Baldur’s Gate 3’s newest patch is the latest to address not just bug fixes or the occasional glitchy animation, but to bring in new additions to the game in response to popular demand. Along with both a customisable difficulty setting and a bragging-rights, one-save-file only mode, the update brings with it new epilogues to see off the characters you’ve spent so long getting to know. With the vast majority of players rolling an original character – rather than playing as one your companions, as is the recommended choice in Larian’s previous game, Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Baldur’s Gate 3 has earned a fan base that’s deeply attached to their characters, and its new endings are emblematic of how Larian intend to interact with them.
When I first played it back in the summer, the game’s ending was the culmination of an act that couldn’t quite live up to the rest of its promise. After tens of hours of role-playing a character and their companions in a complex and reactive world, interesting choices dwindled – or at least the ones that weren’t about the best way to approach a combat scenario. My companions fell quiet, and suddenly the biggest, most dramatic choices of the entire game – which will be impossible not to spoil, so consider that a big spoiler warning for Baldur’s Gate 3 endings in itself – felt arbitrary.
At the climax of the game, you discover that only a mindflayer can successfully wield the netherstones you’ve fought to gather and overwhelm the netherbrain. Immediately, your choice appears to be either trust your dubious ally, the Emperor, with them, or become a mindflayer yourself, the very fate you set off in the first place to avoid. A sacrifice, or a leap of faith.
