Baldur’s Gate 3 racked up six awards at The Game Awards today, including Game of the Year, a win Larian founder Swen Vincke tells PC Gamer he didn’t expect, even after leaving the recent Golden Joystick Awards with too many awards to carry.
Kicking off the love early in the show was Neil Newbon, who won the Best Performance award for his role as Astarion. Newbon was teary-eyed as he took the stage, thanking his fellow Baldur’s Gate 3 actors and specifically calling out Astarion’s writer and creator at Larian, Stephen Rooney.
Newbon also thanked the community for their enduring support of the game.
“The community has reached out to so many of us at Larian and said they were seen and they were represented by this game,” Newbon said. “When they lost hope, they felt isolated, and they felt alone, this game brought them together and gave them something to push through.”
The good vibes continued with Baldur’s Gate 3’s win for Best Community Support. This was one of Geoff’s patented rapid-fire awards he sped through to make time for announcements, so there was no acceptance speech. If there had been, I imagine Larian would’ve talked about how active and passionate the BG3 community has been since launch, flooding my feeds with nonstop fanart, highlights, and geuiniely hilarious memes since August. The crown jewel of BG3’s community, if you ask me, is its extremely active mod scene that’s been patching the RPG with cool class remixes, new clothing, and godsend quality-of-life features alongside Larian’s own post-launch support.
Next up was a hat trick of Baldur’s Gate 3 awards announced by Geoff all in the same minute: Best RPG, Best Multiplayer, and Player Voice. I think anyone could have guessed Larian would take the RPG category, but multiplayer was a small surprise for me: BG3 is surprisingly great in co-op, but I wouldn’t have guessed it’d beat out Street Fighter 6 and Diablo 4.
But the biggest prize came at the end of the night, when Baldur’s Gate 3 took home Game of the Year. Vincke took the stage this time, making a brief speech to thank fans and reflect on the experience of making Baldur’s Gate 3 in a pandemic.
“A game like Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t possible if you don’t have an incredible team working on it,” Vincke said. “The team at Larian spent their hearts and souls for six years on this game, sometimes under very difficult circumstances.
“This was our Covid game. Along the way we lost quite a few people also, so we want to dedicate this to all the people we lost. Especially Jim [Southworth], our lead cinematic artist who passed in the last month.”
Southworth, who was diagnosed with cancer in late 2022, was described by his coworkers as an “absolute rock and a wonderful man.”
PC Gamer caught up with Swen Vincke after the show for his reaction to the GOTY grab.
“My heart is beating. I didn’t expect it anymore. I didn’t think we were gonna get it,” he said. “It’s been a very very long journey.”
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