Why Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterclass in game writing

Baldur's Gate 3 is an absolute masterclass in game writing. From fulfilling the story's moral arc to creating complex characters to using subtext in dialogue, I break down the literary and screenwriting techniques that make this game a storytelling masterpiece, so that you can use them in your own game writing.
🚨 Massive spoiler warning: Only watch if you've completed the game! 🚨
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[@MorganaEvelyn]

Lae'zel had an incredible arc. Loved your video thank you for sharing your content from one Aussie to another ❤️

[@KatClay]

Lae'zel is basically me 😅 Thanks for watching, I really appreciate it.

[@-Lindol-]

You’re right to point out that Baldur’s Gate III does an excellent job of Promise, Progress, Payoff, while still giving the player full agency in the story with the power to choose not just how the main story ends, but how all of the cascading stories end.

[@KatClay]

I love how you've summarised it there. It's so hard to do this with player agency in the mix. Thanks so much for checking out my video. 🤗

[@gamersinger5118]

@@KatClay You think "this" is a masterclass in game writing? Go play Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape Torment. The list goes on and on. BG3 is very lackluster compared to those games in terms of writing and storytelling.

[@fantasyfinal89]

It definitely has one of the best writing in all the rpg video games ive played, especially the prose, dialogue and the stories in the books you found. The plot may not be the most interesting, but the prose are up there with books I read in real life.

[@KatClay]

Yeah the plot feels a bit borrowed from DOS II, but I'm not complaining. Some of the lines though, oof.

[@kvd9600]

You are on point with this! The narrative is captivating and the fact that it branches to different endings depending on your actions is mind-blowing to pull off on this scale.

[@KatClay]

Thankyou so much! I kinda want to look behind the curtain and see their narrative design process because the branch mapping must be huge.

[@NoName-ym5zj]

You might be surprised, but if you don't try to convince your companions and just say something like "It's your choice, I will support you regardless", they usually go for the "right" option.

[@KatClay]

I actually had a point on this in the video but cut it out due to time! I think it's quite profound to be able to ask characters what they want to do, and the outcome be determined by how you've been roleplaying.

[@PaulRGauthier]

I literally just talked about this :)

[@sepulcher_stalker]

I think something really interesting about the writing of BG3 is that the evil choices are ALWAYS the easiest ones. Like it's easy to take that power that's handed to you, but it's so much more rewarding and beneficial to be good. I've always really liked that. You NEVER have to go out of your way to be evil because being evil is always easier

[@KatClay]

I love this! I'm planning on doing an evil playthrough soon with a durge character... I'm interested in how the narrative changes but yes, doing good is hard, and it comes at a cost in this game.

[@JustinB_Oz]

I put it on par with Disco but more memorable characters. The amount of choice and quality in every decision is mind boggling

[@KatClay]

They're so memorable. Like Disco, it just lives rent free in my mind. Karlach's squizzy little dance is the best tho :)

[@JustinB_Oz]

@@KatClay yes the dance is the best. She has so much sass

[@PaulRGauthier]

Fantastic analysis! But you wanna know another subtext that you didn't mention? You did mention it as a central theme, but misseded how it's actually encoded into the DNA of the game: freedom and agency. In most of the companions' big scenes you shouldn't try to influence them, or only minimally. You should give them agency, stand back with humility and trust and let them decide for themselves. Most of the time, they make the "right" choice. You see this time and time again in Baldur's Gate 3, but Shadowheart is my big example. The best course of action is not to try to influence her decision, but to shut up and respect her freedom to decide for herself. Same thing with letting Lae'zel do the talking with other Gith. I agree with everything you've said here, but I want to add some observations... You urge other game devs to take a lesson from BG3, but that's not gonna just happen. What I mean is that Larian is absolutely *committed* to storytelling, it's Swen and the team's driving passion. One either has that passion or one doesn't. I'm pretty sure you understand and agree, now that I've said it :) And it's not just about the writing. Larian is a team with an artistic vision and they shown how much they respect and honour their artists and creatives inside the organisation, from writers to actors to visual artists to musicians. That's very rare in the entertainment industry and in gaming in particular. Also, when it comes to both game design and also writing, the attention to detail in BG3 is mind blowing. Take for example, reading books and piecing together all the little stories of the different inhabitants of Faerun. One of my favourites is the heartbreaking story that you piece together about Lenore, the former inhabitant of the Arcane Tower. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a just master class. It's a masterpiece.

