Baldur's Gate 3 rules, the best game of this year by a pretty comfortable margin. It's got heart, brains, and no shortage of genitals, at least going by the exhaustively-feral horniness of the fanbase. It's broad and deep and adventurous in all the right ways, and could arguably claim the title of being the best fantasy game of the last decade. For me, it's particularly fantastic – I've been playing D&D regularly and somewhat obsessively for over a decade – something that, despite my initial resistance, has resulted in my osmosising quite a lot of D&D lore along the way.
In earlier years I was dismissive about the core Forgotten Realms setting that D&D usually takes place in, something that appeared to me to be little more than baseline generic fantasy and what I occasionally think of as "Tolkan't". But while that might be how D&D's world appears at first glance, once you peel back the layers you realise that there's a lot of weird shit at play – it just tends to hover around the fringes so as not to freak people out. And the weird shit is exactly what a theoretical Baldur's Gate 3 DLC needs to focus on.
To the one place that hasn't been ruined by Gortash… SPAAYCE!
For me, the big two setting elements I've always wanted to see done justice are Spelljammers and the Blood War – both of which we have teased in the very first five minutes of Baldur's Gate 3.
Spelljammers is certainly the stranger option, a whole realm of magically-powered space travel on enchanted airships, but it's not so out of character for BG3: the Nautiloid that the Mind Flayers snatch you onto in the game's tutorial is an eldritch form of "Spelljammer" ship. Just a shame it crashes before you can hit level two and you're pretty much landlocked from that point on.
Meanwhile, the strange reality your created Guardian speaks to you from is actually the Astral Sea, the cosmic in-betweeny space that Spelljammers fly through. As much soft sci-fi as much as it is fantasy, Spelljamming would admittedly be a bit of a tricky pitch considering you could end up pretty much anywhere, but the phrase "magical flying pirate ships" should be its own justification for the attempt.
Hell? Yes!
Then there's the Blood War, which BG3 also has hanging notably in the background, but never quite engages with directly. Long story short: hordes of destructive Demons and armies of tyrannical Devils have been killing each other in Avernus, the top layer of Hell, for the right to ruin everything in their preferred way since time immemorial, escalating into the longest and most brutal war in all of D&D lore. Beloved barbarian buddy Karlach is an escapee from the Blood War, and the Nautiloid sails over one of its many battlefields in the aforementioned tutorial, allowing us to view it from a distance – but it doesn't quite do justice to the full thing.
The Blood War is basically where Dungeons and Dragons goes full "heavy metal album cover"
And that's because the Blood War is basically where Dungeons and Dragons goes full "heavy metal album cover": think smoke-belching war machines and spiky Mad Max vehicles sporting glowing pentagrams, all manned by snarling, blood-drenched rejects from Doom Eternal. You've got the devil god Asmodeus ruling one team, a deity so cunning he makes Raphael look like a concussed toddler, and opposite him the literal avatars of carnage and corruption known as the Demon Lords, who range from tentacled, two-headed chimps to snobby fungus to just piles of omniscient ooze.
I don't pitch this without good reason: I ran a three-year campaign of "Descent into Avernus", a D&D adventure all centred around the Blood War and machinations of Hell, not to mention the event that makes Zevlor and the Tieflings into refugees in the BG3's first act. It's genuinely one of the best experiences in D&D I've ever had – in part because of the clear joie de vivre of the setting.
Plus it helps that it's an idea deeply tied to Karlach, and to a lesser extent, Wyll. Zariel, the wrath-filled fallen angel associated with both characters, is the high general ruling Avernus and controlling Asmodeus' forces in the Blood War, and a character I was deeply disappointed never made an appearance in BG3. Speaking of which, when the Soul Coins that trigger Karlach's mechanical heart started appearing, I gave an ignoble squeal of excitement – because in D&D lore those coins are usually used to fuel the rumbling War Machines of The Nine Hells, all of which look like drivable versions of the House Robots from Robot Wars.
I love Karlach and her powers, but even now I feel a bit cheated that Larian teased me with the chance to pilot some massive armoured tank dripping with mounted weaponry across the fiery pits of Avernus, only to snatch that hope away when it turned out the Soul Coins were just a way to (consensually) set a friend on fire. A DLC set in Avernus would at least have a chance to correct that injustice, and if nothing else, I'd really like to knock down Auntie Ethel with a Satan-powered monster truck.
We love all things BG3 here at GamesRadar: for more, check out our interview with Orin the Red actress Maggie Robertson, or see how the voice of the Dark Urge came to be!
