Baldur's Gate 3 is the first game in history to win five major game of the year awards: those from BAFTA, D.I.C.E., Game Developers Choice, Golden Joystick, and The Game Awards. This historic achievement further underlines the massive success that Baldur's Gate 3 went on to become, especially since that elusive fifth accolade was far from a certainty.
Major Baldur's Gate 3 Villain Was Once Playable
25.03.2024 - 22:59 / gamerant.com / Swen Vincke / Dominik Bo
Baldur's Gate 3 Act 2 spoilers ahead.
Major Baldur's Gate 3 villain Ketheric Thorm was once a playable companion, Larian Studios said. This revelation was offered as part of a wider overview of some of the sacrifices that the developer had to make in order to ship Baldur's Gate 3 on time.
The second act of Baldur's Gate 3 largely revolves around defeating the Thorm family and learning more about it in the process. Ketheric is the scariest of that bunch, having turned into an immortal monster plaguing the Shadow-Cursed Lands whom the player has to deal with in order to progress to the final act of the acclaimed RPG.
But the seemingly unkillable villain wasn't always meant to perish at the end of Act 2, at least not in every possible permutation of the game's story. The developers had instead originally planned to make him an optional companion. That's according to Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke, who said as much to IGN during his recent appearance at Game Developers Conference 2024. Elaborating on that point, the executive revealed the developer initially wanted to make the villain recruitable for anyone who manages to pass the difficult Persuasion check to «spare» Ketheric Thorm in Baldur's Gate 3.
«You can see that a moment where [sic] he breaks, that moment led to recruitment normally,» Vincke recalled. But the studio eventually had to cut that possibility out of the game in order to ship it without delays, the executive explained. Ketheric Thorm was far from the only Baldur's Gate 3 character who was once meant to be playable. On the contrary, Larian Studios had «an entire roster of companions that didn't make the cut,» Vincke said, noting that Thorm was simply his favorite one. The official also revealed that many locations ended up getting cut from the game as well, because they were too small to truly reward exploration. Those abandoned areas include the Candlekeep, Vlaakith's palace, the Gith Astral Plane, and even Hell.
You can see that a moment where [Ketheric Thorm] breaks, that moment led to recruitment normally.
If players were indeed able to convince Ketheric Thorm to join their cause, that likely would have made the Baldur's Gate 3 Act 2 boss fight play out much differently. Doing so would presumably resulted in him assisting in the second phase of the encounter, which many fans found to be fairly challenging. Passing his final Persuasion check is still the path of least resistance, as it skips the Thorm encounter by having him chuck himself into the nearby pit, allowing players to save their precious resources for the Apostle of Myrkul.
The chances of the developer revisiting the idea of making Ketheric Thorm playable appear to be non-existent. During his GDC talk, Vincke said that Larian is
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