Developer/publisher Larian Studios
Format PC, Stadia
Origin Belgium
Release 2023
The road to Baldur’s Gate is long and hard.
The first act alone – currently playable in Early Access – takes us from crashed slave barge to subterranean cult, via a goblin camp, besieged druids and fungal forests. And all this to the ticking of a time bomb: a tadpole burrowed deep in the brain that grants psychic boons as it saps the host’s humanity. Surviving all the way to the Sword Coast metropolis will be one thing; making it there as the same hero you set out as, quite another.
And so it is for Larian, which finds the route to release studded with obstacles of a different kind: the restructuring of outline the effort required to keep atop of the challenges (the studio swelled to almost 400 staff during development), you wonder if a Mind Flayer parasite might not be a mercy by comparison.
