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Neil Newbon, who voices popular party member Astarion in the smash hit Dungeons & Dragons game Baldur's Gate 3, is offering up his support for HBO's upcoming live-action TV sequel for BG3, saying he's got faith in showrunner Craig Mazin.
"I really hope people give them space to make the show that they want to make," Newbon tells FRVR. "It's really important that artistic endeavours are left to cook. What they'll do with it, who knows? But he's [showrunner Craig Mazin] an amazing writer. I think he's a great showrunner as well. I think Chernobyl is a great example of how good his writing is, man."
"If they do it right, then I think it'll be a fantastic TV series," he continues. "Let them cook, man. Let them do their thing and enjoy it," he said. "I think the worry about the internet at the moment, sometimes, is that people really pile on a lot, and they really get worried and upset. And I understand that comes from a place of love, often they're very worried about things, but nothing's happened yet, you know what I mean?"
Baldur's Gate 3 is just about as popular as D&D-related media gets, building on a beloved video game franchise that spans decades and which draws directly on D&D lore. The Baldur's Gate 3 TV show will be the first ongoing live-action D&D show, which has fans naturally on edge, as adaptations of the tabletop RPG have been hit or miss over the years.
Nonetheless, Newbon wants fans to reserve any judgment till after seeing the show, keeping in mind that it likely won't be a perfect one-to-one experience with actually playing the game.
"TV, film, theatre, most theatre (some theatre is actually promenade), but most of that is passive medium viewing the vision of the director," Newbon explains. "Games are active. You are involved directly in the story. It’s a completely different medium. And I think people should understand that, I think, I hope they do, that it's a different thing.
"That's why it has to be treated in a different way. You have to see that this is the vision of people of the best story they can do with the material that they have. This is a game, and if you take a film that goes into a game adaptation, same thing, right? For a long time, it was not easy to translate because people would try to translate the film into a game as opposed to making the game itself."
No premiere date for the Baldur's Gate TV show has been set. For more, check out the best shows on HBO Max you can watch right now.
