We Play, You Play: Baldur's Gate 3

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Uh, guys, I think breaking into the hells was a really bad idea.

I think we should just get out of here.

Uh, Raphael's gonna find out.

He's gonna be really mad, so I think we should just go.

Uh, Raphael's gonna be really mad.

Ah, you sound like a baby.

You're a fucking baby, you baby.

Yeah, yeah.

Why are you scared of this place?

What do you

got your little panties like stuck up in the crack of your butt, and you're you're like prancing around, and you're like, oh no, I'm scared.

That's not how you wear panties.

You're supposed to put them around your body, not up your crack.

Yeah, you're like a piece of wet string cheese.

I mean, so what if I am, all right?

This is this is scary.

This is the the worst place across all the plains.

I mean, there's, there's all these spirits who are here of the damned that are trapped, that are condemned.

I don't want to be turned into a rat and have to live here for all eternity.

Yeah, no shit, there's spirits everywhere, man.

It's the fucking hells, dude.

Okay,

what else is supposed to be down here?

Well, there's these crates.

What's in these crates?

We got crates to break.

We got stools to smash.

What is this?

A candelabra?

This place is dumb.

Everything's dumb.

This place sucks.

The hell sucks.

The hell sucks, and so do you, Nick.

Yeah, you suck, too.

You're right.

The hell sucks.

We should leave.

We don't need to grab the gauntlets of hill giant strength.

We can just leave those there.

We don't need to worry about that orphic hammer.

Just forget about it.

I'm going to grab that orphic hammer.

I'm going to grab those.

What is that other thing you said?

The gauntlets of hill giant strength.

Shorts of oblivion?

I'll grab that shit.

I don't give a fuck about any of this.

You're going to steal so much shit down here.

No, please, we got to get out of the vault.

We got to go.

We just got to leave right now.

Look at me.

I'm encumbered.

Oh, yeah, look at me for carrying too much shit.

I can't walk.

I really feel like something bad is going to happen.

I really feel like there are going to be consequences.

Oh, you think we're going to get in trouble for stealing down in the house?

Shut up.

Maybe if I shit long enough, I'll be unencumbered.

Am I right?

Maybe there's shit here in the path.

Why don't we just go down this dumb hallway and see what's down this dumb hallway?

Yeah, probably a bunch of dumb hallway stuff down here in the dumb hallway.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, my God.

Oh, fuck.

This is so bad.

This is so, so bad.

Oh, God.

Oh, no, no.

I told you we're in so much trouble.

Wait.

What's happening here?

What is the

best?

Oh, we're in so much trouble.

Oh, my God.

Oh, I'm regretting all of my choices.

choices i was just kidding earlier it doesn't suck down here actually it's really good i can't drop enough stuff i'm still in comfort i can't get away

we actually weren't stealing we were just actually gonna clean it off i was gonna lick off all the dust and gunk and shit

wait wait

hold on hold on i i think there might be a way out wait let's go down over here oh okay okay i'm i'm organism this way this way this way okay okay okay let's stop over here let's just go through this portal oh oh thank god okay okay I think we're safe now.

I think we're away from that.

Okay,

that was a close call.

You were right, Nick.

That was a bad idea.

We shouldn't have to.

Yeah, that was a terrible idea.

I got to get this stool out of my pocket.

I got to drop all these books.

Yeah, you're carrying a lot of just like corpses.

You should probably drop those too.

I got to get rid of these corpses.

Your inventory is insane.

I can keep this like one severed hand, right?

Yeah, sure.

Fine, whatever.

It's a quest dynamite.

Let's go through this.

350 bones.

Here, let's just, let's just go through this door.

I think we'll be safe in here.

Okay.

Here we go.

We'll just go into here.

I think we'll be safe in here.

Oh, fuck.

No!

Oh, my God.

No!

Guys, the door is locked.

The door is locked.

Keep it out.

No!

We let a vampire spawn, give us just a nibble, and retrieve a clown's dismembered corpse as we play you play my favorite game, Baldur's Gate 3, this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where this week, we've played a game, and you've played a game, and Nick has played the game more than most people alive.

It's Baldur's Gate 3 week here on the We Play, You Play episode of Get Played.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about this game at length.

I mean, it's, it's, I guess I could just say now, like, I'm nervous because I'm just like, I didn't want to over prep for this episode because I do love this game and I do want to do it justice, but I also like don't want to forget anything.

You know that feeling.

Like, it's, it's always harder to talk about something you like, I feel like, versus something you don't like.

Yeah, and but also like, I think there's like a, there's a pretty good understanding of like how the game works like amongst the listeners and like people playing it.

So like I think there's, there should be an understanding that there's no way, there's just absolutely no way you could talk about everything.

It would be impossible.

Yeah, it's impossible to be truly comprehensive about this experience.

And then also just the other thing is so much has been said by this point by so many people that we've talked about it every week for two months probably.

Well, I do think that this is a good opportunity to sort of recap the stuff that we've been talking about.

Because I'm sure this might be like people might be like, oh, wow, Baldur's Gate.

I'll click on this.

I love listening

to my favorite game be discussed by these three strangers.

And we've had very, very different playthroughs.

Nick's had more than one playthrough.

That's true.

So I'm sure we've got stuff to talk about.

Yeah, we'll have more than enough to talk about.

There's something else to talk about.

is Rochelle, our producer, is out today.

Doughboys MVP Emma Erdbrink is our in-studio engineer.

Hi, Emma.

