One Of The Most Popular Video Games Ever Is Heading To HBO — But It's A Terrible Idea

"Baldur's Gate 3," one of the most acclaimed and successful video games of modern times, is about to become a TV show. A report from Deadline has revealed that "The Last of Us" showrunner Craig Mazin is now set to create, write, and executive produce a live-action TV adaptation of the Larian Studios title for HBO (something that also points to "The Last of Us" ending after its upcoming third season).

Video games adaptations have become a very profitable industry lately, so this all makes sense in that respect. Indeed, video game TV shows are doing especially well at the moment, between "The Last of Us," "Fallout," "Arcane," and others like them. Moreover, between his work on "The Last of Us" and the network's much-celebrated "Chernobyl" miniseries, HBO has reason to trust Mazin with a venture like this.

For those not familiar, "Baldur's Gate 3" takes place in the world of "Dungeons & Dragons" and follows a party seeking to cure themselves of a parasitic illithid tadpole infecting their brains. As you play the game, you encounter monsters, dragons, armies, and even demons on your quest to save the realm.

Sounds fun, right? Here's the problem: For one, it appears that no one from Larian Studios is actually involved with this adaptation (per a Twitter/X post from "Baldur's Gate 3" lead designer Swen Vincke). Instead, Mazin will be working with "Dungeons & Dragons" business daddy Wizards of the Coast's Head of Story Chris Perkins, who's serving as a consultant.

The other issue? Deadline is reporting that the TV show will tell an original story that "takes place immediately after the events of [the 'Baldur's Gate 3' video game]." This will also force the series to pick a canon storyline from the game, which will trivialize what fans love about it.

The thing that sets "Baldur's Gate 3" apart from similar titles its its sense of freedom. Rather than telling a linear story, it has a branching narrative that offers unparalleled agency for the player. No two endings of the game are exactly alike, just as no two "Dungeons & Dragons" campaigns are the same.

And yet, it appears that the "Baldur's Gate 3" TV show will undermine all that. By taking place after the events of the original game, the show will focus on characters both old and new "dealing with the ramifications of the events in the third game." Except, HBO can't draw from the game's various story branches the way players can when they begin a fresh run. Instead, it will have to settle on a specific canon that overrides the hundreds of hours that players put into the game. Sure, certain plot points from the game will remain canonical, but by taking this approach, the "Baldur's Gate 3" TV adaptation will inevitably end up contradicting the stories that so many players went through.

This is the opposite of what makes Amazon's "Fallout" TV show a stellar video game adaptation. In that case, showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet have developed a series that's mostly standalone and barely overlaps with the original "Fallout" games. And even when its narrative touches on characters and events from its source material, the show still leaves things vague enough to avoid clashing with them canon-wise.

Basically, the brilliance of "Baldur's Gate 3" is that it doesn't tell a singular story; it tells hundreds of them. To undo that in the name of "canon" is to remove what makes the game terrific to begin with.