BG3 third-person camera mod completely changes how you play Baldur’s Gate 3

After installation of a few mods (the True Third-Person Camera mod needs a few others to get everything set up right, namely, the Baldur’s Gate 3 Script Extender, the Mod Configuration Menu, and the WASD Character Movement mods), you get:

• An immersive-feeling over-the-shoulder camera point of view
• The ability to tinker with the angle of the camera and the zoom distance from your character in a couple of clicks, by bringing up the in-game mod configuration menu
• Tracking around your character, as you switch characters, whether your character is running or jumping or crouching or transforming into a bear, hypothetically
• Intuitive-feeling auto-switching! This is not a POV you need to commit to. When combat starts, for example, the camera will move to tactical view, but if you want the intimate POV while fighting, one tap on your keyboard, and you’re back.

You also get the benefit of working with a very, very responsive modder. The mod has been out for less than two weeks, and its creator has already rolled out several helpful updates and YouTube explainers.

Half the internet is in love with thisBG3mod. Across various social media platforms, you’ll see people saying it feels like a brand new game.Most are excited. It’s not hard to see why. You can tweak settings like camera height and horizontal tracking speed, if you so choose! For some, it may feel like a better way to explore a map we’ve had access to since 2023! Perhaps most intriguingly for me, with this mod enabled, you can look up. Faerûn looks fabulous from a lower angle. Suddenly, when you’re climbing down into the Adamantine Forge or checking out the goblin camp, you get a different sense for just how massive these buildings are — something that’s admittedly a bit difficult from a top-down POV.

But there are, of course, those who are less than thrilled with this mod. Some are even going as far as calling the use of these camera angles “sacrilegious,” or saying that “not every game needs to be playable from every angle,” as X user Manwe noted. Are we twisting Larian’s vision by downloading these in the first place?

I wonder — if Larian wanted to give us a world in which we could write our own Game of Thrones, would it really feel game-identity-erasing to give us a more cinematic way to view our stories as we’re creating them? The studio’s always been pro-mod, even going so far as to give us an in-game mod manager to make upgrading and customizing BG3 even easier. If this brings more people back to Baldur’s Gate 3 three years after launch, it’s hard to believe Larian’s overly mad about it.

Will Larian go so far as to incorporate these fan-fave camera angles into Divinity, the studio’s next big game, when their specialty has been isometric (top-down, mostly) cRPGs?

Hard to say. When Divinity releases, we’ll find out. Until then, excuse me, I’ve got places to be. Namely, the Gauntlet of Shar. I can’t wait to see and feel how towering those gigantic statues actually are from a true third-person view.