Agency, consent and trauma: How narrative shapes player experiences in Baldur’s Gate 3

Video games are frequently emotional experiences, with different kinds of games communicating the potential for emotional impacts to players. These emotional experiences often include investments in characters and game narratives that the player can explore as an avatar. Alongside this, players have grown to expect a certain level of agency in narrative-based role-playing games. This study explores how these elements of player experience are impacted by inclusions of themes of consent and trauma in video game narratives. Using Baldur’s Gate 3 as a recent case study, the project highlights the ways these narrative themes can affect players’ bonds with in-game characters, emotional responses to game content and senses of limited agency within a video game.