Over a year after its release, Baldur’s Gate 3 is still going strong, with update after update piling on more and more content than any one game should reasonably be expected to have, or than any one player should reasonably be expected to encounter.
Part of its success hinges on the fact that it chose a specific audience and pandered to them perfectly, haphazardly propping up all the aspects that any elite fandom fulcrum should have. And indeed, Baldur’s Gate 3 has attracted, among others, cosplay enthusiasts by the hundreds, and where there’s a cosplayer, there’s an older family member who has no idea what the hell is going on.
TikTok‘s @notalannalawson is one such cosplayer, and she was gearing up (literally) for a Baldur’s Gate 3 skit with her fellow pseudo-Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts when she received a video call from her grandmother. Per the video description, Alanna and Granny Lawson are tight, so Alanna answered with what’s probably her usual amount of gumption, not realizing until the last minute that she was still wearing her Emperor mask.
For those of you not in the know, the Emperor belongs to the mind flayer species, meaning that its head looks like a demonic squid, meaning that Granny Lawson picked up the phone and saw a demonic squid instead of her granddaughter. Needless to say, Granny Lawson wasted no time bringing Jesus into this little equation, and wondered aloud “why these games have [you] acting up again.”
What Granny Lawson may not be aware of, however, is that Alanna is far from the only one who’s been acting up over Baldur’s Gate 3. Per Pushsquare.com, Baldur’s Gate 3 has reportedly sold over 10 million copies as of February 2024, on top of receiving universal praise from both critics and audiences alike and five major Game Of The Year Awards. Indeed, the world has gone bonkers for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Most such folk, of course, are probably ignoring the fact that Baldur’s Gate 3 never consistently communicates how it wants you to interact with it. For instance, if you don’t take the Volo’s Eye encounter seriously, you will be rewarded for it, whereas there are other instances where the game wants you to take it seriously, and punish you for it if you don’t. And none of that well and truly matters anyway, because you can just quicksave before making a decision, and then reload that save if it turns out to be the wrong one. There’s no concrete way to consistently understand what you’re doing, nor any tension from the fallout of what you do.
In short, Baldur’s Gate 3 is great entertainment and a primo cosplay opportunity, but perhaps not Granny Lawson’s cup of tea.
