HBO just made something of a bombshell announcement to keep up its streak of top-class videogame adaptations, and this time it has me significantly more excited than I've been before. It's going to be continuing the story told by Baldur's Gate 3, a toweringly impressive choice-driven game that's probably on my personal Mt. Rushmore of best-ever experiences in the medium.
The announcement means we probably still have years to wait before the show is ready to watch, but it's a massively exciting one nonetheless, given the absolutely massive success of Baldur's Gate 3, which hoovered up countless awards the year it finally moved from early access to a full release.
The project is being run by Craig Mazin, also a showrunner on The Last of Us, although I prefer to assume that his work will be up to the standard he set on Chernobyl instead, one of the finest miniseries ever created.
He sounds like a true fan, too, confirming that he's completed the game on its super-difficult "honor mode", and says that he's put "nearly 1000 hours" into the game. That's great news, although I still have some pretty deep worries about how the source material can translate to TV.
One key thing to know is that the series will be a sequel, picking up after the events of the game and telling a new story that will involve some of the same characters. In one major way, this sounds great – since adapting the main story of Baldur's Gate 3 would require picking a single "canonical" path through the game's tale, and by necessity chopping out some amazing story paths.
On the flip side, though, even a sequel will still have to struggle to represent the single biggest draw of the game – player choice. Baldur's Gate 3 is so beloved because it reacts to your every choice, and even small moments can have major consequences later on. In a non-interactive format, it'll be an interesting challenge for Mazin and his team to get that concept across on-screen.
I don't want to comment on the huge climax of the game, either, but even that leaves about a dozen different ways for the world to have been left, with major characters dead or alive and a huge threat dealt with in a variety of different ways. It's almost a shame that one of these will likely now be confirmed as the "official" version.
Interestingly, this probably makes it even more likely that the rumours about The Last of Us ending after its third season are true. Mazin having that show to continue and a major new adaptation to work on would seem like a big split in attention, and given HBO owns both, it looks more like it's lining up his next project.
I can't wait, regardless. Whereas The Last of Us felt like a really obvious TV project, with an obviously cinematic game to basically put straight into a show, Baldur's Gate 3 is far more open to new approaches. What sort of story it could tell is anyone's guess, but the world and tone it inhabits should be brilliant to explore.