[@KatClay]

Love this so much! I actually cut out a bit on character agency in the video in the interest of time, but it's such a unique part of the game. Imagine a game where you can give control to characters You've shaped through choice, so that they can make their own choices. 🤯 You've really thoughtfully articulated a lot of great ideas about the storytelling here. I really wish devs would take note of this especially after the well deserved GOTY but you're right that they probably won't 🤦‍♀️. My bad habit is to rush through the lore books, but reading them more fully fleshes out the story and also offers hidden quests and puzzles. So on my current playthrough I've really been enjoying revisiting them and picking up so many of the broader clues dropped in the books of the first act. Thanks again for this lovely comment, makes my day to talk to someone engaging with the story on a deep level.

[@pandoraeeris7860]

Maybe you can work on BG4!

[@KatClay]

That would be the dream! 🤩 Baldur's Gate 1 was my gateway into RPGs.

[@CarloGoiff666]

test

[@JustinB_Oz]

It works

[@Rzepik]

I liked the game overall because of the gameplay and encounter design, but... the writing? I feel like the main storyline was twisted and undermined by the mid-development changes. Illithid tadpole especially - I would never thought brain worms can be a pure win and a source of power with zero negative consequences.

[@KatClay]

Yeah I was always suspicious of the brain worms and their uh, owner... But maybe I've seen Wrath of Khan too many times.

[@Reon_L]

I sincerely hope this take is ironic. There are so many contradictions and leaps of logic, not to mention cringe-worthy dialog, in BG3 that it stands as one of the worst written games I've ever played.

[@KatClay]

Ahh well, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

[@daviru02]

I agree with the amount of choices in this game for dialogue, but some of it was so basic and cringe. But the combat more than makes up for it. Solasta and this game both suffer from the same issues and their strengths are also the same imo.

[@KatClay]

Yeah the combat is awesome. There's a lot of freedom to play it however you want.

[@Honyakusha]

Character designs are exquisite, banters between them are humorous, but for overall story and side ones, there is no way BG3 is a "masterclass" in game writing.

[@-Lindol-]

Do you have a rebuttal against the points made in the video? Because Bg3’s writing is definitely in the highest echelons of game writing, especially since BG3 gives more freedom to the player to ruin the story than the other best written games do.

[@KatClay]

I feel that everyone is entitled to their opinion on the game, but I'm genuinely interested in what critiques people would have of the writing in BG3?

[@Honyakusha]

@@KatClay A reminder, I'm just against the "masterclass" in game writing evaluation and found the overall writing pretty good and enjoyed my 300+hours of time. That being said, slow pacing was one of the problems, where it ended one of our mp sessions and inconsistency of tone was another. Overall, BG3 was my GoTY for sure, yet I don't think a game messes up with pacing and tone should be hailed as a masterclass in writing.

[@KatClay]

@@Honyakusha those are all fair points and tone is especially hard to get right when you're dealing with multiple writers across a complex project. Appreciate you taking the time with my video and to leave your thoughts.

[@kvd9600]

​@@Honyakusha then in your logic, no other CRPG will fall under that class since having player agency means that stories will change their tone. And CRPGs are generally slow-paced, like really slow. In fact, BG3 was way newbie-friendly coz if you play Planescape Torment or PF then you will be bored to death. This genre of game likes to throw in narratives left and right. And I have been playing this genre since BG1/2 and DAO - both of which are masterpieces in their own right. And I can confidently say that BG3 is on par if not better which should be obvious since Larian's DOS2 is a masterpiece as well.

[@scion64]

It's most certainly not a masterclass in writing unless you haven't experienced anything prior to this game as your only experience with RPGs and it definitely falls short if you get into other mediums outside of gaming as well.

[@-Lindol-]

BG3 only falls short since it doesn’t put you on rails strong enough to stop you from ruining the story by being a murder hobo. Do you have specific rebuttal’s on the video itself? Because saying “nuh huh, bg3 writing bad” with nothing to back it up is, well, bad writing.