Hi.

Emma, so we've already recorded this, but it's coming out later.

You also, because Rochelle was out, engineered our Get Animated Pluto series finale.

Yeah.

So, yes.

Which you guys loved.

You are witnessing.

You are witnessing, or I guess having to endure two lengthy, detailed conversations about topics you have no understanding of.

You know, it's fascinating.

Maybe it'll get me to play.

And also, Jemmy is over here, Jimmy the dog.

Great dog.

And

Jemmy's sort of sitting on the concrete floor.

And I think we'll soon realize that it's not as good as sitting maybe next to a good new friend.

Yeah,

I don't know why she's hiding in the corner today, but she is.

Weird.

There's a snuggable spot on Matt Apodaka's chair that Jemmy is staying away from.

My own dog won't sit next to me.

It's true.

It's true.

My dog, you know, dogs choose a favorite, and my dog has chosen my wife as her favorite dog or dog owner.

Her favorite dog owner is my wife.

So

when

Mary is not around, my dog will sit across the room and look at me like it's judging me.

And I'm like, you'll live with me.

Yeah, it's really, it's tough.

It's tough being rejected by a dog.

I I don't think there's anything more about that.

Yeah,

yeah, doesn't it make you want a potion of animal speaking so you can get into their heads?

Not yet, Nick.

Not yet.

We have to talk about other stuff.

For example,

I pray for the animal that you first have to talk to.

Hey, buddy, it's me, Weiger.

Oh, God, I understand.

You played Baldur's Gate?

We should, yeah, we should, we have other things to talk about,

which is, first off, I think we can, we can, we were recording this on the day that the new Elden Ring DLC trailer came out.

We've all watched that.

Kenny

say that I was surprised by my emotional response to that trailer, which was similar to medical trauma.

I was like, oh, God, it's this place.

Like, it wasn't like,

I didn't have the feeling that I thought I was going to have.

Like, oh, I can't wait to fuck these guys up.

Because, like, the truth is, as much as I love the game, it is so fucking good, it's so good, and I really enjoyed my build.

I, I felt, I felt supremely like

uh

seen by my own build of my own character, like wearing that shit armor and like carrying a bunch of horrible swords.

Yeah,

but it was still so much work,

like it's a stressful game

to inch your way through and seeing those like faces and those nightmare spaces.

like I was like, oh God, that like that guy's wearing like a mask and he's on the back of like a dog that's got like a lion head on it and and and it's throwing fire.

I don't want to see that guy.

I don't want to I don't want to get in there, but I think I might get in there.

We'll see.

I'm for sure going to get in there.

My reactions were, wow, it's Elden Ring.

I love Elden Ring.

And also, what the fuck is all this?

This is crazy.

And then I was just like, was the game like this before like so many of the new creatures and and and bosses they showed were like

so yucky looking to me but i guess it i mean it was it was yucky games you know oh yeah it's a yucky environment yeah wasn't was it elden ring that had the like giant made out of sewage in the forest

I can't, some games I get confused with other games when I'm like uncomfortable and have to kill somebody.

That sounds like that.

Right.

That sounds like it could have been an Elden Ring or like a story from your childhood.

I, I, I, the thing that I worry about is

the muscle memory because I know it's not there for a game like that.

I have to get, I have to get back in there before June when the DLC drops so I can re-familiarize myself with the

with the UI, with the with the controls, with all of it.

So I can just know what I'm doing when I get back in there.

I don't want to be a fool in front of the shadow of the Erd Tree.

No, I got to do the same.

So I guess I'll have to finish up my fourth Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough before then.

You'll have to, one, finish Elden Ring first.

That's true.

That's a great point.

No, well, like Heather was saying, it's like, and I honestly felt the same thing with BG3, of like, at a certain point, it becomes an obligation.

Yes.

At a certain point, it like requires willpower to force yourself through to the end game.

And, you know, that

as much as I loved Elden Ring, as much as I enjoyed the 100-plus hours I put into that game, at a certain point, I was just like,

I've got to step away from this.

But I owe it to myself to go back to it and finish it.

I think about it a lot, actually.

Every time I'm in between games, I'm like, should I dust off Elden Ring?

Now I have an excuse to do it.

Because the DLC is...

just only a few months away, you know, but

I'll be getting in there and reporting back for sure.

Speaking of news, here in in the, in the, in this like

news segment that we've never done, but we're doing right now.

Nintendo announced Mother 3 for the Switch Online in Japan, which, and they also announced like

plush figures from the game.

And let me tell you.

Nothing feels like more of a slap in the face than a

celebrated re-release re-release of a game they've never ever bothered to bring here.

And

as if it wasn't enough, bringing out merch for that game feels like they know that it's lovable enough that people will want it in their space.

Yeah.

And yet it is not, it's still not here.

I know you guys have copies because I bought them for you and I think you threw them away.

It mine's in my analog pocket currently, actually.

Most people don't get a chance to play it and I'm frustrated.

The other other news

article item that I wanted to bring up was that in my favorite current game, Fortnite, which isn't my favorite game of all time, but my favorite current game,

they just announced that Lady Gaga is going to do a collab and a ton of her music is coming to the and usually they do like some kind of mini concert.

But she is dressed so much like

she has like a single shoulder

piece of armor that kind of evokes cloud.

And I feel like

her outfit overall doesn't evoke cloud, but there's enough of it that I'm like, is it, is it like a, like a, like a little bit of a wink?

