During a Steam broadcast that I can't for the life of me find an archived copy of, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke and famous dungeon master Matt Mercer demonstrated that, yep, Baldur's Gate 3 is a Larian RPG.
The Divinity: Original Sin RPGs let players exploit physics to, for example, solve every combat encounter by using telekinesis to drop heavy objects on their enemies, and Baldur's Gate 3 is similarly sandboxy. On the stream, clipped by Twitter user Asarge, Mercer builds four impossibly tall stacks of crates and climbs to the highest where he stands teetering above a keep's ramparts.
For a seasoned dnd professional stacking 45 crates to vault over a castles ramparts is an obvious solution#BaldursGate3 pic.twitter.com/6dJcvcF03kAugust 3, 2023
Mercer, who plays Minsc in Baldur's Gate 3, then calmly fires an Arrow of Transposition over the keep's wall, teleporting himself over its natural moat.
- Baldur's Gate 3's accidental PS5 release of Patch 8 has the theorycrafters in a flurry—though I'm just glad D&D's blade cantrips are officially here
- Baldur's Gate 3 modder says the community's been making 'huge strides' towards custom campaigns: 'I think we'll see many of them refined, improved, and released this year'
Baldur's Gate 3 hasn't been out of early access for long, and it's very big, so I suspect we'll see a lot more physics-based problem solving to come, and other fun ways to exploit high level spells and items.
We're liking the D&D RPG a lot so far, but still have a long way to go before we see its end. I've played over 10 hours in my main save, and still haven't left the first act. I haven't even tried stacking a bunch of crates on top of each other yet.
Mercer's an appropriate Baldur's Gate 3 promo figure: Aside from appearing in the game, he DMs in D&D Twitch streaming outfit Critical Role, which has inarguably played a role in D&D's resurgence of popularity—the last time we caught a glimpse of Twitch channel revenue numbers, we learned that the group was the site's biggest earner.