[@scion64]

@@-Lindol- There would be far too much to get into. The characters specifically are very shallow. Their story lines are rehashed story lines already done and not even done as well. The one story line that actually did have legs because it was masterful at it's ability to give the player just enough info without giving away too much, which was Wylls, was overwritten with (and this is self admitted on the writers part) a story that was much more in your face and direct with Wylls hero story because the writers believed (and in some ways fairly so) that players made surface level perceptions of his bravado coupled with his heroism being the result of his ties to Mizora which he kept under wraps and that too is something that players jumped on to tie the two together as if Wyll was a liar and blowhard rather than being probably the best representation of a hero amongst the companions. That man went through some serious .... and was treated like a liar bent on a revenge arc while using powers that weren't his own as if somehow that made a difference to his heroism... sad and such a waste of an actual good example of great writing. Lae'zel is extremely shallow (Fair enough she's Gith so it sort of makes sense), Shadowheart probably has the most depth, Karlach is a trope.. some depth but a trope, Astarion is an even worse trope, Gale is also shallow, leaving what really? The main plot? The main plot that really amounts to having two to three arcs leading up to the same outcomes? The emperor does have a decent story line, that I can give you and Orin was the best of the villains but unfortunately they didn't spend enough time on her history and therefore she had even less depth than the companions obviously.

[@KatClay]

You're more than entitled to your opinion on the game, but I would respectfully disagree. As for my chops as an RPG player, I've been playing CRPGs since Baldur's Gate 1, including DOS II and at least 500 hours into Skyrim and Fallout, amongst many others. I'm also an award winning author and have published two best selling TTRPGs.

[@kvd9600]

@@KatClay Nicely said!

[@scion64]

@@KatClay There is a sea of award winning authors out there. The examples you give of CRPGs are a drop in the bucket of RPGs, in fact, most of them aren't even great ones. A seasoned writer would be able to correctly point out the flaws that definitely exist within this work. You're entitled to your opinion as well that this is somehow a 'master class' in writing despite many other titles existing that are far better written. BG3 is ok. It's just not great. There are greats out there. That said, as a game BG3 was one of the better RPGs to come out for some time.

[@derlon858]

It is just average, honestly the whole time playing it i was missing baldurs gate 2 and pillars of eternity, because this game cant do one thing well, it is not immersive, the rolls and narrator, the bad writing and the wow based zones with quest givers and singular solutions, and the dialogues written mostly by generational twitter addicts / leftists, it is in comparison to the other crap games of our era: good, but thou being the best smelling tourd in the yard aint something to be proud about, every character with a few exceptions makes me think it was written by some goofball that is playing their first dnd session in their life and know nothing at all about the original baldurs gate games, i played fan made nwn2 modules that had more heart and better writting than this. In game mechanics the rolls are busted the DCs are too high for the sake of being too high, the spells are crap in comparison to planescape torment wich was a game that came out when we was toddlers, and the amount of magical items given bust the whole balance of a newer system that is suposed to have no magical items at all for players in comparison to 3.5 wich had up to +5 itens with various effects you could add instead of creating bizarre conditions for triggering just because they are too dumb to get the math that it is busted to give a +1 weapon or armor to a low level character.

[@KatClay]

Appreciate your thoughts but I do really love the game. Pillars of Eternity is excellent and I did enjoy it a lot. But the funniest thing about your comment is that you think I was a toddler when Planescape came out. 😂

[@martink2875]

How much do they pay you that you find it worth your while to sell your soul with such lies? BG3 companion's writing is one of the most overdone-yet-shallow, bland, uninspiring, and hamfisted edgy thing that putridly 'graced' the world of gaming since ever.

[@-Lindol-]

Did you play the game? The writing is a lot better than even the heights of the Mass Effect Trilogy. Tell me what part of the video is a lie, and where the writing in the game specifically fell short.

[@KatClay]

Lol absolutely nothing, I paid for the game out of my own pocket. I'm an independent reviewer. Not sure if I've signed a contract with Raphael tho.

[@melteddali8000]

What did you find lacking? I can see being unimpressed with Halsin or Wyll's writing as both those characters felt unfinished and underwritten to varying degrees (Halsin has it the worst, but Wyll needs more the most given he's a main character) but I was satisfied with the writing for every other companion.

[@martink2875]

@@-Lindol- Edgy, cringe, copypaste demeanor of any and all companions may be good writing in your universe, but not anywhere else. Player-sexual blandness, instead of unique depth, with clear boundaries is writer's degeneracy. I could continue on and on, but you are clearly set in believing patterns such as Twilight being next Kurosawa. Mass Effect's hights, Madre Mia! Stop eating ice cream in winter, or whatever are you doing, you can't handle the brain freeze it gives you.

[@martink2875]

@@KatClay I believe you. And you apparently have good sense of humor. That makes the matter even worse. What a despair.