More Baldur's Gate 3 details are released

A new gameplay trailer, as well as opening cinematic, has been released for Baldur's Gate 3, and it's shaping up to be rather special.

Built with Larian Studios' new Divinity 4.0 engine, Baldur's Gate 3 looks like a souped up version of past games in the series, mixed with Larian's Divinity: Original Sin titles from recent years. It remains a top-down RPG like the Baldur's Gate series before it, as well as Divinity, but it looks far more gorgeous than that with some fantastic visuals for the genre. 

Combat looks good but it's also far more complex than we've seen before, with the need to think things through carefully. It's still turn-based but plays out a lot more like chess with the need to think many moves ahead, as well as to take advantage of environmental advantages such as hills or walls. Think X-Com style complexities rather than the fairly simplistic nature of the game's predecessor. 

Interestingly, when dialogue is needed, the game zooms in on the relevant characters so that the storytelling is consistently more cutscene-like than we've seen before, although - for now - pedants may be a little uncertain of the past tense used in some of the dialogue footage we've seen. 

Larian announced that via the early access version, players will have access to an in-development version of the first act, along with 5 playable characters and the same number of different classes. The 5 playable characters include Wyll, a Human warlock, Shadowheart, a Half-elf cleric, Lae'zel, a Githyanki fighter, Gale, a human wizard, and Astarion, an Elven vampire spawn rogue. 

It sounds pretty varied and we suspect it should sustain many players until the full game is released at some unknown date in the future.

Interestingly, another tidbit learned via an Eurogamer interview with the executive producer, David Walgrave, is that he doesn't believe that "current-gen consoles would be able to run it", thanks to there being a "lot of technical upgrades and updates" to the engine. No word has been said on next-gen consoles, but either way, this should give some insight into the technical prowess behind Baldur's Gate 3. 

Expect the early access build to be available on Steam later this year.