There is a lot of praise about Baldur’s Gate 3. However, there is one quest that is implemented so poorly that the community wishes it didn’t exist at all.
When thinking of games that offer as much freedom as possible and consider almost all decisions of the players, Baldur’s Gate 3 is likely at the top of the list. Whether in solving fights or quests, there are numerous ways to complete them, and almost every spell and ability can contribute in some way. Although there are sometimes little things, like a staff that loses its effect in cutscenes, the majority is thoughtful and consistent.
However, one quest near the end of the game is disliked by a large part of the community. Because it is simply poor compared to what the game otherwise offers.
Which quest is it about? It is about the incident with the doppelgänger in Act 3. As soon as you arrive in the city of Baldur’s Gate, you will receive a warning from Gortash shortly after that a doppelgänger is in your camp. This is a creature that poses as one of your party members. The quest later culminates in a kidnapping, and the task seems clear: Find the doppelgänger before something bad happens.
The only catch: This is not possible at all and ignores all mechanics of the game world.
What is the problem with the task? In the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, the player TheHatOnTheCat wrote a long post about what doesn’t work with the task. Because the hero group in the game has a number of special circumstances that should actually make it easy to identify a doppelgänger.
Yes, you are warned that there is a faceless one in your camp. Yes, everyone would assume that you should try to find this person. You are not supposed to do that, and you can’t do it at all. It is literally impossible for you to investigate the incident and find out who it is.
The problem with the task is that you actually have a variety of ways to locate such a fraud:
- Potions, spells, scrolls, and an amulet that can use “Detect Thought”
- If you kill a doppelgänger, it assumes its original form again. This is not the case with any person in the camp.
Additionally, the circumstance that the hero group is actually telepathically connected by the mind flayer worms in their heads should come into play. They consistently engage in dialogue through telepathy and have insight into each other’s thoughts and memories. This should make it a piece of cake to find out who the doppelgänger actually is.
There is no doppelgänger – until the game says: But!
What is really problematic about the task is that it is simply unsolvable. Because by the time you are warned about the doppelgänger and logically start investigating, the game hasn’t even decided who the traitor is supposed to be:
The game is lying to you. Yes, there is a traitor in your camp, but the game hasn’t decided yet who it will be. You can’t investigate, and there is no way to catch [the traitor], because they are all still themselves at the moment. This also means that there are no clues at all, because that would have required minimal effort to efficiently incorporate this “plot”.
Or, as TheHatOnTheCat puts it more dramatically at the end:
The faceless “quest” is the dumbest “quest” in the whole game. Honestly, it’s even the dumbest “quest” across multiple games. The majority of the game is good, but this is just a poop emoji drawn by a preschooler.
The words may be a bit harsh, but compared to the rest of the quality of Baldur’s Gate 3, the whole doppelgänger incident stands out particularly negatively. But a game can never be perfect, and so Larian also has something they can improve on in the next game.
Almost as hated as the quest is a race in D&D – the Tieflings. But there are many reasons for that.
