Baldur’s Gate 3 solves the problem of being able to talk to every corpse with a brutal trick

Larian Studios prevented a problem in Baldur’s Gate 3 that would affect one of the most useful spells in the game with a cruel trick.

What is that problem? In Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3), there are some powerful spells. One particularly useful spell is ‘Speak with Dead’, which allows you to have brief conversations with a deceased person. This way, you can obtain interesting information from an NPC who has already seen the lilies from below.

However, ‘Speak with Dead’ posed a problem for BG3 developer Larian Studios because if you could speak with literally every dead NPC and obtain important information, the spell would be simply too powerful – and moreover, you would need even more dialogue lines than Baldur’s Gate 3 already offers.

As Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios, revealed in an interview with Todd Kenreck of Wizards of the Coast, the developers employed a small but brutal trick to balance the spell.

Without a head, one cannot speak

What is that trick? According to Vincke, Larian followed the simple principle: ‘You can speak with any dead person who still has their head’ and elaborated: ‘So if you see many decapitated people in the game, we literally did it that way. That’s our cheat (via YouTube).’

Deceased NPCs that you shouldn’t be able to speak with died too brutally to provide you with information. They are headless and cannot respond to you.

To further balance ‘Speak with Dead’, you can ask a corpse a maximum of 5 questions. Additionally, a dead person may not want to speak to you if you are their murderer.

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Who can use the spell? ‘Speak with Dead’ is a 3rd-level spell that can be learned by bards, warlocks, and clerics like Shadowheart.

In addition, the ‘Amulet of Lost Voices’ grants you the ability to speak with a corpse once per day. You can already find this piece of jewelry in Act 1 in the Moldy Crypt.

In the interview with Todd Kenreck, Swen Vincke also spoke about a spell that did not make it into the role-playing game and explained why the team decided against it:

One single spell would have nearly doubled the size of Baldur’s Gate 3