Baldur's Gate is a series of role-playing video games set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. The series has been divided into two sub-series, known as the Bhaalspawn Saga and the Dark Alliance, both taking place mostly within the Western Heartlands, but the Bhaalspawn Saga extends to Amn and Tethyr. The Dark Alliance series was released for consoles and was critically and commercially successful. The Bhaalspawn Saga was critically acclaimed for using pausable realtime gameplay, which is credited with revitalizing the computer role-playing game (CRPG) genre.
Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal is a 2001 expansion pack for the role-playing video game Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. It adds a multi-level dungeon called Watcher's Keep to the game and completes the main plot. There are several new weapons, a higher level cap, a further refined Infinity graphics engine, and new class-related features and magical skills. The novelization of the game was written by Drew Karpyshyn and released in September 2001.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Interplay Entertainment. It is the sequel to 1998's Baldur's Gate and was released for Microsoft Windows in September 2000. Following its predecessor, the game takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a fantasy campaign setting, and is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition rules. Powered by BioWare's Infinity Engine, Baldur's Gate II uses an isometric perspective and pausable real-time gameplay. The player controls a party of up to six characters, one of whom is the player-created protagonist; the others are certain characters recruited from the game world.
Cameron Riley Monaghan is an American actor and model. He is known for his role as Ian Gallagher on the Showtime comedy-drama series Shameless and as twins Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, who serve as origins for the Joker, on the DC Comics-based TV series Gotham. He also portrayed Cal Kestis in the action-adventure game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel Jedi: Survivor. Monaghan began his career as a child model at the age of three and as a child actor at the age of seven.
Neil Newbon is an English actor known for playing Elijah Kamski and Gavin Reed in Detroit: Become Human, Karl Heisenberg in Resident Evil Village, and Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3.
Jacob Basil Anderson is a British actor and musician. As an actor, he is known for his roles as Grey Worm in Game of Thrones (2013-19), Louis de Pointe du Lac in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (2022), his recurring appearances in the first seasons of Episodes and Broadchurch (2013), and the thirteenth series of the revival of Doctor Who (2021). As a musician, he uses the alias Raleigh Ritchie ; his debut album, You're a Man Now, Boy, was a soul and trip hop album released in 2016 to positive reviews. Anderson's second studio album, Andy, was released in 2020.
Sophie Belinda Turner is an English actress. She made her acting debut as Sansa Stark in the HBO epic fantasy television series Game of Thrones (2011–2019), for which she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2019.
The second season of the fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones premiered in the United States on HBO on April 1, 2012, and concluded on June 3, 2012. It consists of 10 episodes, each running approximately 50–60 minutes. The season mostly covers the events of A Clash of Kings, the second novel of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, adapted for television by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. HBO ordered the second season on April 19, 2011, which began filming in July 2011, primarily in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Croatia and Iceland.
Power is an American crime drama thriller television series created and produced by Courtney A. Kemp in collaboration with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. It aired on the Starz network from June 7, 2014, to February 9, 2020.
José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal is a Chilean and American actor. After nearly two decades of taking small roles in film and television, Pascal rose to prominence for portraying Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2014) and Javier Peña in the Netflix crime series Narcos (2015–2017). He went on to appear in the films The Great Wall (2016), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), The Equalizer 2 (2018), Triple Frontier (2019), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022).
The sixth season of the fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones premiered on HBO on April 24, 2016, and concluded on June 26. It consists of 10 episodes, each of approximately 50–60 minutes long. Much of the season's storyline is derived from content not yet published in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, although a significant amount of material from A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons and the upcoming sixth novel The Winds of Winter, which Martin outlined to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, was used. The series was adapted for television by Benioff and Weiss. HBO had ordered the season on April 8, 2014, together with the fifth season, which began filming in July 2015 primarily in Northern Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Iceland and Canada. The season cost over $100 million to produce.
Gypsy is an American psychological thriller drama television series created by Lisa Rubin for Netflix. Naomi Watts stars as Jean Holloway, a psychologist who secretly infiltrates the private lives of her patients. Billy Crudup co-stars as her husband Michael. The first season comprises 10 episodes and was released on June 30, 2017.
Isabella May Ramsey is an English actor. They are known for their break-out role as young noblewoman Lyanna Mormont in the HBO fantasy television series Game of Thrones (2016–2019) and Ellie in the HBO drama series The Last of Us (2023–present). They received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the latter.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a 2023 role-playing video game developed and published by Belgian game developer Larian Studios. The game is the third main installment in the Baldur's Gate series, based on the tabletop fantasy role-playing system of Dungeons & Dragons. A partial version of the game was released in early access format for macOS and Windows in October 2020. It remained in early access until its full release for Windows in August 2023, with versions for PlayStation 5, macOS, and Xbox Series X/S releasing later that year.
House of the Dragon is an American fantasy drama television series created by George R. R. Martin and Ryan Condal for HBO. A prequel to Game of Thrones (2011–2019), it is the second television series in the A Song of Ice and Fire franchise. Condal and Miguel Sapochnik served as the showrunners for the first season. Based on parts of Martin's 2018 book Fire & Blood, the series begins about 100 years after the Seven Kingdoms are united by the Targaryen conquest, nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, and 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen. Featuring an ensemble cast, the show portrays the events leading up to the beginning of the decline of House Targaryen, a devastating war of succession known as the "Dance of the Dragons".
Power Book II: Ghost, or simply Ghost is an American crime drama television series created by Courtney A. Kemp that premiered on September 6, 2020 on Starz. The series is both a direct sequel and spin-off to Power.
Alan Wake 2 is a 2023 survival horror video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing. The sequel to Alan Wake (2010), the story follows best-selling novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI special agent named Saga Anderson.
Twisted Metal is an American post-apocalyptic action comedy television series developed by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Michael Jonathan Smith. Based on the vehicular combat video game franchise of the same name published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the series stars Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Joe Seanoa, Will Arnett and Thomas Haden Church. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, John Doe, a talkative milkman with amnesia, is given a mission to traverse the desolate United States to deliver a mysterious package with unknown contents. He faces a life-altering opportunity but must confront ruthless marauders in deadly and destructive vehicles to secure a chance at a better future.
The D.I.C.E. Award for Role-Playing Game of the Year is an award presented annually by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences during the D.I.C.E. Awards. "This award honors a title, single-player or multi-player, where an individual assumes the role of one or more characters and develops those characters in terms of abilities, statistics, and/or traits as the game progresses. Gameplay involves exploring, acquiring resources, solving puzzles, and interacting with player or non-player characters in the persistent world. Through the player's actions, his/her virtual characters' statistics or traits demonstrably evolve throughout the game". All active creative/technical, business, and affiliate members of the Academy are qualified to vote for this category. The award initially had separate awards for console games and computer games at the 1st Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in 1998, with the first winners being Final Fantasy VII for console and Dungeon Keeper for computer. Throughout the history of this category, there have been numerous mergers and changes for role-playing related games. The current version was established at the 21st Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in 2018, which was awarded to Nier: Automata.
The 20th British Academy Video Game Awards are set to be hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts on 11 April 2024 to honour the best video games of 2023. Held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the ceremony was hosted by comedian Phil Wang for the first time. Nominations were announced on March 7, 2024, with epic fantasy roleplaying game Baldur's Gate 3 earning a leading ten nominations.
