In a year chock-full of splashy starring vehicles, 2023 was surprisingly kind to the little guys. Some of the year’s biggest blockbusters boasted ensemble casts the size of football teams, a practice made cool again with the help of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Though their title characters will inevitably take some of the spotlight, a handful of the year’s most talked-about performances came from actors who made the most of their limited screen time.

At the end of each year, Inverse looks back on the performances that stuck with us long after the credits rolled, and the actors who stole the show without top billing. From internet boyfriends to Oscar winners and relative unknowns, these 10 scene stealers each surpassed conventional expectations, delivering performances that went beyond what they were given on the page.

Here are the best scene stealers of 2023, ranked.

When Baldur’s Gate 3 was still in Early Access, back in 2020, the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired game asked players to create two characters at the start of their adventures. The first was the protagonist. The second was the “Dream Lover,” who appears to the protagonist while they’re sleeping and exists somewhere within the game’s massive fantasy world. But as those early test players gave their feedback (all while paying full price), Belgian developer Larian Studios realized something wasn’t working.

“As time went on, we rolled out more and more dream encounters between this seductive version of the character and the player,” principal narrative designer Lawrence Schick tells Inverse. “It became clear that it just wasn’t connecting. It wasn’t conveying what we wanted it to convey. Players were just confused.”

In the final version of Baldur’s Gate 3 (released for Windows in August 2023, followed by versions on PS5, Mac, and Xbox), the Dream Lover is replaced with a drastically different type of character, the Guardian.

This transformation encapsulates exactly what fans love about Baldur’s Gate 3. Unlike most big-budget games, which arrive fully formed (at least, one would hope), Larian’s role-playing epic feels like a living document, reacting and responding to player feedback. Its unusual development cycle gave BG3 an edge, and it could mark a major change in the way video games get made in the future.