Meta-music and the sonic storytelling of Baldur’s Gate 3
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21689884 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas Studley (0000-0003-4178-5791, Queensland University of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-24 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1354-8565 • E-ISSN: 1748-7382 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13548565251352073 |
| OpenAlex | W4411594162 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
The video game Baldur’s Gate 3 adapts the fictional setting and rule systems of the classic tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons . For most of its branching three-act story, the music of Baldur’s Gate 3 serves the conventional nondiegetic purpose of supporting narrative immersion and communicating key gameplay information to players. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 also employs a range of metareferential musical devices which foreground the artificiality of the medium with varying impacts on the player experience. This article explores how the use of ‘meta-music’ in Baldur’s Gate 3 contributes to its digital representation of the tabletop roleplaying experience while also navigating the anti-illusionistic risks that this entails for immersive storytelling. I begin by reviewing the established relationship between music and immersive storytelling across video games and tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) alike. I next consider the metacommunicative nature of TTRPGs and how this aligns with the unique potentials of metareferential music within interactive contexts. The article then proceeds with a detailed accounting of the diverse meta-musical techniques encountered in Baldur’s Gate 3, from musical easter eggs and transdiegetic leitmotifs to villains who perform their own nondiegetic theme music. I argue that these strategies evoke the aesthetic experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons by eliciting states of heightened meta-awareness and open creative experimentation that characterise TTRPGs. In doing so, the ‘meta-music’ of Baldur’s Gate 3 bridges the extra- and intratextual worlds to support a specific interactional immersion that succeeds, in most cases, to deepen the storytelling experience. I conclude by arguing for further research into player perceptions of metareferential music and considering what the case study of Baldur’s Gate 3 reveals about the study of video game music at large
Art · Literature · Narrative · Storytelling · Digital Games and Media · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · Media, Communication, and Education
Narrative Discourse
Music in the Role-Playing Game
Cybertext
Flow
The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio
Shared Fantasy
Narrative Levels
Game Sound
Understanding Video Game Music
Gérard Genette Paratexts
In-Game
Ritual, Play, and Performance
Why People Play Table-Top Role-Playing Games
Invisible, aesthetic, and enrolled listeners across storytelling modalities
| Highly cited | No |
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