A user meets someone and gets them to play Baldur’s Gate 3. The new partner’s reaction: first kill and loot. Even the NPCs, who are supposed to be beloved companions. Their complaint about not being able to sell an item leads to hundreds of comments.
This was the player’s first playthrough:
- After a shared co-op experience, the partner of Reddit user Dradiant ventured into their own run. Their first act after the tutorial: kill Shadowheart.
- Shadowheart is one of the companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 and is considered an absolute fan favorite along with Astarion and Karlach. Especially her deep storyline captivates many.
- After the treacherous murder, the partner then grabbed an artifact from Shadowheart’s pocket and wanted to cash it in. The complaint about why that doesn’t work leads to a huge debate.
Spoiler warning: We are going into parts of the story that you will uncover only at the end of Baldur’s Gate 3.
What is so special about the item? The “Strange Artifact,” which Shadowheart has, looks like a cube with spikes. Even in Act 1, it protects you with a strange power from harmful visions.
Only late in the game do you find out that this artifact is actually a small pocket dimension, where the Emperor lives and from where your ally plans the fight against the Absolute.
Ultimately, the artifact is your protection from being turned into a Mind Flayer by the larva in your head . Without this, the game would essentially be over right away – but you don’t know that at the beginning.
It’s understandable that the developers want to prevent you from making a fatal mistake. Not all users find that right, though. The corresponding thread has gathered over 974 comments within a few hours.
You can really do a lot in Baldur’s Gate 3. Having sex with bears is also part of it:
“Make it tradable, just for the ‘build nonsense and find out’ moment”
Baldur’s Gate 3 allows enormous freedoms and creative solutions, many of which have surprisingly been considered by the developers. For example, there is a unique cutscene for the case where you destroy an item, without which the story cannot be concluded.
The players wish for foolishness or experiments, like selling the artifact, to be possible and to be punished. Possible consequences: you simply won’t be protected by the artifact, will be directly transformed into Mind Flayers, or – in the most extreme case – will only find out at the very end that you can’t win without the artifact.
That would be extremely frustrating, but it would also somehow fit the game that leaves so many possibilities open.
However, the player’s behavior awakens unpleasant memories for many users. In Dungeons & Dragons, the underlying pen and paper, there are always such people: players who just kill because they can and thus destroy every great story.
This phenomenon “Murder Hobo” has been a meme in the D&D community for ages. Fans believe: Players should be allowed to make mistakes. But especially in Baldur’s Gate 3, they would then feel the consequences directly. Killing Shadowheart is, by the way, a stupid idea anyway, as you’d miss one of the best weapons in the game.
