In Baldur’s Gate 3 you can obtain various endings for your companions, depending on the decisions you make during your run. One ending for Gale is particularly sad, as you only have to not show him a book in this case.
Which book is it about? In Act 3, you can find a book in a vault under the shop “Sorcerous Sundries” (or rather, steal it). The book titled “The Annals of Karsus” plays an essential role for your companion Gale.
Because this book leads him to seek out the goddess Mystra, where he learns about his mysterious, magic-eating power. And also that there are ways to get rid of it – without him having to die. Additionally, it contains important information about the crown of Karsus, which significantly influences Gale’s decisions.
That it has consequences not to get this book or simply not to show it to him, one can now imagine. However, it even leads to a particularly sad ending that breaks fans on Reddit, as user bonuslobster shares their experience in their thread.
“Oh yes, this ending breaks my heart.”
What ending did the player get? Player bonuslobster shares in their thread on Reddit their experience, in which they retrieved the book from the vault but forgot to show it to him. Although they tried again later, Gale showed no reaction. However, this did not bother bonuslobster, as they did not want their companion to ascend to godhood to solve his problem.
In the end, at the docks, Gale then tells the player that he will seek the now lost crown, no matter what they would say to him. When bonuslobster reached the party at the end of the game, however, they found only an echo of Gale. He had seemingly pulled the crown from the water and had promptly vanished from the plane of existence when he attempted to ascend to godhood himself.
When bonuslobster decided to embrace the echo, Gale questioned their choice and regretted having risked “all of this” to become a god. A letter followed, in which he wrote that he should have been satisfied with his life, but the temptation of immortality was too great.
Also, his winged cat Tara is hiding behind some grass, visibly sad and dejected. When spoken to, she tells how much she would like to curl up in Gale’s lap again and that she would do anything for that.
How does the community feel about the ending? As user crockofpot explains in the comments, this ending makes quite a bit of sense, as without the book Gale had no other hope for long-term improvement of his condition besides the crown. Nevertheless, bonuslobster is not happy with it at all and would have preferred a different ending.
Many others share their opinion and express their sorrow about it:
- Werfboi writes about Tara the cat’s statement: “That’s the line that always touches me, and when you want to embrace Gale’s echo and he says something like ‘Oh, what a good friend you were’, then it really messed me up.”
- crockofpot notes: “His final lines and his letter are even sadder if you have a romance with him and receive his death hologram.”
- Rayne009 comments: “Oh yes, this ending breaks my heart. I hate the dead Gale endings, I just can’t stand them (I’m a certified God-Gale simp, but still).”
- SuperbFlounder7552 agrees: “That happened to me too. I didn’t think it would be that bad if we skipped the book. It turned out that it was a big deal.”
To provide Gale some relief from his problem with the mysterious power, he constantly needs magical items that he can absorb. This can be tedious when you have to hand over the painstakingly gathered items to him. To help you know what you can give him, we have created an overview for you: The most useless magical artifacts in Baldur’s Gate 3 that you can feed to Gale
