Every once in a long while, a game comes along that is so memorable, exciting, fresh, and well-written that it sets a new high-water mark for an entire genre. Baldur's Gate 3 is such an achievement for the tabletop roleplaying-inspired, swords and sorcery adventuring that its BioWare-made CRPG predecessors helped popularize decades ago. Larian Studios has turned this corner of Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms into a beautiful, detailed world stocked with too many fully-realized, powerfully written, and skillfully voiced characters to count. There are heart-wrenching choices to be made, alliances to be forged, bears to be romanced, and a vast diversity of interesting, challenging turn-based combat encounters. I didn't merely enjoy my 130-plus hours on this journey. I fell in love.

One issue video games have often run into when trying to adapt the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons on the tabletop is that it’s almost impossible to achieve the freedom and imagination you get to express in overcoming problems using real-world logic. It's hilarious in other RPGs when you have a spell that can blow an ogre to kingdom come, but is no match for the might of a wooden gate. And while it’s doubtful that any game will ever match that level of flexibility, Baldur's Gate 3 is a big step forward from what we’ve been able to do in the likes of Skyrim or Dragon Age. Those gates aren't going to stop a determined warlock.