2023 Video Game Innovations EVERYONE Should Copy

5. Designing With EVERY Player In Mind - Baldur’s Gate 3

In 2023 plenty of gamers and outlets popped Baldur’s Gate 3 at the very top of their Game of the Year lists and one of the reasons why is Larian Studio’s unique commitment to designing their games with every player in mind. Even the 1% who decides to go ahead and experiment by doing something completely random you’d assume there’s no way the developers could have expected.

If you played Divinity: Original Sin 2, like I keep trying to bully people into doing, you would have expected this from Larian, but even at that standard their efforts here have gone above and beyond.

There are voice lines, interactables, cutscenes, and even game fail states for almost everything you can imagine doing in the game. Which, for a title based on the nigh-on limitless freedom that Dungeons and Dragons allows for, is an extraordinarily tall order. The game itself is massive in its environments, complex characters, endless decision-making possibilities, and approaches to combat.

And yet, this is a game where, for example, if the vampire Astarion tries to bite the fire-fueled character Karlach during an intimate scene he will literally catch on fire.

There are so many moments like this that you could presumably play the game over and over and keep discovering new interactions and possibilities. This level of game design where even the tiniest portion of gamers are considered and catered to is admittedly something a lot of studios wouldn’t have the resources to accommodate, but for those who do we’d love to see more of it.