The environment in an RPG can be a cruel mistress and this is especially so in Baldur’s Gate 3, as anyone who’s had the displeasure of seeing one of their beloved party members plummet to their instant death in a bottomless chasm will know. The dreaded “Athletics Successful” can be a death sentence, but this sword cuts both ways. My friends and I aren’t the most talented adventuring party, but we’re known up and down the Sword Coast for shoving all types of creatures to their dooms.
Both the shove bonus action and spells that repel opponents (Thunderwave, for instance) have proven to be deadly tools for our enterprising band. The first thing I do when entering combat is evaluate the environment, trying to find the easiest way to cheese the most powerful creature on the battlefield.
I’ll give you a small example of our misadventures, with some minor spoilers for a side plot in the first act. As many will know, going down the well in the Blighted Village will lead the player to an underground cave full of teleporting spiders. As a level three party, the odds were against us. However, we discovered that if you destroy a web while a spider is sitting on it then it’ll take significant fall damage. We managed to subject the Queen to this treatment twice, bringing her low, but she still managed to one-shot several party members in the few turns she had.
However, with a fatal teleport, she put herself in a prime position for our party’s signature move. Clearly, the news of our exploits hadn’t reached her webs. With one final Thunderwave, the Spider Queen was sent plummeting down a chasm to her untimely death. We didn’t want her loot anyway, we have no need for powerful trinkets when we can utilise gravity to eliminate our problems.
People may know that the green-lit chasm in that same cave (not the one we shoved the Queen into) is actually an entrance to the Underdark. We found this out after one of us fell to our doom while trying to attract the Queen to a web. Well, after our great victory, we decided ‘Why not brave the Underdark?’. So, brave it we did
After an uncomfortable meeting with the archdevil Raphael, we poked our heads into uncharted territory and were immediately faced with two hulking minotaurs. Needless to say, their mighty charges soon snuffed out the lights on some of us, myself included. We had managed to get one of the minotaurs low enough that our last remaining party member was able to finish it off on his next turn. Then there was just the small matter of the full-health over-levelled beast we had yet to scratch.
It was a one-versus-one and the odds seemed hopeless. Our last man standing had managed to live the minotaur’s charge on a single point of health. How was he going to deal 70+ damage in a single turn? The answer was simple, really. He edged around the minotaur’s opportunity attack range and cast one final Thunderwave, sending the Minotaur into a small opening between platforms to its ultimate death. The party (and gravity) had triumphed once more.
Above is an example of one of the most beautiful things about Baldur’s Gate 3. The range of options at your disposal to tackle every situation, combat or otherwise. Larian has created systems that allow you to advance through the game in any manner you deem fit.
This extends to story beats as well. Feeling like a particularly powerful level-three character? Then if you really insist, try and fight the mythical being of pure evil that currently sees you as an insignificant fly. See what happens. It’s not the most intelligent choice, but at least you have a choice. Humorously, the game’s narrator and in-game prompts warn you if you’re about to make a particularly serious error in judgement. Are you sure you want to piss off this guy, dooming your entire party and maybe Faerûn to a grim end? Sounds good to me, probably.
The term “immersive sim” is thrown around a lot these days. While I don’t think having the option to go through a window or a front door qualifies something as an immersive sim as some people believe, the variety of options available to the player in Baldur’s Gate 3 means it kind of fits the bill: Persuasion, murder, circumvention, stealth, or (as the case may be) throwing everyone off cliffs; there are many, many ways to crack an egg in Baldur’s Gate 3.