Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Congratulations BG3 on Best Storytelling Award

Among 5 other awards including Ultimate Game of the Year, Best PC Game of the Year, Best Visual Design, and Best Game Community, Larian won Best Storytelling at The Golden Joystick Awards.

Well done.

Can you name a favourite part of the story without spoiling it?

Favorite part is the whole Nightsong sequence, especially when the OST kicks in.

Raphael. Astarion. Barcus. Rolan.

Spoiler-free enough?

The BG3 OST is so good it's almost a companion

Spoiler-free, intriguing and cheeky. Natural 20 territory.

Yesssssssss, when I saw it for the first time I had goosebumps and was tearing up! Then I started sobbing and my husband came to my room to check up on me cause he heard me ugly crying! Just to find out I was crying cause of that one beautiful scene! It has the same effect on me as that one scene in Titanic and Inception! AMAZING! <3

Considering all the plot holes and retcons this award is a joke.

I cry, when that music starts, so well done.

Some of my favorites:

• Halsin in Act 1 and 2
• Owlbear cub
• Shadow curse quest
• Auntie Ethel side quest
• Raphael
• Mindflayer plot

I think the whole monastery map might be might favorite. It might be my favorite dungeon too. Truly a pleasure to explore and discover.

That's including the enclave

Is this some kind of sick joke? Did anyone at the Golden Stick play through to the end or just play a bit of Act 1 and go "sure whatever".

How can a game win a storytelling award when the stories are not ... you know ... actually told? There are multiple companions with no endings whatsoever on multiple playthroughs.

Those awards are in the end all popularity contests. With enough hype and people who only played act 1 or writing fanfics about companions no one will dare to give the game a more realistic review or deny them awards because in that case the horde will descent upon them.
Just look at Eurogamer and what happened when they dared to not give a 5/5.

True, marketing and popularity contests.

Yes. As much as I like this game, people confuse quality with quantity. In terms of narration, BG3 is very cartoonish and sadly not always logical even.

Still a great game, but best narrative is a bit too much.

GOTY fully deserved though.

One of the best things about the game is all the things you find if you look a bit closer than you did the last time.

A word about popularity contests. The Joystick Awards are the result of a vote and every vote is a popularity contest. Well-spotted.

I have seen individual experts of various kinds pour scorn on things the public loves. They are expert - on their own taste. Just like everyone else.

A conversation about hype and marketing in gaming verus quality, however the particular person speaking defines it is something I can imagine spending a lot of time discussing in the past but the debate has no end and, debatably, no point. The less one agrees with apparently popular opinion the more one may be inclined to attribute it to alien distortion whereas when the same factors are in play and the same person agress with the consensus they might have no complaint.

BG3 is an extremely popular game even with players who do not love every origin character, every arc or literally any ending, even players actively campaigning for improvement. They love the characters, the situations, in a word the storytelling. That storytelling has earned affection in a way no game has in a long time. That is what these awards reflect.

I agree with all of this. I have many criticisms of BG3, mostly to do with the story writing, but it's still a breath of fresh air for crpg fans as of late. All I can hope is that its popularity will encourage more quality crpgs to be made. And perhaps Larian will take some of the story's issues into account and try to improve on structure/pacing/payoff next time they make a game, who knows.

The owlbear cub story can be horrifying, natural, sweet or all of the above. It's on my list too.

Auntie Ethel is such an interesting person. A lot of hidden depth.

Hum my favorite story is Shadowheart’s especially when you play as a good Durge cleric of Selune and romance her. I think that’s all very well done— with perhaps the need for small tweaks/additions like hugs that we may get in the next couple of patches… and of course, an epilogue to tie everything up in a neat and satisfying way, at least relatively speaking. But yeah, I would say that Shadowheart’s story/character is extremely well done and it’s one of the things that keeps me coming back to the story again and again.

(as others have noted, act 2 Nightsong is an incredible sequence, and it’s made all the more incredible if you

Those are a problem, but one could make an argument that sheer interactivity of the story makes it special.

Though my personally poor integration of gameplay systems and narrative make it farily weak, even if more glaring story problems get patched up in the future.