 So I just played the new Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access and woo-wee is it pretty. I only played up to the end of the tutorial because I'm planning to play more of the Saturday with my good friend slash part-time lover JoeCat. You can find my Twitch link in the description below. But what I played so far makes me want to run to my neighbor's house, kick down the door and scream in their faces about how fabulous my little boy's hair is! So you boot up the game, get through the bullshit layering, account maker, and boom, there it is! Look familiar? Yeah, that's because it's made in the same engine as Divinity Oregano Sauce and it's made by the same people, so you can bet that they're reusing assets. Anyway, the character creator gives you a few races to try out. Notably, the gnome and the dragonborn are missing, but the drow is its own race, which offends my puristar. I was planning on making a wood half-elf bar and rocking it to lead zeppelin as I tore up the streets, but the Early Access doesn't have a bar yet, so I uninstalled. And then after I reinstalled, I decided to play a charlatan half-drow row with blue skin and pink hair because bubblegum pop is the new edgy. After making my OC, I was ready to load in, but the game stopped me to ask what my potential dream date would look like. Who do you dream of at night? Davies! Gay! And since I was unable to create XP to level 3, I just made a sexy drowman. Finally, I was allowed to hit the start button and I was greeted to THE MOST AMAZING CINEMATIC IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! My D&D tube of brain basically spent the next minute going, OH! I know what that is! OH! OH! OH! I know what that is! That isn't good! OH SHIT! IT'S THE FLYING FORCHES OF ZARIO! WHAT IS GOING ON?! And then a cabin put a brain slug in my eye and it put the smooth on my noggin. A few minutes later, I woke up and I was greeted by the tutorial lady, also canonically referred to as the Gith waifu, who told me that the best option for us to survive was to crash the ship into the Nine Hells and I believed her. We spent the next hour fighting imps, infected people, and intelective hours, which are way too high CR for our level, but this dungeon master is forgiving and fudges a lot of dice rolls. The combat layout is a little confusing and the tutorial doesn't really hold your hand as much as it tugs you along like a mother at an amusement park, but considering that I literally teach D&D for a living, I figured it out. I really like the way knowledge rolls work, in that most things work off of your passive intelligence skills, while other things require a specific role, I might adopt that into my own games. And if my character hadn't been such a charismatic chud, we might have saved one girl from getting Mass Effect 2'd. Anyway, we fought our way to the bridge, stepped past the devil and Mindflayer having a slapping contest in the corner, and touched the Navi tail thingies to get back home. This game gets points for beauty, negatives for clunky mechanics, and the lack of bards is unforgivable. Zero out of ten.