And then that brings me to my personal news, which is that last week on the show, we watched Advent Children

for, for, uh, for our, for our episode release.

And I got so Final Fantasy pilled that I bought Cloud's sweater.

Wow.

Look at that thing.

It's like it's his sweater.

And it looks, when I put it on, I feel like I'm Cloud.

So now I have his sweater and his hair.

And again, nowhere to wear this except walking around in a circle in my house.

But the sweater is low-key enough that I can wear it out.

I don't think anybody, I mean, people might be like, oh, it's cloud adjacent, but it is, it's cloud's actual courting.

You know, I'm glad that people exist who are like, oh, I want that sweater because then I can be like, oh, I want to buy it.

So I bought Cloud's sweater.

It's cosplay that you can pass off as something else.

Functional.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's going to be great.

I think

when you're first back in studio, just come full cloud.

Buster sword and all.

You have time to get a buster sword between now and then.

I'll just walk down Sunset Boulevard from wherever I've parked as full cloud.

Yeah, and people who know me.

Yeah, people who know me in the neighborhood will just be like, oh, hey, Heather, what's up?

Oh, it's happening today, huh?

All right.

Was there something on the news that I missed?

Oh, I'll go home.

See ya.

Yeah.

But I know that I'm safe because I guess Heather's on it.

Do we ever talk about on the podcast how, like a guy in Italian parliament during like a government meeting accidentally shared like Tifa hentai?

Do you remember that?

Yeah, I do.

Did that ever come up?

I don't know if we ever talked about it.

That's one of the craziest news stories.

The thing was that it was

so adjacent to what you do to us on a daily basis that I don't feel like it was comic.

It's not really news.

And it's also like of the news,

it is crazy.

It in a day became the least crazy, like, you know what I mean?

Like

whatever the next thing was was like crazy.

I mean, but like

it would be one, I mean, because it's, I don't know, people,

people have access to things in a way that they didn't used to, right?

It would be crazier if it was like George H.W.

Bush sharing Tifa hentai.

Like, that's crazier to me.

Sure.

And like a new guy.

Yeah, because I guess you could, that's the thing of just like you can be of the age where like, yeah, you just know what hentai is and where to get it and you would just be the but you'd also wear a person who holds a seat in like a as like a fascist member of an Italian parliament.

Yeah, yeah, like

God AOC plays like RuneScape or something or one of those types of games and like that would have been so wild and crazy to me.

And now I'm just like, oh yeah, like you got to guess pass some time, you know, when you're on the floor during a filibuster or something and do what you got to do.

Or was it League of Legends or maybe it's

League of Legends, I think it's it's what it was.

Yeah.

Future guest, AOC.

Oh, yeah.

And there's that congressman who

went to prison because he was using campaign funds to buy things from the Steam store.

Do you remember that?

See, it's like

you have to sort of take the good with the bad, right?

Obviously, like one shoe, the world is bad, but then

a congressman goes to prison for using funds to buy stuff at a Steam store.

That's really funny.

It's very funny.

Gives a tearful

apology at a news conference.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I bought Honey Pop with

all the DLC, all the extra skins.

We could watch, because there is another news item that came out this morning, as of record, which is that Borderlands,

based on the game with the same name, received a trailer.

And I don't think any of us have seen it.

We could watch it live and provide our feelings.

Or we could skip it because none of us care about that game.

Let's skip it for the interest of time.

Yeah, I think Nick really wants to talk about Baldur's Gate 3 for some reason.

But we should talk about some other video games we're playing.

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following somebody around in the city and having a good time.

And then they locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

Um, that's a true story.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

What are you playing?

Wow!

It's me, the Resident Evil Merchant.

Coming in hot.

That sounded like it.

What?

That sounded like it hurt.

Talking?

Yeah, it does.

I'm here.

I'm from the game Resident Evil 4, where I normally ask, what are you buying?

But I got fired from that game and have been

on

eggshells here at Get Played as my follow-up job.

But I come in every week.

I am here every week, right?

I've never missed an episode.

Have you?

I've only missed like the last like three weeks.

Yeah, you actually miss episodes all the time.

I would say it's probably

60-40 you're not here versus when you actually show up.

A lot of no calls.

I was locked in a gas station bathroom and lost track of time.

So I can see how I might have missed a few weeks.

Honestly, it was.

Those locked from the inside?

Huh?

Those locked from the inside.

Yeah, did you just not figure out how to do that?

No, they locked me in there.

Okay.

From the outside.

They moved an ice machine in front of the door.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

I was in sort of like a solitary confinement drinking toilet water for

a few few weeks.

The sink wasn't working.

You went straight to drink the toilet water?

Sink?

Where?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Where's it at evil game?

Let me describe what's in the bathroom to you, and maybe you can point out what item is the sink.

Okay.

So there's like

toilets, which we all know.

Yeah.

And then on the opposite wall, there was like a little hand towel.

And then like a little microphone I couldn't figure out how to work.

And like a

cell phone?

Yeah, like a little silver microphone.

That's probably is the nozzle, the faucet for the sink where you can, you know, wash your hands after you use the bathroom.

Okay, I thought the toilet was an all-purpose water source.

Okay, so you're using the toilet, flushing it, and then rinsing your hands off in the toilet bowl.

That's extremely unsanitary.

I do.

Yeah, I mean, it's...

