so they will not attack you or you can just outright be aggressive towards them and attack them immediately. Whenever you try to talk someone into doing things your way (whether through persuasion, intimidation or deception) the dialogue choice will tell you which skill will be used. When you click on that choice, a d20 will appear on screen with a number above it. The number is what you will need to roll on the d20 to either tie or beat; if you do beat the number then your action will succeed and you will either get past that point or find out you still need to persuade them more. But if you fail, the consequences could be you just can't go down that dialogue tree to being attacked right then and there.

As you wander throughout the world, every once in awhile you will see what looks like a d20 appear above all the characters' in your groups heads. This is a perception roll to see if you can spot a hidden switch or enemy lurking somewhere in the dark. It will also show you traps or hidden treasures that you can easily miss. Almost everything can be interacted with; you can climb rocks, jump over pits, throw boxes, even put out fire with water barrels if the desire arises. Even in battle, sometimes objects within the area can be used to your advantage or the enemies'.

The fighting in Baldur's Gate 3 is turn based, when you get into a battle each character has an order in which they can take their turn. Each turn consists of a few actions: Move, Main Action, and Bonus Action; each action can be done in any order. Each character can only move so far and when you are moving them, it will draw a line in which the character will move. The character can only move as far as their movement bar allows and no further. The main action is usually either attack or cast magic, but there are other things that can be done as well. The bonus action is used for some skills that can be done quickly or drinking a potion to get some healing. Whenever you attack a target, you select the type of attack you want to do, then move the mouse to the target. The fighting system will highlight where your character will strike from and what percentage they have of hitting the target so you know what to expect before you confirm that is what you want to do. The terrain can also provide advantages and disadvantages to your party; having archers on higher ground will give them a better chance to hit the enemies below them.

The graphics in the Baldur’s Gate 3 are amazing. You can see far into the distance, see the running water, see NPCs (Non-player characters) or enemies from far away, or zoom in and see the details of the armor your character is wearing. The camera controls were a bit difficult to get use to at first; when you start off in an area, the camera is locked to the main character, but if you move it at all or switch characters the camera unlocks and then has to be moved manually until you press the home button on the keyboard then it again locks to the currently controlled character. There were also times where it was hard to select an enemy or item if they were too close together without messing with the camera for awhile as this caused me a few times to accidently target my own teammates with offensive spells. Another issue I ran into a few times were the cutscenes. Sometimes I just outright missed them and one of the characters would talk about something from a scene that I had never seen or another time I got a cut scene after I had a fight and removed a threat, then a cutscene with those characters that I had already dispatched ended up playing as though I was trying to sneak past them.

Baldur’s Gate 3 runs the entire spectrum of the scale of morality. In character creation, you can create a male, female, or non-binary character (only if you make a custom character). You can also choose genitalia, though you do have to option to keep it hidden. During gameplay you can choose to be as good or as evil as you want, you can forgive someone that wrongs you, or if you want you can slaughter them for even looking at you funny. It allows almost all options in that matter. You can side with the villians or protect the downtrodden from being sacrificed to them. You can be truthful, lie, save people, kill them, or leave them to their own fate. You can speak to a devil and agree to a contract. There are a few spots found with bloody altars to gods and goddesses, a scene or two of some sort of occult rituals, and a few spots with druidic symbols.

With the issue of violence, there is a lot of it. Violence against animals, violence against unhuman looking creatures, violence against human looking creatures, and even violence against humans. There is blood whenever your characters kill someone with physical weapons. It isn’t gory, just a pool of blood forms around the body. You can also kill people by pushing them off cliffs, dropping things on their head (like stalactites), exploding a barrel of oil that someone is standing nearby. You can pretty much kill anyone anyway. Swearing is another issue. One character you run across uses F**k a lot and I found another that used s**t. Often times though most of it I believe is in a different fantasy language like elven or dwarvish so while I believe that was the intent of the word I did not look it up so I don't really know if they were swear words.

One of the biggest moral issues is sex. I know that you can romance almost all the available companions and they even talk about sex randomly as you wander throughout the map. Its very easy to unlock romantic dialogue with the companions, especially if you are playing a good character. Very many times during my playthrough I had to turn down both male and female characters from pursing a relationship with my main character. I did manage to unlock one of the follower’s romance options, but from what I have seen gender does not matter in whether you want to romance a female or male companion. While I didn't personally run across any viewable sex scenes, I know that there is one that you have to do some pretty evil things in order to unlock it. There is also a sex scene where a shape shifting druid offers to turn into a bear.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fantastic game. The story is compelling, the fighting is challenging, and I enjoy the way it lets you come at a solution to an issue many different ways. There are definitely a few graphical and gameplay issues, but they do not break the game in any way and does not detract from the enjoyment of the story or the mechanics. It took me about 70 hours to complete and I most likely missed some quests along the way too.

As always, consider any appropriateness issues before making a choice as to play this game or not, but if the things mentioned do not bother you, then I think this would definitely be a good choice for any CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game) fan. Baldur’s Gate 3 will be changing over time, hopefully for the better.