If you haven’t heard, Baldur’s Gate 3 is really good. Like, really good. As such, I knew I had to give the game a try, irrespective of the fact that I had never played a computer role-playing game (better known as a CRPG) before, and nor had I ever participated in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which from what I gathered was essentially what the game’s entire play-through simulated. I knew of both things, of course, as anybody even remotely interested in nerd culture and video games will have an awareness of both through osmosis. But not having any tactile experience with either is what gave me pause before I hit the check-out button on the Steam page. Mainly because I wasn’t sure if the learning curve would be too steep for someone like myself.
Still, I had a rule: if any game, indie or otherwise and regardless of the genre, had an aggregate score higher than a 95 with over fifty critical reviews, I needed to play it, and fast. No questions asked. With BG3 sitting comfortably at a 96 on OpenCritic with over one hundred official reviews from outlets — including our very own Nima’s, who gave the game a perfect score — my rule came into play. Problem was, I didn’t own a PC, and wasn’t entirely ready (yet) to splurge the 600+ Canadian dollars on a PS5. I could have waited until next year when the game is slated to come out on the Xbox Series X|S, but that was next year, and I wanted play the game now. This is where my impulse purchase during the summer of Logitech’s G Cloud came in. A handheld that was fitted with Nvidia’s GeForce Now app, and allowed one to play some of one’s Steam library (emphasis on some) via the cloud.
It was a risk, as up till now I’d only used the handheld to stream my Series S, which worked well enough, but I would now be purchasing a full-priced game and playing it entirely via the cloud. This is essentially the future that companies like Microsoft envision for the gaming market, a complete erasure of physical media that instead focuses on streaming and the “play anywhere” ideology. It’s an ideology that, though admittedly is endlessly convenient, is beyond concerning for long-term game preservation seeing how one’s ownership of their media is essentially controlled by the corporations offering the “service.”
Nevertheless, playing BG3 via the cloud on my G Cloud was the only option for me at this time. After going through the tedious process of creating an Nvidia account, signing up for their “Priority” tier on GeForce Now because I’ll be damned if I have to wait fifteen minutes in a queue each time I want to start a play session, I finally started my journey into Baldur’s Gate 3. I should mention that I started this whole process last week while my wife and I were away on holiday in Quebec City; meaning my first experience playing BG3 via GeForce Now was on shoddy 30mbps hotel Wi-Fi. To my surprise, it worked flawlessly.
The “Priority” tier gives players access to RTX-capable rigs, 6-hour play sessions (compared to just an hour for the free tier), and up to 60fps at 1080p. When booting up the game, I had to adjust some of the screen ratio settings and scale the text so that it was readable on the small 7-inch screen. While doing this I made my way over to the graphics settings. In it I saw that the game had defaulted to 720p at medium settings. Thinking this was maybe all that my current server could handle, I went ahead and started the game. After spending far too much time on a robust character creator, I was off.
The opening minutes of Baldur’s Gate 3 had me instantly invested with the high quality cinematics that established the world and story. When I finally got control of my character on the Nautiloid ship, I was impressed by the visuals, though far from blown away. That didn’t matter, though, as my first encounter was with a sentient brain that, with my chosen Warlock abilities, I was able to have join my party — a truly brilliant, if not a tad grotesque intro to the many creatures and pathways I was eventually going to discover.
It took a while for me to get acclimated to all the different mechanics of the game. My vast experience with JRPGs made the turn-based combat a little easier to wrap my brain around, though the many spells, buffs and de-buffs, class considerations, and environmental hazards took some time to settle. Now a little over ten hours in and I’m finding myself somewhat adjusted to all the game’s mechanics. However, I will say that the limitations in movement per turn and the heavy emphasis on chance are still things I’m yet to get fully accustomed to.
Shortly after I’d escaped the Nautiloid ship and was given freedom to roam the open world, I decided to open up the settings once more and out of curiosity fiddle with the graphical settings. In a “there’s no way this will work, but let’s try it” whim, I upped the resolution to 1080p (the maximum resolution for my handheld’s screen), and defaulted all the settings to “ultra.” Fully expecting my frame-rate to drop to that of a slideshow, or my already questionable internet connection to not be strong enough to deal with the needed bandwidth, I returned to the game only to be welcomed to a much prettier world and a frame-rate that was negligible from what I was already experiencing. I stared with my mouth agape as I walked through a now brilliantly crisp and beautiful world, speaking with characters whose models now almost popped out of the screen; doing so without a hitch in frame-rate, or a glitch in the audio or video feed.
As much I hate to say it, mainly due to my aforementioned concerns with cloud-streaming, I have to admit thus far this has been a truly impressive experience. To be able to play a recently released AAA game on ultra settings, via a handheld while on hotel Wi-Fi, is something the ten-year-old me would have dreamt of. As far as Baldur’s Gate 3 itself goes, I can see why this game has gotten such high praise. The breadth of choice and variety in approach to both combat and character interactions is impressive. Couple that with the incredibly well done facial animations the likes of which I’ve never seen before in an open-world game, brings a polish and intimacy to scale in ways that I hope future titles can get inspired from. Larian Studios have made a game that I know I’ll be enamored with for hundreds of hours, and has peaked my interest in getting invested into the world of D&D.