I guess guess it's unsanitary if like the toilet is not clean and if you're doing it with you know toilet stuff in the toilet but i do want to point out that the water in the toilet is no different than any other water except that it's sitting in a place that also houses people's pits piss and shit yeah you don't it's not ideal yeah i would drink from the top The top is a different story.

You drink from the top, right?

Yeah, you're going from the tank at least.

This one didn't have a tank.

It's not that ideal.

It was one of those like straight out of the wall types.

Yeah, right.

Those industrial toilets.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Anyway, sorry I missed a few weeks.

And also, I apologize for having lost track of time.

But I'm here to ask you the question.

What are you playing?

I'm just glad you're okay is the

headline for me.

Yeah, and considering that you were drinking from the bowl.

of the toilet yeah you seem to be doing pretty well it's utterly revolting by the way like having to listen to all that it's just disgusting.

I mean, I ate a couple of napkins.

Not as bad.

Hurts.

Hurts to do it.

Yeah, it seems like it does.

That would hurt.

You didn't have like a loose, like, black bass in your trench coat or something like that that you were going to suck with?

I was out.

I had one green herb, one red herb.

Okay, you can make a little something there.

Well, yeah, I wasn't injured.

Like, what am I going to just like...

You don't eat neosporin when you're in the middle of the morning.

You know, that's a great.

No, that's a great point.

Now I look stupid.

You're right.

Yeah, you do.

Medicine is not food.

It's not.

I'm sick of having to repeat this over and over again.

Medicine is not food.

But I'm the dumb one here.

Nobody's dumb.

There's no, we don't judge here.

We don't judge on get paid,

but I

what

no, I like, I like the energy.

Just coming out is very hot.

I am hot.

I've been stuck.

You know, it's a small space.

Yeah.

They condemn the building, which is the only reason I got out.

So, wait, I already asked you.

You already asked.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

I derailed us.

I apologize.

I do actually have an answer here.

Something other than Baldur's Gate 3 I've been messing around with.

A game that's an early access is from developer Funday Games, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.

Now,

you may know Deep Rock Galactic.

You may play Deep Rock Galactic because this is this beloved co-op FPS that people keep recommending to me that I've never actually played.

Either of you messed around with Deep Rock Galactic?

I have not.

No, no, no, no.

Can't do that.

I think it's a game that three of us could probably hop on and all play together and have just like the time of our lives from what I've heard.

People love this game.

This is a spin-off game that is a Vampire Survivors-like in the same universe.

So it is a Bullet Heaven game, but with a completely different aesthetic to Vampire Survivors, which is like, you know,

this 8-bit pixel art that I find very appealing.

But this is a 3D engine and it's running at 60 FPS.

And

at least that's what I'm running it as.

And it's really pretty.

It's just

a gorgeous rendition of this type of gameplay.

There are two gameplay differences versus vampire, or a few gameplay differences, more than two, the Vampire Survivors, based off of my time with the game.

First off, there is a much bigger emphasis on resource collection.

There are like when you kill the enemies, there's still like the orbs that are dispensed that you pick up to gain levels.

That's mechanically the same.

But there is also like mining is a strong element.

Like you're going around with a pick and you're mining resources.

And then related to that.

You know, because kiting enemies is such a big part of these games, like directing the mob to where you want them to go so you can stay safe and survive and hit them with as many bullets as possible.

You can carve like paths through rock.

And, you know, obviously your movement is slower while you're mining, but you can, but like I found it really engaging to be like, oh, okay, I can kind of carve this sort of circuitous, you know, path through here, this little like roundabout loop.

The mobs will follow me through this.

And as such, I can kind of like gain ground on them

and also, you know, find a way to, I can just basically kite them exactly where I want them to go.

And that's really satisfying.

And also it has discrete levels, you know, with a boss fight at the end of them.

And then an escape pod arrives and you've got to flee to the escape pod before the timer is up.

So that gives you a little bit of an extra thing of like, first off, I've got this big, this big heavy I've got to take down.

Again, the thing that's in Vampire Survivors, but it's represented a different way here.

And then after I do that, like how I'm going to grab as many resources I can within the 30 seconds before I get back to my pod, or else I'm trapped there and I fail my run.

I've seen some complaints in the user reviews about the progression feeling flat, which if I spent more time with the game, maybe I would feel the same thing.

But I do think it's very fun as is.

And also, given the pedigree of this developer and that this is in early access, I think this is going to be awesome when it ships.

Like, that's a sense I get of, like, that's the sort of thing they'll figure out.

They'll figure out how to not make it feel flat, how to make it feel like, you know,

have life as you're spending more and more time with it

or feel like it's sustaining itself, you know beyond just those those initial few hours of gameplay so yeah deep rock galactic survivor i've really enjoyed my time with it so far that sounds great yeah

i think deep rock galactic was like a playstation plus

game at one point and i probably have it in my library because of that but i've yeah that i'll have to check that out because the the vampire survivors like of it all sort of is more appealing to me i think yes well it's it's it's a fun iteration on that the one thing is that and and heather i know you didn't respond to Vampire Survivors as much as we did.

But as I was playing this, I was like, Heather would hate the quips in this game

because it's like

Scottish dwarves going like, you know, oh, it's just a flesh wound.

It's like that sort of stuff.

And I'm just like, oh, man,

these would bother Heather so much.

There's a bunch of things that are on a t-shirt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, man.

I mean, I think it's fun and charming, but that's what I've been playing.

Here's what I love about games

we don't have to like the same things, but you can like games together, and that's cool.

It's a great project.

And when our likes overlap, it's really fun.

