Ever since sweeping at The Game Awards and the Golden Joystick Award with 13 combined wins, including Best Performance and Game of The Year, Larian Studios continues giving to fans of Baldur’s Gate 3.
First, immediately following the highly anticipated Xbox release, the studio published a free, online advent calendar game. Now, they’ve brought in two iconic Lord of the Rings actors to play the game on camera.
At some point following The Game Awards, Larian Studios’ CEO and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vinke met up with Sean Astin (Samwise) and Elijah Wood (Frodo). It’s unclear where this was filmed or if the hobbitses were at the awards but regardless, neither actor seems to have played BG3 before. So Vinke showed them around the computer RPG starting with its expansive character creation system.
I would’ve watched an hour of these three playing just the character creation alone and I hope Larian Studios shares more clips from this seemingly multi-hour-long gaming session. While Astin opted to play an Asmodeus Tiefling rogue, Wood decided to play the Dark Urge (a.k.a. Durge) character as a fighter.
Alluding to Wood’s time barefoot in Middle Earth as Frodo, Vinke suggested the actor play a Stoneheart Halfling. With a mischievous smile, Wood replied “I think a halfling would be very appropriate. I’m going to go with that.” From that moment onward, I silently prayed for the LOTR connections to continue. And, boy did they.
***Spoilers for Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Lord of The Rings: Return of the King***
While in a secret cellar under an apothecary in the Blighted Village, Vinke suggests they pick up a creepy book just sitting on a table. Unbeknownst to them, this text is The Necromancy of Thay. Its wretched contents mixed with the Durge’s intrusive thoughts accidently created an almost Ring of Power scenario. This came after the first LOTR-like scene to get The Dark Amethyst—the gem that activated the book. To get the violet violent stone, the three adventurers had to defeat a giant spider nest. Not unlike Shelob who Sam fought in the mountains surrounding Mordor.
After the temporary death of Wood’s character, Astin tried to lift this rin-I mean book, but couldn’t. Seeing Wood’s Durge make some pretty vile decisions after that book’s introduction to their adventures, Astin sought to destroy the book. If you actually want to destroy The Necromancy of Thay, players must use radiant damage. It will also gain you approval points with some companions. However, Vinke didn’t tell them any of this. Instead, the trio found themselves in the magma landscape of the Adamantine Forge looking to through the book in the fire. Because I don’t want to spoil the whole video, I’ll just say this: Sam isn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
(Yes, I know Astin was in The Goonies.)
(via Larian Stusios on YouTube, featured image: Larian Studios)
