I'm a little bit behind most of the world on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3, or at least it feels like it. First 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I waited for the console release, and then I've been pulled away by other games I've been covering, most recently 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. The ceiling and creativity on Baldur's Gate 3 is so high that 1꧟68澳洲幸运5开奖网:I often end ꦬup negatively comparing them to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Larian's RPG, but it also means progress is slow. I've only recently made it through the Underdark, and being a female drow down there made me feel like Barbie.
I didn't plan on being a drow initially. As the release of Baldur's Gate 3 drew nearer, I was surer and surer that I would be a tiefling. Easily my favourite species in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, the latest adventure I'm DMing even features a walled tiefling city populated by several dozen of them. In the next adventure I have waiting, I shall be playing as a tiefওling. You can never have too many tieflings. But when Karlach was revealed, she fit the exact look I was going for in the game, and so it seemed like a little diversity was needed - enter the drow.
The only time I've ever played as a drow is in the Risk-like spin-off game Tyrants of the Underdark, but as dark and vaguely demonic outsiders, they had the tiefling vibes I wanted. I didn't mind giving up my buff red tiefling for Karlach, but that didn't mean I would become a happy little dwarf bard. I was still planning for the same vibes, so a move to a drow felt the most sensible. I could have flipped the script and become a lovely, blonde elf paladin, which probably fits the classic Barbie approach.
It's down in the Underdark where your drow feels most like Barbie, at least if you're playing as a female. Drow have a matriarchal society, and thus women are not only revered but celebrated. That I was a Lolth-sworn warlock only made things sweeter. I was queen in this place, empress, mistress. Like Barbie, at least at the beginning of the movie, it was girls’ night every night. The men are just Ken, everywhere else they'd be a ten - but this is not ever🅰ywhere 🃏else. This is the Underdark, and it bows to me.
Early in my exploration of the dark realm, we met a male drow. As ever in Baldur's Gate 3, there were a plethora of options - discussion topics to ask for exposition, requests for assistance, the option to fight... possibilities stacked on possibilities. But as a Lolth-sworn drow, you can instead remind the drow that they, a Ken, live to serve you, a Barbie. He corrects himself, refers to you as mistress, and gives you anything you care to take.
Throughout most of the game, characters will be wary of you as a drow, and they may even recoil. The only ones who seem to welcome you are the villains, who expect you to share their ruthless bloodlust and masochism. But down in the Underdark, encountering you is not a surprise. You will be welcomed by the mushroom myconids, and can roam freely in your element. Your presence is celebrated, and it is by your hand that peace flows through the shadows. Even when you head to the Grymforge and are given a thoroughly un-Barbie welcome, that's because they think you are a True Soul (or, as they colourfully call it, Twat Soul), and through siding with the animals, slaves, and rebels you get to uplift the downtrodden and are celebrated once more.
The only thing I'm missing is other Barbies. A hallmark of Barbieland, and one of the few scenes from the movie to rival the cultural impact of Barbenheimer as a concept is the famous "Hi Barbie!" scene where all the Barbies meet and welcome each other. Playing as a drow is a lonely existence, with few of your own to call your own. Tieflings feature throughout the game, as well as the typical constant presence of elves, humans, dwarfs, and gnomes.
Playing against the drow type by helping as many people as I can, accepting various religions, and rejecting power in favour of pragmatism, I'm able to make more friends than your average drow, but it feels at times less like I'm Stereotypical Barbie and more like Weird Barbie or Midge. Barbie-adjacent, but not quite Barbie. It's only in the Underdark where drow become Barbie. You just have to imagine all those blacks and greys are really pink.