But yeah, that would sound like I'll be trying it out.

Matt, what are you playing?

I'm back in

not Resident Evil, excuse me.

Resident Evil!

No, that was a mistake.

It was an absolute mistake.

I apologize.

I didn't mean it.

I didn't mean it.

I meant to say Final Fantasy.

He sprinted in here.

Yeah, that was crazy.

I don't know where he came from.

I'm sweating.

It was like he had been running.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't a fresh sprint.

It was like, it didn't start right outside.

It was like he came from far.

I was at McDonald's.

The one down the street.

You know, it's like just, it's down the street from the studio.

Yeah, that's a good McDonald's.

I've been there.

Yeah.

It's a cure.

Do you know that the fish fillet is the only

weapon item?

The only item on the McDonald's menu with a steamed bun?

That's interesting.

There's a special drawer for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a special

special equipment just for the fish fillet bun, which is gently steamed.

You know, that's Trump's favorite McDonald's menu item is the fish fillet, which he calls the fish delight.

I personally like that drawer because

I hate Trump, by the way.

Wow,

other than that i'm apolitical you know i don't i think interesting all right i just don't like trump uh he is something about him he's like

anyway i really like the fish-filtered drawer at mcdonald's because it's an excellent place to clean your clothes at night after this the shop is closed that sucks That sucks to hear.

It's a steam cleaner.

You're wading up a 3XL trench coat and putting it into a fist-sized alcove and steaming it?

It's not going to steam.

No, it's a drawer.

Oh, it's a drawer.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You should watch the TikTok.

It's fascinating.

I don't need to see the behind-the-scenes at fast food.

But stop making TikToks about it.

I'm done.

I don't need to see it.

I say keep them coming.

Matt, you were saying you're playing Resident Evil.

No, I meant to say I'm playing Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I'm back on it after taking

a couple weeks off for

Baldur's Gate.

I knew I couldn't juggle both, right?

But, you know, by the time this comes out,

we'll be only days away from Rebirth, and hopefully I'll be finished by then.

Right now, I'm on chapter 13.

Wow.

I know that there are 18 chapters in it, so I'm getting close to the, I'm getting close.

So that's going to be sort of my weekend homework.

But I'm still really, really enjoying it.

Something that I I haven't talked about

that I really really like in the game is

sometimes you'll be in an area where you haven't been

and you'll see like a little

like an alert of sorts that's like three question marks and the music symbol and you're like I gotta find where they're selling this piece of music that I haven't unlocked yet right and then I go and I purchase the song and then it says what it is I'm like it's the song from the game from before but like a new version of it.

And I just like doing that.

I like trying to collect all those

things.

I did look at my quest log

and I realized that because I've progressed further than

where these quests are, I accidentally failed two side quests.

I'm a little upset, actually.

That's a bonus.

That did really make me upset because I was making it a point to do all of them as they popped up.

Yeah.

But I accidentally failed two.

Yeah.

And

I don't think I'll play this game again, right?

Because I'll be playing the next one unless I do a, you know, finished rebirth.

And then by the time the third one comes out, I want to go through all three again.

Right.

But I don't see myself doing that because that seems insane.

But

I really like, I just really love it.

And I love, um, I like buying stuff for the other party members.

Like, I'll buy stuff.

I'll prioritize cloud because I use cloud the most.

Sure.

And I know that you can switch between the party members.

I don't do it that much, though.

I really kind of just like playing playing as Cloud.

He has the best, he has the best moves, I think.

Like shooting as Barrett is fun.

Punching as Tifa is cool, and using magic and stuff as Aerith is fun, but Cloud's my guy.

He's the guy.

He is the guy.

I did what I, and I'd forgotten about the music.

They're CDs, right?

Yeah, they're like little CDs by little CDs of the tracks from the game.

That is a fun little sub-game.

I found, especially as the combat got harder that switching between the characters frequently was like the best way to play through that game but it does get a little dizzying yeah because like the camera does this like specific like

pause but it shifts over to the other to the other character and i do i do like their movesets and i like you know hearing what they're saying when they're doing hitting and and things like that but i just i just love cloud cloud's such a good i love his sword i love it one thing i think they they do really well in that game is they make the buster sword

viable for the entire game.

Like it's just like you start with it and then you can keep upgrading it and you can just use that and you can just look like Cloud with his famous sword the whole way through.

I love it.

Yeah, no, I really, really love that.

I've been thinking a lot about, though, while I've been playing this Final Fantasy,

I've been thinking a lot about Final Fantasy 16, right?

Because I was the one on the show that loved Final Fantasy 16.

That's right.

Nick didn't complete it, didn't bounce off of it, didn't really love it.

Heather completed it, did not like it.

Would go as far as say maybe hated it.

Close.

Close to hating it.

It's funny that,

I mean, and this is like, you know, I know that Final Fantasy often

is like a different, it's always a different thing.

Right.

The first,

maybe five or six, maybe five

are all closer to the same thing than they are different.

They're different, but they're closer to the same kind of thing, I think.

Yeah, the NES ones through the Super Nintendo ones.

I get what you're saying.

Honestly, I'd even say up through nine.

They're all pretty.

They shifted to 3D and they added a lot of, you know, more cinematics, but it's fundamentally the same sort of design carried through.

Nine goes back to like the creature type, like, you know, more fantasy rather than guys wearing normal clothes.

Right.

And then 16 comes along and is like Game of Thrones, kind of, like that type of thing.

