"'Baldur's Gate 3' Tries to Capture the Chaos of D&D Gone Horribly Wrong"

From a very lengthy write up of the demo by Rob Zacny:

The opening cinematic features a Mind Flayer systematically infecting imprisoned characters with a Mind Flayer "tadpole" that (rather horrifyingly) burrows in through the eye of its victim and takes up residence in their bodies. Then, in short order, we see the Mind Flayer leave his victims to await their transformation while he goes to the deck of his vast, living warship as it descends on the city of Baldur's Gate

...

Baldur's Gate 3 opens on this central dilemma: You and your companion characters are infected by the Mind Flayers' tadpole, and supposedly you have only days before it transforms you into a Mind Flayer and you join in their work of infecting and controlling yet more people. But there's another wrinkle to this as well: While finding a way to "cure" your characters by removing the tadpole is the most obvious solution to this problem, there's also something curious about the infection itself. Rather than slowly having your strength and vitality sapped by the tadpole, everyone infected aboard that Mind Flayer ship appears to be thriving. A possibility that quickly occurs to the main character is that this infection might be different in some way, and that this particular version of Mind Flayer enslavement carries with it the possibility to become almost superheroic. While, yes, the responsible thing is to get this Alien-like infection taken care of as quickly as possible… there's a temptation to wait, and see how it plays out.

Another write up at RPS:

The shove is great. In the right circumstances it can send a character flying in a beautiful parabolic arc into, for instance, a pit with some giant spiders in it. I began softly chanting “shove him! Shove him!” whenever the opportunity arose in the demo. I can think of no instance where the shove would not be helpful. Vincke acknowledged that the shove appeared overpowered, but only because those checks were about the only ones he always succeeded at. “It’s just fun. It’s like putting things on fire. It’s just fun to throw people off stuff,” he said.

And the opening cinematic:




*Previously: The Diablo 4 trailer.