Baldur’s Gate is a role-playing video game that was developed by BioWare and published in 1998 by Interplay Entertainment. It is the first game in the Baldur’s Gate series and takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a high fantasy campaign setting, using a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 2nd edition rules. It was the first game to use the Infinity Engine for its graphics, with Interplay using the engine for other Forgotten Realms-licensed games, including the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. The game’s story focuses on a player-made character who travels across the Sword Coast alongside a party of companions.

The game received critical acclaim and was credited for revitalizing computer role-playing games. An expansion pack was released titled Tales of the Sword Coast, as was a sequel, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn. An enhanced version of the Infinity Engine was later created as part of Beamdog’s remake Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, the first new release in the franchise in nearly nine years. The original Baldur’s Gate continues to be referenced as a point of inspiration in many modern role-playing games, and is often cited as one of the best video games ever made. In 2023, Larian Studios released the third installment, Baldur’s Gate 3.

Players conduct the game from a top-down isometric third-person perspective, creating a character who travels across pre-rendered locations, taking on quests, recruiting companions to aid them, and combating enemies, while working towards completing the game’s main story. A user interface allows a player to move characters and give them actions to undertake, review information on on-going quests and the statistics of characters in their party, manage their inventories, and organize the formation of the party, though the screen does not need to be centered on the characters being controlled and can be moved around with the mouse and keyboard, the latter capable of accessing various player options through keyboard shortcuts. All of the gameplay mechanics were coded to conform to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition role-playing rules, with the game automatically computing rule intricacies, including tracking statistics and dice rolling.[8][9] Although the game is conducted in real-time, some elements of the rule set were modified to allow it to feature a pausable real-time mode. This allows players to pause at any time and prepare what actions a character would do, including the ability to set the game to automatically pause at preset points in combat.