I wonder, I kind of want them to go

for 17, if they do 17.

Hope it's not an MMO, first of all.

I would like them to go back to

old school classes, right?

Like,

not just like a bunch of guys or like a guy with like a sword.

Give me a fighter.

Give me a, give me a red mage.

Give me a red mage.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah,

I could say, it would be interesting to see them try to revive a job system, see what that was like.

Yeah.

Um, but I, you know, I'm loving it, and I, I, I'm eagerly awaiting rebirth.

I'm very, very excited.

Uh, Heather, what are you playing?

Have I talked on the show about

Fortnite before?

Because I've been playing that.

I think it's come up.

It's come up.

We only talk about Waller's Gate 3.

Did I tell you guys about the statistic that was shared with me about how many people in the world wear the skin that I currently wear in the game?

No.

So

I play as Ivor

from Assassin's Creed, Valhalla, a previous all-star game of the Get Played podcast.

And apparently, only four people in the world wear that skin.

How did you find this out?

What?

There's there are websites that track what skins are most used and least used.

So you can find out how many people are actively at any given time, like wearing that skin or using that skin.

And there's very, apparently nobody, nobody's wearing that skin,

which

made me feel like a sense of ownership over it, kind of like a gentle, like, oh,

I'm Ivor.

Previous to that, I was rocking the T800 from Terminator, just that metal endoskeleton.

Love that skin.

I'm playing here, we're going to talk about,

you know, Baldur's Gate, and I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate.

And what's nice about these two games is they are extremely complementary energies.

It is a metronome of

like Twitch physics and like instant responses, and then

thoughtful, exploratory,

curiosity-based gaming of Baldur's Gate.

And so

when I am like,

it rained a lot on President's Day, and I had a time, I had the whole day off, which was really nice,

you know, because I've been recovering, and it was really great to just like

be able to sit in a gaming space for an entire day.

and flipping between those two games was so great because you'd play like three rounds of Fortnite and you'd be like, okay, I have a ton of energy, but I want to take a break from this.

And then Baldur's Gate comes in as the perfect counter programming for that game.

They're fantastic games to play against each other.

But yeah, the season is coming to a close on Fortnite.

They're doing a Ninja Turtles collaboration, which is excellent.

The Shredder skin is great.

The only thing about the collab that doesn't quite land is the music, but you can enter into all the sewer systems in the game, and you get to see Splinter.

I don't know, it they really do excellent work when it comes to collaborations in that

metaverse IP.

It's wonderful.

So, yeah, that's what I've been playing, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they bring out next season.

But mostly, I've been playing Baldur's Gate,

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Well, let's get into it.

It's time for our WePlay Uplay of Baldur's Gate 3, which was released on August 3rd of last year, 2023, developed and published by Larian Studios, directed by its founder, Svenvinki.

It's an independent Belgian studio known for the Divinity RPG franchise.

If people are less familiar with Larian or didn't know them prior to this game, it was in development for six years and in early access for three years.

And I found this article from the site is called Navik,

and it's entitled How the Stars Align to Create the Success of Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm going to read a short excerpt from this.

The studio tripled in size to realize the ambition of Divinity Original Sin 2, their previous game, from a team of 50 on the original to 150 on the sequel.

The studio's ambitions for BG3 were even higher.

And when the choice choice came to scale down the scope or scale up the team, Larian decided to go all in and tripled in size once again.

The BG3 team has about 450 members spread across seven locations around the world.

The risk of having the biggest budget and the largest team was deprioritized in favor of the team's high aspirations for a Baldur's Gate sequel.

So they bet big on this game, a 450-person team.

and it and a huge budget and it paid off.

Sales figures have not been released, but

it did sell 5 million copies on Steam at launch.

And I've seen estimates as high as 22 million copies across PC and console.

Hard to find out exactly what it sold, but it sold like gangbusters.

And also was critically acclaimed, winner of the 2023 Game of the Year for the Game Awards, the Golden Joystick Awards, the Steam Awards, and a number of publications.

Along those lines.

On Metacritic, it is currently the top-rated game of all time across all platforms.

It has taken the top slot from Ocarina of Time, which occupied it for many, many years.

How can we not know how many copies of this dang thing has been sold, but we can know how many people are wearing the goddamn Assassin's Creed skin and know that it is exactly four.

And if Heather stops, it will be three.

There's power in information.

So let's address spoilers before we get into it.

I think what

we have landed on is, first off,

we are, well,

let's, before we even do that, let's just say where everybody is in this game.

I'll go first.

I've now finished the game twice.

The first time I did it on Explorer Difficulty, which is the story difficulty.

And then the one I just finished was on Tactician, which was the hardest difficulty.

Now is underneath honor mode, which was released in an update.

I have 348 hours played in this game.

So I have dedicated a substantial chunk of recent months to playing Baldur's Gate 3.

And

I do plan on doing a third playthrough on honor mode, but that's where I'm at.

I've finished it twice.

Matt, how about you?

I,

as of the rainy president's day,

have finished Baldur's Gate 3.

I completed it, saw it all the way to the end.

However many more ways I could

fill in the rest.

I did jump from a Steam playthrough to a PlayStation 5 playthrough, so my time is skewed in a certain way.

It said like 64 and a half hours on Steam, which feels wrong also because I felt like at a certain point I had clocked 100.

Like I was just like playing it non-stop, just like we all were.

But

on,

you know, from where I left off on PS5,

or you know, where I left off on Steam and picked up on PS5, it was an additional

like 50 something hours, 60 hours.

