Baldur’s Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire

Heartbreaking: the man had a point.

Image credit:Larian Studios

The quality of Baldur’s Gate 3 performances, and the technology and expertees used to render them so beautifully on screen, is one of the best things about it. And that’s high praise considering that there’s one hell of a lot to love about the best RPG of the decade so far. We make the case for this extraordinary work, and why it’s so crucial to recreating the D&D experience, in the video below.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s digital acting is the subject of our first Just One Thing, a new video series where we examine one particular aspect of a game that it does particularly well.Watch on YouTube

It’s particularly impressive because of the game’s sheer size. You could argue that there is better performance capture work elsewhere, for example in The Last of Us Part II , where millions of dollars per pixel is spent on producing photorealism in very controlled environments, most successfully in cutscenes. And it’s incredible work, no doubt. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is much wider in scope, and leaves much more up to the player in terms of where and when dialogues can be triggered, even taking into account permutations like the height of the player character (which, in a game with loads of different races, can vary wildly). So, while it isn’t as photorealistic or quite as granular as TLOU’s motion captured performances, it has a lot less control over where the player looks and a lot fewer places to hide.

So, for my money it’s an incredible achievement, and a real step forward in what games of this size and scope can achieve. But a lot of that is down to the fact that BG3 is not a game that has come from the AAA studio system, as Sherif points out in his latest op-ed . The game’s development was funded partly via a long stint in early access, on the back of Larian Studios having built up enormous trust and goodwill amongst CRPG fans by simply making a lot of very good games over the years.

Baldur's Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire - 4

BG3’s performers are exceptional, and their work is beautifully recreated in-game. |Image credit:Larian Studios

It’s not the first time that a game of significant size and scope has been notable for its performances, of course. The big watercooler game of 2011 was LA Noire, a Rockstar published detective sim set in the late forties, and sold largely on its facial mocap tech that captured actors performances in a way that was impressive for the time but that never quite clambered out of the uncanny valley. The technique it used, which essentially took 360 degree digital video of an actor’s face and wrapped it around a 3D scan of their head, was extremely limited in what it could realistically achieve. And also it made everyone’s mouths look really weird.

Baldur's Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire - 5

LA Noire was a bold experiment that pushed the medium forward, but it ultimately didn’t work all that well. |Image credit:Rockstar

When David Cage, the director Heavy Rain among some other incredible heaps of melodramatic QTE-heavy crap, said in an interview in 2011 that LA Noire’s tech was “an impressive dead end” , citing that it was expensive, impractical, and ultimately limiting compared to more traditional methods, he took a lot of flak. Of course he did: he was being uncomplimentary about the game of the moment, for whatever reason. And that got people’s backs up, understandably.

But he was right, as history as proved. We know this because nobody bothered doing anything like LA Noire ever again, while the kind of mocap tech he was touting as the more practical alternative has, with every generation, gotten better and better.

Heartbreaking, I know.

Baldur's Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire - 7

Baldur’s Gate III

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Baldur's Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire - 8

L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition

Baldur's Gate 3 proves David Cage right about LA Noire - 9

The Last of Us Part II

PS4

Wishlisted - Our 10 Best Steam Next Fest Demos

Another Next Fest kicks off soon, but we’ve already done the digging for you.

Welcome to Wishlisted, a showcase of our favourite demos from Steam Next Fest: June 2024. Check the video above or watch on YouTube .

Finding the Best NextFest Demos is all about the joy of discovery, but with so many Steam Next Fest demos getting released in such a short amount of time, it can be bewildering. So we’ve decided to show you our ten Best Steam Next Fest games which we think deserve your attention. These are all upcoming Steam Next Fest games that we’re genuinely excited for, and that we think should play nicely on PC handhelds too!

This is just the start of our Next Fest coverage. This week we’ll be previewing loads of upcoming demos across the entire network - right here on VG247, of course, but also over on our sister sites Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun. Bookmark our Wishlisted Steam Fest hub to stay in the loop. And this is well before Next Fest actually starts, so you, dear reader, get to bask for a solid fortnight celebrating all the wonderful new games that are just around the corner. Enjoy!