There are times in the new D&D CRPG Baldur’s Gate 3 when your mettle will be tested. When your party will be clinging to life by a thread, all your Revivify Scrolls depleted, your Health Potions down to their last, goopy drop.
Maybe you’ll emerge from the turn-based combat victorious; maybe you’ll die and have to reload from the last save. Maybe you got too far along in the game on your first playthrough with only two companions by mistake, artificially spiking the difficulty because you were supposed to have four. (Yes, that was me—I had to backtrack to pick up some stragglers I left back in the opening area, something I later included in my 12 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Baldur’s Gate 3 article).
Whatever the case, whether you’re struggling or cleaving through your enemies and obstacles like a scythe through fields of wheat, there is one piece of advice that I think everyone should hear. This comes by way of Larian director of publishing, Michael Douse, via Twitter:
“If you’re coming into Baldur’s Gate completely new, and you’re not used to this genre I can give you one tip: worry less about closing out quests and winning fights, and instead focus on exploring, toying with the tools and systems, remembering to take it slow, and trust the dice,” Douse said [emphasis added].
“It’s not a game about heading to a waypoint and clearing the map for a reward. It’s a game about both narratively and systemically overcoming challenges using your wits and creativity. You’ll be rewarded in areas you least expect it, as you start to own the narrative. Agency!
“Talk to animals. Talk to the undead. If you can’t, find out how. Something locked? Knock. Inaccessible? Stack crates. Turn into gas. Shrink. Grow! Everything you think you can’t do, you quite possibly can. Trust yourself, and trust the dice. It reacts to your success & failures.”
This is advice that applies to other games as well, even if Douse is aiming it specifically at Baldur’s Gate 3 here. In this game, the reward isn’t just better loot or more XP, it’s about exploring and figuring out puzzles and learning new things about the Forgotten Realms and the quirky ensemble of heroes you’ve assembled as Companions. The journey, not the destination.
But I’d extend the same broad advice to other titles as well. In Elden Ring, for instance, you may be striving to overcome great obstacles, but such a big part of the Dark Souls games (including Elden Ring, Sekiro and Bloodborne) is about learning to let go. Players have to get used to the idea of failure, of dying, of picking themselves back up and trying again. Once you can do that you can start enjoying the world more, the exploration and the wonder of discovery. All the best roleplaying games invite us not just to find better loot or “grind” but to discover new wondrous things, to escape into often perilous yet beautiful worlds. The fun is in making the hard choices, making mistakes, licking our wounds, solving puzzles using our wits and creativity.
This also applies to more recent games like Nintendo’s wildly inventive The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, which tasks players with engineering the solution to all sorts of puzzles in all sorts of unique ways.
The point is: Have fun and go crazy. Isn’t that what gaming is all about?
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