BALDUR'S GATE III

Larian consummates its long love affair with D&D

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Developer/publisher Larian Studios

Format PC, Stadia

Origin Belgium

Release TBA

The marriage of Larian Studios and Baldur’s Gate might seem one made in Celestia – aka, final resting place of the Lawful Good. Larian, after all, has already crafted perhaps the finest successor to BioWare’s sorely neglected party roleplaying series in the shape of Divinity: Original Sin II. Still, we must confess to a wriggling worm of doubt.

Larian’s Divinity games are celebrated as much for breaking the classic CRPG template as cleaving to it – consider the pandemonium of Divinity’s magic and element systems, whereby you’d cast fireballs to evaporate spilled blood, then poison the resulting steam so that undead characters regained health while walking through it. The game’s taste for knock-on effects is true to the tabletop roleplaying on which Baldur’s Gate is based, in which dungeon masters and players constantly test one another’s wits, but for some CRPG devotees, it was a bridge too far. In shouldering the burden of a direct successor to the ’90s games, due out this year in early access, will Larian be forced to rein in its knack for coordinated chaos?

The answer comes 45 minutes into our demo, when studio founder