Baldur's Gate 3 writing director says Larian is "not saying no" to new races, but you'll likely have to wait a while

RBI Deputy Governor flags AI risks in finance sector; AI reshapes sales: Professionals save over 2 hours daily, focus on human connections; Canadian health care workers embrace AI amid staffing crisis; Samsung's AI-powered fridge generates recipes- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

Before its release, promised to include 17,000 different endings — but does it really? There's undeniably a ton of player choice and variation in the game. There are even hundreds of contingencies and failsafes in case players try to break . It wouldn't be too much of a stretch at all to say there are thousands of different ways its story can play out, but 17,000 endings is an entirely different kind of claim.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has reignited the great debate about how Cait Sith is pronounced, as his own pronunciation goes against the infamous Twitter post that started it all.

Minthara is definitely one of Baldur's Gate 3's spicier companions, and a firm fan favorite for those that enjoy a little bit of bloodshed in their RPGs. Back at launch, you couldn't actually recruit Minthara without slaughtering a bunch of Tieflings (or turning her into a sheep), and while a recent patch has allowed players to not have to make that choice anymore, it's still very clear that she isn't a particularly pleasant person.

Of the various mini-games in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, some of the most interesting are Queen’s Blood, a collectible card game, and piano playing. While Square Enix offered new details on the latter, including a free play mode, it hasn’t discussed how the CCG works.

Today, December 20, artificial intelligence space has emerged as a big talking point again as various countries are taking significant steps in integrating the technology and formulating the right regulatory procedures. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has written a post looking back at 2023 and the year ahead. In his post, he predicted that AI will take center stage in 2024 and will “supercharge the innovation pipeline”. In other news, the defence ministry signed a Rs. 1,614 crore contract for the procurement of six AI-powered offshore patrol vessels for the Indian Coast Guard. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

I'm just now getting to know Minthara in Baldur's Gate 3—both on my evil necromancer playthrough and my Honour Mode run, where I intend to pick her up from Moonrise Towers after risking my neck to knock her out. Still, I've cast off the shackles of spoilers after completing my first playthrough—gleefully getting my mitts on whatever details I can about my future drow bestie—which makes this a good point to mention that there'll be spoilers for Minthara's full plot line below. In a recent interview with IGN, Larian CEO Swen Vincke and co-lead writer Adam Smith discussed her character arc and the nature of evil, and they come to a conclusion I find genuinely fascinating: Minthara may grow to adore her compatriots, but she's still evil with a capital E. «She has this very unexpected story where she does soften,» says Smith, «and you see her learning how to deal with being part of a group.» However, Smith's keen to point out that her story «is not a redemption arc.» Minthara's tenderness, Smith implies, is a facet of her character from the get-go that you slowly discover—not something the player creates for her. Another surprising revelation is that Minthara can actually question why you slew the tieflings at the grove if you went full murder with it—even if that was the only way to recruit her until recently. "[Minthara] says, 'Okay, so now I'm not hearing the voice of The Absolute anymore … I killed all those tieflings, it's because I was brainwashed. What is your excuse?'" He goes on to point out that if you just reply 'cause I'm evil', she actually really dislikes that.

Baldur's Gate 3's developers have explained how they tackled the game's many, many endings.

Baldur's Gate 3's default class was originally going to be the Paladin, but a conundrum with Lae'zel sort of ruined the entire idea.

Picking a favourite Baldur's Gate 3 character is a bit like picking your favourite limb, but there's little question that the best villain in Baldur's Gate 3 is Raphael. The smooth-talking trickster cambion is as charming and charismatic as he is utterly, incontrovertibly evil, such that you kind of want to do what he asks of you even though it's clearly the worst idea ever.

When I played Baldur's Gate 3 back in the autumn, I decided to roll with a Dark Urge Paladin, and it was such a fascinating experience that I wrote a whole article about it. But to give you the notes, combining a class that's sworn to abide by justice with a character who just flippin' loves murder creates an incredible internal conflict, leading to a character arc which, for me, felt like the closest you could come to a canonical playthrough of BG3.

The cast of Baldur's Gate 3 has evolved over the game's Early Access period and beyond—Wyll in particular had a whole rewrite between the game's conception and its full release. Whether it's whole storylines shifting or just toning down Gale's accidental thirstiness, finding the core of a character in a story this large is bound to be complicated.