So all told, it was like 100 and I think all told, it was like 117 hours

for the playthrough.

Got it.

Yeah.

I have not beaten Baldur's Gate.

I,

you know, I've had, I had a rough fall,

which

limited my ability to play.

Autumn, just to clear things up for people that don't want to hear more worse news.

Yeah, I had a rough.

No, I had a rough autumn.

And so I didn't get to put as many, because

when the game first came out, I was playing it non-stop on my Mac before I realized that my save would not transfer, which was so fucking heartbreaking.

Right.

You're playing it, I think, an early access build, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So then I had to start all over again on PS5, which I did and have enjoyed, and I have not restarted my playthrough on PS5, which we'll talk about.

But I've also played many hours in multiplayer mode

with different characters.

So

my

current playthrough of Baldur's Gate is, I think, 45 hours in on the save that I'm currently playing.

But my grand total of played time in Baldur's Gate is somewhere around 70 hours.

Wow.

So it isn't,

it's not for lack of

love for the game nor exposure to the game.

Yes.

I just have not had a chance to beat it.

But I'm really enjoying my playthrough.

And this is one of the rare times where we do a we play, you play, and I will continue to play the game afterwards.

That's awesome, Miriam.

And you are like, story-wise, you're like into Act Two, is my understanding.

Yes.

Yes, though.

I, my entry into Act Two was very weird

and a little messy.

And we'll talk about that also.

So,

to return to spoilers, what we're going to do, since Heather hasn't finished the game, and

is we're not going to spoil the ending for her, we are going to record separately with just me and Matt talking about the end game.

And then, for anyone here who doesn't want that spoiled, that will be at the very end of the episode.

So, we'll do everything, and then there'll be a little extra thing with a little extra warning about just talking about

the back end of Act Three and the end game specifically uh at the end of this episode the end game of this episode uh but i think for our discussion we're gonna keep things pretty loose and open um but talk up through act two so you know that there will be some some story and and character spoilers throughout here uh through the first couple acts of the game i think that's what we landed on yeah yeah yeah yeah uh so so fret not and you know if you if you if you do hear something that you maybe you didn't want to hear uh sorry yeah yeah I guess if you really absolutely don't want to hear anything about like the gauntlet of Shahr or, you know, the night song, like if that's stuff you still want to be in the dark about, then you might want to bail on this.

You might want to turn the volume all the way down on the free feet of the podcast, but keep it playing.

Right.

It helps our metrics if you get all the way through.

If you want to just listen to it all the way, you know, you want to play it all the way through.

Yes.

You could at least do that.

Yeah.

We don't want to look like that Assassin's Creed Valhalla skin.

Yeah.

Only four people finished this episode.

God, if I found out, actually, I never want to see anything like that.

But no,

I think, look, we still will try to give a spoiler country warning if we start feeling like we're spoilering anything, you know, too pivotal in Act Two.

But for the most part, we're going to talk pretty openly about Act 1 and Act 2.

Oh, I should also note that we're recording in the aftermath of Patch 6, aka the kissing update, which has a number of consequential gameplay and UX UI fixes,

including easy party member swapping, which is huge.

Huge, huge update.

That's a great one.

Um, I didn't know it was the kissing update until I made my characters kiss, and I was like, wait, these are different.

And the, you know, the default player character is for the most part now the speaker in cutscenes, which is a, which is easy.

I mean,

and that speaks to, I think, a big part of this game is

as it's continued and as it's

post-release, rather, it has gotten gotten a lot of support, a lot of substantial free updates, additional content, and then just general like quality of life improvements.

And I think that's it.

There's every expectation that that will continue.

So it's great that this game has been supported like that.

I love this game.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, having,

I did take some time away from it, right?

Like to sure.

And then getting back into it, it was.

It was like, you know, the tired phrase, like riding a bike.

I got back in there and immediately was like, oh yeah, I love everything about this game.

I love, I love, just, I love my characters.

I love my party.

I love my tav.

I love, I love,

you know, I love all of it.

And I loved

some of the late game

powers and things and abilities that I got.

Because I got all the way to, I'm not sure how possible it is to finish the game not at the level cap, which I think I believe is 12.

I hit it like, I feel like midway through act three on both of my playthroughs.

I did two.

But I think

like getting to that and knowing that I was as strong as I could be was freeing in a lot of ways.

Cause like sometimes early in the game, I was like, you know, level five or whatever and being like, is this even possible like for where I am?

And

the game, most of the game is possible if you're if you're clever and um and and careful.

You don't have to be so strong to survive a lot of

encounters, but it does help.

You know what I would love is to hear, I think a great way into this, because it's such a big conversation to have, is to hear

what your build was.

And for Nick, you know, multiple builds.

And then sort of like...

your initial experiences.

Because like, again, if people are dropping in and they haven't heard any of the the previous times we've talked about Baldur's Gate, I'd love to refresh them or bring them on board so that we can talk about what we did.

I'll go first.

For example,

I

played

or I chose to play a half-elf thief with a background of criminal

because my favorite thing to do in a game like Baldur's Gate is to open doors, pick locks, and pick pockets because I really want to see everything.

And what's funny about Baldur's Gate is I do think that being a thief prevents you from seeing everything as opposed to other games where I feel like being a thief breaks.

Like you can go, you can get a key and open a door that you're not supposed to open.

In Baldur's Gate, there is a bit of

story ramification.

