There’s No Shame in Taking It Easy: Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Explorer Mode

These goblins hate me. And I didn’t even do anything: I just sneak attacked their generic devil-looking oaf of a leader so that I could recruit a sexy druid who turns into a bear to my party. Who wouldn’t understand that? But as soon as I touch Droz, or Rodz, or whatever that giant red goblin’s name is, an entire castle’s worth of the little guys come rushing in to stop me. They’re easy to stop individually, or even in groups of eight or so, but get a horde of them together, and have them rush my wizards and warriors en masse, and it becomes a lengthy battle of attrition that I apparently can’t win. 

This fight comes very early in Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s probably supposed to be a breeze. And I’ve done the things that would seem to limit the goblin stream; I’ve closed the gates to the red guy’s throne room, smashed their war drums before they could use ‘em, caught ‘em off-guard in hopes of wiping that main room clean before any of their buddies show up. None of it worked. I’ve tried multiple strategies, including hanging out in the rafters above and using spells and arrows to pick them off from a distance; the sheer number of goblins still overwhelms my party. Whatever: after failing at it five or six times in a row, wasting a solid 90 minutes in the process, I was done. I’ve got too much on my plate, anyway, between work and life and staying alive, to throw my free time away replaying parts of an 18-month-old game I wasn’t even planning on writing about.

I was about to turn Baldur’s Gate 3 off for good and just write off that $55.99 I paid for it, when I remembered two words: explorer mode. 

That’s the easiest of the game’s four difficulty levels, and the one that’s recommended if you just want to experience its story. Its story, and how it tells it, is literally the only reason I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not a Dungeons & Dragons fan. I don’t have time to play every big new RPG, and I’m actively turned off when I see that a game takes close to 100 hours to complete—as seems to be the case with Baldur’s Gate 3. “High fantasy” puts me to sleep. Clearly this game isn’t for me. I am interested in storytelling in games, though. That’s one of the reasons I still play these things. And I’ve heard so much about the narrative significance of Baldur’s Gate 3, how the sheer scope of its complex architecture of decisions and conversations makes it the latest innovation in the relationship between game narrative and player choice, that I was willing to look past all those warning signs and play this thing. And then the big red guy, and then the wasted hour and a half, and then the frustration.

I bumped it down to explorer mode and killed an entire garrison’s worth of goblins (and at least one wolf-like critter) in maybe 30 minutes. 

You don’t need to spend much time poking around the online places where people talk about games to see there’s still a stigma about playing on lower difficulties. I’ve always found that ridiculous, but it’s especially silly when it comes to games that are most notable for their stories. I’m not playing an RPG praised extensively and primarily for its storytelling because of combat that’s based on a 50-year-old tabletop RPG I last played in the early ‘90s. I’m playing it for that storytelling, and if the combat gets in the way of that, I’ve got no problem with making it easier. Nobody should hesitate to do that, and nobody should be mocked for it. It’s an outmoded way of thinking that was off-putting and embarrassing when it first really started taking root in the ‘90s, and today is just one of many signs of the permanent childishness of certain quarters of the gaming audience.

Call me a “noob.” Tell me to “git gud.” I don’t give a shit. If I’m not having fun I’ll make a game as easy as it’ll let me. If I’m feeling bogged down by something the game lets me adjust, I’ll tweak it until it feels right. If I find out something in a game is entirely optional, and can’t finish it within three attempts, I’m hitting the bricks. There’s absolutely no shame in that, and you should do it, too, if you want to.

Even beyond the “serious hardcore gamer” crew, some argue that a game’s difficulty level is an intentional choice that should be respected, as integral to a game’s nature as the language a writer chooses. If that’s true games wouldn’t offer multiple difficulty levels. Books don’t give you the option to make its words easier to understand (there is a history of making abridged or edited versions of classics to appeal to broader audiences, but those are marketed as distinct variations), but games often do, and each of those difficulty levels is its own discrete, intentional choice by the designers. There’s no right or wrong way to play, especially if you’re simply using one of the options provided by the game itself.

If you’re interested in Baldur’s Gate 3—or any other game with multiple difficulty levels—but feel discouraged by its length or difficulty, know that there’s some flexibility there. And if you’re somehow still hung up on this puerile belief that playing a game on the easiest setting is wrong, or bad, or embarrassing, you’ve got some things to work through. Please leave the rest of us out of that in the meantime. 

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.