Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate video game news, reviews & editorials.

Baldur's Gate is a series of role-playing video games set in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The series has been divided into two sub-series, known as the Bhaalspawn Saga and the Dark Alliance, both taking place mostly within the Western Heartlands, but the Bhaalspawn Saga extends to Amn and Tethyr. The Dark Alliance series was released for consoles and was critically and commercially successful. The Bhaalspawn Saga was critically acclaimed for using pausable realtime gameplay, which is credited with revitalizing the computer role-playing game genre.

The Bhaalspawn Saga was originally developed by BioWare for personal computers. Beamdog and its division Overhaul Games developed remakes of the original games. The Dark Alliance series was originally set to be developed by Snowblind Studios, and ports were handled by Black Isle Studios, High Voltage Software, and Magic Pockets, with the second game developed by Black Isle.

The Baldur's Gate series was revived in 2012 with Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, an update of the original Baldur's Gate. The release of the Enhanced Edition marked the first release in the series in eight years, and was followed by an enhanced edition of the second Baldur's Gate called Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. Beamdog was granted permission to develop new games with the license, such as Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, an expansion for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

The license was later given to Larian Studios, who developed and published Baldur's Gate 3, released in 2023. The game received critical acclaim, and is praised for its gameplay, narrative, and production quality. Baldur's Gate 3 won many Game of the Year awards and became the first game that won GOTY awards at all five major video game award ceremonies.

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