Following a 20-plus year wait, RPG fans will finally return to the Forgotten Realms of the popular Baldur's Gate franchise. But the Dungeons & Dragons-based sequel has much more going for it than players' long-brimming anticipation. Developed by Larian Studios — the team behind acclaimed RPG series Divinity — Baldur's Gate III represents that rare dream pairing of a beloved property with the studio best suited to adapting it. Toss in the fact that this hotly anticipated PC game has been honed over two years of fan feedback-fueled early access, and we can't wait to party up and teach those ugly mind flayers some manners.
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
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Wikipedia's article on Baldur's Gate 3 gives the Larian developer, D&D 5e rules and Forgotten Realms setting, d20 rolls, character creation, level cap of 12, three acts with 288 quests, turn-based combat, Divinity Engine and mod support.
WebFetch could not retrieve IGN's review page; its title and 19 August 2023 publish date place it just before the pin's stored 31 August 2023 launch, consistent with an early review embargo, though unverified directly.
RPGSite corroborates, reporting "Baldur's Gate 3 will ship on PlayStation[5] 5, PC and Mac on Aug. 31, 2023," the same date announced at Sony's State of Play.
PlayStation's own blog confirms "Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to PS5 on August 31, 2023," matching the pin's stored date exactly.
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The fourth in the action role-playing series will be darker than the last iteration - a return to the grittier roots of the original Diablo.
Diablo 4 is on the way - there's plenty more hacking and slashing to be had. The next game in Blizzard's mega-popular franchise was unveiled a good while ago, and its release is drawing ever closer.
From long-awaited sequels and ambitious remakes to even a few potential-packed original projects, here are the 15 games we’re most eager to get our hands on this year.
Thanks to fantastic games like Stray, Tunic and Bayonetta 3, 2022 provided ample reason for players to keep their controllers fully charged. And that’s before you consider these exceptional entries were sandwiched between absolute bangers Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok.
When it comes to over-the-top roleplaying games, it’s hard to beat the bonkers worlds and stories I’ve come to expect from the Xenoblade Chronicles saga. With Xenoblade Chronicles 3, massive improvements have been made to combat, quest design, and the RPG sandbox, while retaining the absurd and awesome environments, and a laser-focus on great characters and an impressive (if convoluted) story. Of course, while this third entry evolves in some key areas that make the epic journey more consistently fun than the two mainline games that came before it, it also repeats some of the same mistakes, including sloppy writing, weak bosses, and graphics that often leave something to be desired. Even so, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is already competing for the spot as my favorite iteration of this beloved series.
In light of the high-quality remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 released in 2019 and 2020, it felt like a safe bet that Capcom would do an equally admirable job of rebuilding Resident Evil 4. Even so, when I hit the start button on this 2023 remake of the legendary 2005 action-horror game I wasn’t prepared for how forcefully it would knock my knees out from under me and suplex me headfirst into 16 hours of sustained tension and exhilaration. This fully revitalised campaign dramatically one-ups the original in almost every conceivable way. Its Spanish countryside setting is substantially more sinister, its pacing has been tightened to the point where hardly a single minute is wasted, and its controls have been modernised in order to allow its signature dynamic shooting mechanics to really shine. I’ve been waiting 18 years for a game to thrill me in the same way as Resident Evil 4; as it turns out, this whole time I’ve just been waiting for another Resident Evil 4.
Historically, Splatoon’s single-player campaigns have focused on acclimating you to the waters of its much more frantic and churning multiplayer battle modes. Splatoon 3’s campaign — dubbed The Return of the Mammalians — starts in territory so familiar that I was initially worried I was about to spend the next several hours slogging through tutorials on fundamentals I’d learned two games ago. Thankfully, the rug was quickly pulled out from under me, leading to a brand-new take on the series’ hub world design mixed with some of the best ideas of Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion. Splatoon 3 boldly let me decide on whether or not to blaze my own path toward any of its 70 bite-sized, inventive missions, and choose where to go next when exploring its fuzzy ooze-filled world. A lot of the enemies I found there were unchanged from previous Splatoons, but I had a great time navigating the large variety of objectives all the way to the campaign’s explosively satisfying finale.
