Fallout worked on TV, but Baldur's Gate 3 is a different beast

Baldur's Gate 3 will officially be the next video game phenomenon to make the leap to television, with Craig Mazin attached to shepherd a story set after the events of the game. On paper, it sounds like a prestigious slam dunk: one of the most acclaimed RPGs of the decade, along with a showrunner known for sober, serious adaptations. But the more I sit with the thought, the more worried I become because Baldur's Gate 3 is a complete game, with a finished story, with very real limitations.

Baldur's Gate 3 left no obvious dangling threads begging for resolution; there are plot points that could be expanded for players at a table, but not on television. For many players, its ending was emotionally satisfying in a way that RPGs rarely are, precisely because it respected their choices and let them live with the consequences. Continuing the story as it tells runs the risk of feeling invasive rather than additive.

Player choice is Baldur's Gate 3's core text

It is not far off to say that the decisive strength of Baldur's Gate 3 is not its setting, its production values, or even its characters in isolation, but how all these elements curve around player agency. This is a game that ends in dozens of radically different ways, and with the help of video games, all of them remain valid. Any post-game televised narrative would necessarily elevate one version of events above all others, turning a deeply personal experience into an “official” story.

Here is a comparison with Mazin's view The last of ushis second video game adaptation, would fall apart. That adaptation was critically successful and commercially dominant, and (critically) it was built on a fundamentally linear foundation. Joel and Ellie's journey, however emotionally contentious, unfolds similarly for everyone playing the game. While the show added very little to fans who knew the games, translating that story to TV didn't invalidate the player experience. Baldur's Gate 3however, is designed to withstand a single absolutely version of events, and its power lies in the absence of a “proper” ending, not in the promise of one.

Fallout and what a Baldur's Gate 3 show offers

So the question is not whether Mazin is capable of writing something convincing. His work on Chernobyl speaks for itself, and even skeptics to The last of Us would be hard pressed to deny his craft. The real question is what, beyond money and brand value, does a post-Baldur's Gate 3 story add to a story that already says what it needs to say? Do these characters need further canonical development, or were they powerful precisely because the players decided who they became?

The latest success for Amazons Fall-out series complicates this discussion in an interesting way. That show bypassed direct adaptation by telling a new, canon story in conjunction with the game, so longtime fans could engage without feeling left out. Despite assurances that it wouldn't do anything specific Fallout: New Vegas ends canon, it undeniably made some results impossible. It's manageable in a franchise built on sprawling timelines and regional stories, but i Baldur's Gate 3where the stakes are intensely personal and tightly tied to player choice, that kind of restriction would be much more pronounced.

Media meeting

A large part of this hesitancy (though not an insurmountable problem) is that prestige television thrives on specificity. By its very nature, TV is a medium that allows for characters and arcs to move in intentional, legible ways that benefit from a single creator's intent. Baldur's Gate 3 and video games that thrive on flexibility, contradiction, and the freedom to play roles against expectations. Those values aren't inherently incompatible, but they are in tension, and unless great care is taken to limit the possibility, even a brilliant version of that show would still tell the players, implicitly, that one thing is what really happened over another.

The Dungeons and Dragons problem

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s) Medium (5.0s) Hard (2.5s) Permadeath (2.5s)

That is also the question Dungeons & Dragons itself, which as property finds its greatest strength in the promise of endless storytelling. Each table, each campaign, each party is meant to have meaning on its own terms, and a TV adaptation of Baldur's Gate 3 Feels specifically counterintuitive to that ethos, especially when a single creative dominates the setting. If you want to tell more stories in the Forgotten Realms, why not tell new ones? Why return to a well that was already drained as satisfactorily as possible?

Ironically, the best modern example of Dungeons & Dragons working on the screen points exactly in that direction. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a great (if overlooked) movie, not because it expanded existing canon, but because it embraced the spirit of the game. It felt like a campaign come to life, complete with tonal shifts, improvisational energy, and a sense that the characters were discovering the story as they went. It does not need to validate previous experiences.

What is lost in translation

Ultimately, none of this means that a Baldur's Gate 3 the series is doomed. It may well be thoughtful and emotionally resonant, but greatness in context comes with a cost. To make the show work, something essential about the game has to be curtailed, if not completely left behind.

For a title that Baldur's Gate 3one that resonated so much because it trusted players to own their stories, that the trade-off feels particularly steep. Sometimes the most respectful adaptive choice is knowing when not to proceed. Baldur's Gate 3's the ending is what makes it work because of everything leading up to that moment, which is different for everyone. A direct sequel (as opposed to an anthological one, in a completely different medium) flies in the face of that.