Making Pop Culture Characters Helps Keeps Baldur's Gate 3 Fresh (2024)

Building someone in a character creator, especially one so robust and flexible as , is a gateway to infinite possibilities. Perhaps Baldur's Gate 3's greatest strength (and there are a lot of them) is just how many of Dungeons & Dragons' infinite possibilities it manages to capture. Though I'm unlikely to commit to replaying it any time soon, and no expansion is coming, these infinite possibilities are keeping me connected to the world of Baldur's Gate 3 through my latest obsession - pop culture creations.

It is a storied tradition in D&D to build existing characters with easily transferable skillsets. Queen Elsa, Batman, Scarlet Witch, and Luke Skywalker all carry over to the character sheets of Dungeons & Dragons pretty easily. We have a selection of Disney, DC, Marvel, and Star Wars builds here at TheGamer, featuring each character respectively. It makes sense then that Baldur's Gate 3 creators like Final Party have explored how to do the same in Larian’s RPG.

People Will Be Playing Baldur's Gate 3 Forever

Baldur's Gate 3 is still relatively new, being less than a year since it left early access. But it still has the air of a 'forever' game. Creators who love the game are probably always going to find new things to experiment with, regardless of whether or not it gets any new content, in the same way Skyrim creators find ways to beat the game as a mudcrab. While Stardew Valley recently did receive a substantial patch, that too is a game where creators find a way to keep it fresh because the game already offers so much depth. It's easy to imagine BG3 lasting for years in the way these games have.

The first pop culture character in BG3 I saw on social media was Harley Quinn, who naturally piqued my interest. It's important to note this is not really a visual challenge - the aim of making Harley Quinn is not to copy the bone structure of Margot Robbie. This sort of character creation is far more common, and in the case of Daenerys in Dragon's Dogma 2, far more annoying. Instead, it's a question of recreating the essence of the character.

Here's How Final Party Built Harley Quinn In Baldur's Gate 3

• Warlock, The Great One
• Mortal Reminder, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Pact of the Blade, Crown of Madness, Detect Thoughts
• Deepen Pact
• Multiclass into Fighter, Champion
• Great Weapon Fighting, Great Weapon Master
• Equip Clown Hammer and Clown Face Paint in Act 3

I always find the creativity in these builds impressive, but that is taken much further in BG3. If you were building Harley in D&D, you could just give her a hammer. Many D&D adventures start with you already at around level 3, so you'd start with a lot of the Harleyness established. BG3 might do a good job of convincing you that it's infinite, but it isn't. It has very clear restrictions as to what is or isn't in the game, and what order you can complete certain tasks or acquire certain weapons. There's also no house rules or homebrew. That makes creating so many characters so convincingly a highly impressive feat.

The Challenges Of Playing D&D Or BG3 As A Pop Culture Character

Would I ever do this for a run of Baldur's Gate 3? Probably not. For the same reason it's hard to consider a replay, there are just too many possibilities that I know about in the game, and I worry about how things would feel if I was too concerned with thinking ahead to what might come next. The same goes for a build - being acutely aware of a specific, existing character, rather than just one I'm imagining, could end up derailing the experience of playing and experiencing the game anew.

I have considered it for actual D&D a little more, but since a lot of my time playing D&D is as a DM I can often use these sorts of characters as vague inspiration, merging them together or tweaking parts of their story or powers so they fit my world. It's the sort of thing I think would be brilliant as a one shot - playing an adventure where we're all a Disney Princess or member of the Justice League - in a world that it fits. The containment of each character there makes them easier to inhabit, but in full D&D, it's not about living up to the idea of the character you've created, but about discovering who they really are.

Making a pop culture character in D&D or BG3 feels more like an exercise in creativity and ingenuity than an ideal way to play the game, but that's what makes it so fascinating. I've never really understood your standard Let's Play - it feels like watching someone else watch a movie. What do they bring to the table? But in finding fresh ways to stretch the implied infinity of Baldur's Gate 3, creators are keeping me interested in the game and helping me to see it from a new perspective.

Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.

Platform(s)

PC , PS5 , Xbox Series X , macOS , Microsoft Windows

Released

August 3, 2023

Developer(s)

Larian Studios

See at Steam