We said in January that Baldur's Gate 3 would take top honors at the 2023 Steam Awards and sweep Game of the Year. What we didn't expect was that the game would continue to kick butt through 2024. That's because Larian's D&D RPG won four titles at the 2024 BAFTA Awards, including Best Game of the Year.
"Baldur's Gate 3" beat out some very impressive contenders, including "Alan Wake 2," "Dave the Diver," "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," "Marvel's Spider-Man 2" and "Super Mario Bros. Wonder." The trophy will be up there with the Game of the Year hardware won at The Game Awards, Golden Joysticks, and Steam Awards, and when it was announced in 2019, we honestly thought we'd be taking on old-school RPG players and fans of Larian's past titles. For a game that I thought might be able to do business, this is a truly surprising stretch of dominance. As it turns out, it was a huge underestimation.
Along with Best Game, "Baldur's Gate 3" also won awards for Best Music, Best Scenario, Best Supporting Actor (especially for Andrew Wincott's performance as the charming demon Raphael), and the EE Player's Choice Award (the only player voted BAFTA award) was also awarded.
Larian's boss, Sven Vincke, was somewhat more subdued in his acceptance speech than he had been at the GDC. Instead, he took a more traditional awards show approach, thanking his family, friends, and everyone involved in the game.
"There were so many partners who helped us create this game," he said. We didn't do it all by ourselves. By my count, there were over 2,000 people involved in the development of Baldur's Gate 3. He also referred to the actors on Baldur's Gate 3 as having "spent a lot of time in those suits."
Despite being a story-based RPG released over eight months ago, Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the most popular games on Steam: over 77,000 people have played it at this point, enough to place it 12th on Steam's Most Played chart It's the most played game on Steam.
And despite this huge success, Larian has officially and emphatically stated that its time with the famous RPG series is over: it will continue to support "Baldur's Gate 3" (in fact, a new hotfix was released just yesterday), but will not produce any DLC or sequels. Vincke stated in March.
Larian has completed Baldur's Gate 3, but the award collecting may not be over: the game has been nominated for several categories, including (of course) Game of the Year, at the 2024 Gaming Awards in June. At this point, one has to imagine that every other game studio on the planet is hoping so.
The full list of 2024 BAFTA Award winners is as follows.
๐ Animation - Hi-Fi Rush ๐ Artistic Achievement - Alan Wake 2 Audio - Alan Wake 2 Best Game Award - Baldur's Gate 3 British Game: ๐Viewfinder Debut title - Venba Evolutionary Game: Cyberpunk 2077 Family - Super Mario Bros. Wonder Game Beyond Entertainment - Tchia Game Design - Dave the Diver Multiplayer - Super Mario Bros. Wonder Music - Baldur's Gate 3 Story - Baldur's Gate 3 New Intellectual Property - Viewfinder Leading Role ๐ Naji Peter (Miles Morales, Marvel's Spider-Man 2) Best Supporting Actor - Andrew Wincott (Raphael, Baldur's Gate 3) Technical Achievement - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom EE Players' Choice Award - Baldur's Gate 3 [19].
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