A Baldur's Gate 3 player has provided a really good example of why the game's level cap has to be set firmly at level 12.
20.09.2023 - 15:51 / gamesradar.com / Swen Vincke / Neil Newbon / Will
Developer Larian Studios has gone to some absurd lengths to make sure that your murder sprees won't totally break Baldur's Gate 3, including a series of fully voiced NPCs almost nobody will ever meet.
The first act of Baldur's Gate 3 asks you to get involved with a conflict between a horde of goblin raiders and a group of Tiefling refugees making camp in a druid enclave. If you want to help the Tieflings, you're asked to go kill the leaders of the goblins. Kill the bosses, and the next stage of the quest will send you to talk to the Tiefling leader Zevlor, who'll organize a party to celebrate the defeat of the goblins.
But what if you choose to murder Zevlor and help the Tieflings anyway? YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician (as noted by PC Gamer) tested exactly that in a recent video. If Zevlor's dead, another Tiefling called Asharak will take his place, with unique dialog acknowledging the previous leader's passing. If you've also murdered Asharak, he'll be replaced by Cerys - a character who can't be dead because you don't normally meet her until Act 2.
Now, let's suppose you do something truly wacky, like choosing to help the Tieflings against the goblins while also murdering the entire Tiefling camp except for Zevlor. In this extremely rare case, you can still talk to Zevlor and activate the party sequence, and you'll meet a whole bunch of new Tieflings with their own totally unique conversations, which you'd never otherwise see.
The thing that impresses me most, however, is a character you definitely haven't met called Gerson the Bent. He only shows up if you take out the goblin leaders while you still have a single party member waiting back at the Tiefling camp, seemingly as the method for the devs to bring in a loading screen to cover all the Tieflings heading for greener pastures. Yes, Larian wrote dialog and cast an actor just to make this one extremely obscure transition a little bit smoother.
Larian boss Swen Vincke has previously said that the secret to a good D&D RPG is "investing in things that maybe 0.001% of the audience will see," and it seems like it's only now that we're starting to truly see the extent of those obscure details. Heck, Astarion actor Neil Newbon has been teasing that players still haven't found a hidden 2-hour section of the game. Who knows what else players will stumble upon next?
Players are certainly testing the RPG's limits, like the terrible hero who got an apocalyptically bad secret ending.
A Baldur's Gate 3 player has provided a really good example of why the game's level cap has to be set firmly at level 12.
Baldur's Gate 3Hotfix 8 is now live and aims to address a series of crashing issues, but most importantly it makes His Majesty hairless again.
has wowed everyone with its attention to detail and nuanced characters. The third installment in the beloved -based RPG series continues the adventure in Faerûn, this time tasking its heroes with stopping a mind flayer plot.
Baldur's Gate 3 is excellent. Historically excellent, in fact, but it's not without its flaws. The first of these, of course, is that Astarion was not voiced with Neil Newbon's original Brummie accent, but the game's awkward inventory system is a close-run second. I don't know about you, but I probably spent at least a couple of hours of playtime standing stock-still in camp, desperately trying to give my chaotic inventory and those of my allies some semblance of organisation. It never worked.
After it launched, Baldur's Gate 3 hit a phenomenal 800,000 concurrent Steam players and received PC Gamer's highest review score in 16 years, but during its years in early access, it wasn't widely expected to be the next big thing. Take as an example this May 2022 document accidentally leaked by Microsoft as part of its lawsuit with the FTC which dismissed Baldur's Gate 3 as a «second-run Stadia PC RPG» that Microsoft figured it could get onto PC Game Pass for about $5 million.
The core cast of Baldur's Gate 3 will reunite for a special one-shot Dungeons & Dragons livestream this week.
Actual play show High Rollers will be hosting the cast of Baldur's Gate 3 for a special one-shot this week.
This Friday at 7pm BST/2pm PDT join us and the cast of Baldurs Gate 3 for a very special live D&D adventure on Twitch! /highrollersdnd @larianstudios #dnd #baldursgate3 #ad pic.twitter.com/889AYParv7September 18, 2023
The entire core cast of Baldur's Gate 3 will come together to role-play their own characters in what I can only describe as the ultimate D&D session.
Even if you’ve only just started your fourth Baldur’s Gate 3 play-through, you still might be craving more of the game’s captivating characters. The actors behind those voices have been pretty active on social media, reciting memes in character and what not. Now they’re taking the immersion to a whole new level and joining actual play D&D series High Rollers for a special livestream event.
By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 3 is set to launch in eight days, and while the devs haven't confirmed the content of the update, there's reason to hope some performance gains might be on the way.