TheBaldur’s Gategames have all been massive successes, in part thanks to their setting in the Forgotten Realms, with city of Baldur’s Gate lying at the heart of these games. Oddly enough, though, it often only appears for a small part of the Baldur’s Gate games, such as only appearing in Act 3 ofBaldur’s Gate 3.
Setting a game entirely within a city can be difficult, with one of the many difficulties being optimization. With so much happening within a city, which needs to be populated with NPCs, filled with shops that players would expect from a city-sized settlement, and other things such as scripted or random encounters, a gaming system can quickly become overwhelmed, resulting in FPS drops, lagging, and crashes.Baldur’s Gate 3had tens of hours of content in Baldur’s Gate, butBaldur’s Gate 4could define itself by restricting its setting purely to its titular location, learning from CD Projekt Red’s masterful rendition of Night City.
Cities are Difficult to Depict in Video Games
Big video game citiesfrom past releases, such as Kirkwall fromDragon Age 2,Oblivion’s cities in Cyrodiil, and the Citadel from theMass Effect Trilogy,mitigated these issues in several ways, such as limiting the size of the cities, restricting accessible areas, splitting them into sections with loading screens, and populating them with low-resolution characters who can’t be interacted with.
Baldur’s Gate 3offset common technological issues by only having Baldur’s Gate appear in Act 3 and cutting out vast swathes of the city from the final game. Even then, many players encountered performance issues in Baldur’s Gate.
Baldur’s Gate 4could avoid these restrictions, leveraging modern technology and studyingCyberpunk 2077, a game that takes place entirely within the megalopolis of Night City.Cyberpunk 2077’s settingincludes everything that can be expected in a major city, including skyscrapers, people from all walks of life, and areas in various levels of decay. Night City also includes a desertscape within its boundaries, giving players a mixture of a massive city and countryside.
Baldur’s Gate 4 Can Define Itself By Being Set Entirely Within the City
Rather than only being partially set within the city,Baldur’s Gate 4can take advantage of technological advancements in video game technology and be set entirely within Baldur’s Gate’s city limits.Cyberpunk 2077proves that creating an immersive and realistic city is possible, with both scale and realism able to be delivered.
For such an iconic city that lies at the heart oftheBaldur’s Gategames, the franchise deserves to have an entire game set within its limits.Cyberpunk 2077is widely considered to be one of the best games of this generation despite being set in one city. One of the reasons for this is because Night City shows the true diversity of large human settlements and how they attract people from all walks of life.
The Depiction of Baldur’s Gate in Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3goes some way to show this with the refugees kept outside the city, the circus in Rivington, the sewers, and the different businesses within Baldur’s Gate. It could go much further by including more types of areas, including more diverse shops, a theater, and theUpper City, which was cut fromBaldur’s Gate 3.
Night City shows the true diversity of large human settlements and how they attract people from all walks of life.
More importantly, aBaldur’s Gate 4game that is set entirely within the city would define itself apart fromBaldur’s Gate 3.Baldur’s Gate 3is one of the defining games of the last five years, and has reliably been one of Steam’s Top Selling Games since it released in early access.Following up onBaldur’s Gate 3is going to be incredibly difficult for any developer, but basing the next game’s identity around Baldur’s Gate the city - finally giving players the chance to explore it in its entirety - would go a long way in setting the sequel apart from the belovedBaldur’s Gate 3.
