Fallout worked on TV, but Baldur's Gate 3 is a different beast

Baldur's Gate 3 will officially be the next video game phenomenon to make the jump to television, with Craig Mazin attached to shepherd a story set after the events of the game. On paper, it sounds like a prestige slam dunk: one of the most famous RPGs of the decade, paired with a showrunner known for sober, serious adaptations. But the more I sit with that thought, the more uneasy I become because Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete game, with a completed story, with very real limitations.

Baldur's Gate 3 he left no obvious dangling threads begging to be resolved; there are plot points that could be expanded upon for players at the table, but not on television. For many players, its ending was emotionally satisfying, as RPGs rarely are, precisely because it respected their choices and let them live with the consequences. Continuing the story it tells risks feeling invasive rather than additive.

Player Choice is the core text of Baldur's Gate 3

It is not a stretch to say that the determining force Baldur's Gate 3 not its setting, its production values, or even its characters in isolation, but the way all these elements bend around player agency. This is a game that ends in dozens of radically different ways, and through video games, they all remain valid. Any televised post-game narrative would necessarily elevate one version of events above all others, turning a deeply personal experience into “official” history.

Here is a comparison with Mazin's view The last of usits next video game adaptation, would fall apart. This adaptation was critically successful and commercially dominant, and was (critically) built on a fundamentally linear foundation. Joel and Ellie's journey, as emotionally contentious as it is, unfolds the same way for anyone playing the game. While the show added very little for fans who knew the games, bringing this story to TV didn't detract from the player experience. Baldur's Gate 3on the contrary, it is designed to withstand a single absolute version of events, and its strength lies in the absence of a “correct” ending, not the promise of one.

Fallout and What a Baldur's Gate 3 Show offers

So the question is not whether Mazin is capable of writing something convincing. His work on Chernobyl speaks for everything, and even the skeptics The last of the Us would be hard to deny his craft. The real question is what does it do besides money and brand valueBaldur's Gate 3 add a story to a narrative that is already saying what it needs to say? Do these characters need further canonical development, or were they powerful just because the players decided who they would become?

Amazon's recent success Fallout series complicates this discussion in an interesting way. The show avoided a direct adaptation by telling a new, canon, story adjacent to the game, allowing longtime fans to engage without feeling overwhelmed. Even so, despite assurances that it wouldn't be specific Fallout: New Vegas the end of canon undeniably made some outcomes impossible. This can be done in a franchise built on sprawling timelines and regional stories, but in Baldur's Gate 3where the stakes are strongly personal and closely tied to player choice, such narrowing would be much more pronounced.

Media meeting

A huge part of this hesitation (though not an insurmountable problem) is that prestige television thrives on specificity. TV, by its very nature, is a medium that allows for characters and arcs to move in deliberate, legible ways that benefit from a single authorial intent. Baldur's Gate 3 and video games like it thrive on flexibility, contradiction, and the freedom to play against the odds. These values aren't inherently incompatible, but they are in tension, and unless great care is taken to limit that possibility, even a brilliant version of this show would be implicitly telling players that one thing is what really happened to the other.

The problem of dungeons and dragons

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s) Medium (5.0s) Hard (2.5s) Permadeath (2.5s)

There is also the matter Dungeons & Dragons itself, which as a quality finds its greatest strength in the promise of an endless narrative. Each table, each campaign, each side is meant to matter on its own terms and TV adaptation Baldur's Gate 3 they specifically feel against that ethos, especially when one single creative dominates the environment. If you want to tell more stories in Forgotten Realms, why not tell new ones? Why return to a well that has already been drawn dry in the most satisfying way possible?

Ironically, the best modern example Dungeons & Dragons the work on the screen points in exactly this direction. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a great (if overlooked) film, not because it expanded the existing canon, but because it embraced the spirit of the game. It felt like the campaign had come to life, complete with tonal shifts, improvisational energy, and a sense of the characters discovering the story as they went along. There is no need to verify previous experience.

What got lost in translation

Ultimately, none of this means that a Baldur's Gate 3 the series is doomed. It may be very well thought out and emotionally resonant, but greatness comes at a price in this context. For the show to work, something essential in the game has to be limited, if not completely left out.

For such a title Baldur's Gate 3which resonated so deeply because it trusted players to own their stories, that trade-off is particularly steep. Sometimes the most respectful adaptation choice is knowing when not to proceed. Baldur's Gate 3 the ending is what makes it work because of everything leading up to that moment, which is different for everyone. A direct sequel (as opposed to an anthology in a completely different medium) flies in the face of that.