If you go into an area you aren't supposed to be in when you're supposed to be there.

So I picked a thief because I'm like, like, I don't want to like, it's also the reason why in like, say,

The Last of Us, I spent the most

of my, what were they, shivs?

Whatever it was that you could use to open lock boxes, like, that's where I spent most of that weapon resource because I always want to see what's inside of the box.

So that's why I picked a thief.

And then I wanted her to get like, you know, I wanted her to be happy when she was opening a box.

I wanted her to be sad.

So I gave her the background of criminal.

And I left her name as the the default for Tav.

How about you guys?

I played, so my first playthrough, and I should mention that, and this is always the way I play like any sort of RPG with character creation, I always have a couple of false starts.

So I, so I, I, I, I, I messed around a couple of times, um, got a few hours in, and then restarted.

And then my first full playthrough was as a half wood elf

bard, College of Lore bard, uh, that kit, um, named Ori.

And then this character played pretty virtuous all the way through it.

And

that was a pretty straight ahead playthrough.

But I did miss a lot of stuff.

And I was, because I was playing without a guide.

I was just sort of like going through and making decisions and living with the consequences.

There were a couple of things where I thought what was the clear, good, and virtuous choice.

When I looked it up later, I was like, oh, wait, no, interesting.

Like what the game was asking me to do was actually something different.

And there were a few like pretty major sub-quests that I like just took different paths through, so I didn't see the the back end of.

So, for instance, like the hag, uh, when I return to which continues starts in act one and continues all the way through act three, I saw all of the hag story um in my

second playthrough, but I missed that in the first one.

What wait, what

that continues through act three?

The hag, yeah, I mean, the hag keeps going.

Uh

what do you mean

that?

I mean, there's no way to talk about this without getting into spoiler country.

So you can, I mean, here's the thing.

I think a non-spoiler way to say this.

Yes.

You can continue the storyline, or you could do what I think it sounds like Heather and I did.

You could end that quest prematurely.

Yes, there are different caps to do that.

She, well, I don't want to know.

I

this is interesting.

How do you talk about this without spoiling things?

I guess we're in medium spoilers now.

I, as soon as I found those two dudes

who were like,

our sister, whatever the fuck they were talking about, like our sister's been kidnapped, I was like, yeah, sure.

I'll go get her for money.

And they're like, fuck you.

Very consistently role playing.

that I'll do anything for financial gain, which

just, I like that it very rarely stops progress in a quest, but mostly makes the NPCs a little annoyed with you.

Yeah, like they're like,

fine.

Yeah, okay.

We'll pay you to do the right thing.

And I'm like, all right, great.

But those guys were like, fuck off.

Absolutely not.

We are not paying you to rescue our sister.

So I followed them and they get murked by somebody.

I think you find that that happens off screen.

And so I went into

the,

oh, and I called out that hag on her bullshit because I, you know, used some skill to like process that she was deceiving them about how nice she was.

So when I show up at her house, I opened up on her because I was like, oh, this, this lady's lying to these people.

And I think she just killed them.

And then followed her down into her little chamber.

and like wiped out all those people down there and like kept following her and then uh

murdered her saved the girl went into her like secret study used her

spell to enter into the underdark and then like found myself in an area which i don't think you're supposed to get to until act two right

no you can get i mean i you can get that's just one way into the underdark which has a bunch of different intro like introductions a bunch of different entry points so yeah that's like a completely normal way to progress that and okay great so yeah that that's you you know you do whether or not that that that that quest continues.

Um, but I, but the overall thing I'll say is that the

for me is like my first playthrough, I did all the major stuff, uh, and I got what I believe is the canonical ending, which we'll talk about later.

Uh, the second, my second playthrough, I did, I think, everything.

And I, my second character was a, was a tiefling Oath of Vengeance Paladin.

Um, Oath of Vengeance Paladin was a really fun class to play because Oath of Vengeance is specifically, like, it's not quite a lawful good alignment.

I don't know exactly where it lies, if it's like lawful, neutral or whatever, but it's all about like avenging wrongs.

And so you will get these oath of vengeance prompts where it will be like, that person has

betrayed your trust.

I will kill them for you.

And it's like, it's just like a really interesting sort of absolutist

moral character to play.

But I still overall played it very, very good.

Although there were a few times where it felt like Oath of Vengeance was pushing me towards like, I've got to punish the wicked here.

And that means that I've got to kill someone on someone else's behalf.

You're playing like a Batman build.

Yeah, kind of, yeah.

That's cool.

And

so

and along those lines,

this just kind of speaks to the scope of the game and one of the many things that amazes me about it.

They're not just paladin specific lines, but Oath of Vengeance Paladin specific lines.

So one of the three subclasses of one of like, you know, 14 classes or however many could 12 different classes you can choose from in the game had specific dialogue in missible side quests.

So just the idea that they went to the trouble of being like, we're going to have a, we're going to record individual VO for a response,

an NPC response to an Oath of Vengeance paladin line for the 1500 people who will play it this way.

You know, it's, it's just kind of like.

How comprehensive they were.

I just cannot imagine flowcharting all this out and then to actually execute it.

So anyway, so what I'm saying is, is that was a playthrough.

I also did it good again.

I couldn't resist.

I didn't want to be full evil.

I played through this virtuously.

The combat was obviously much more difficult

but manageable.

And then also

I did basically every side quest.

I don't think I missed anything.

Wow.

That's insane.

I did miss some side quests

in my playthrough.

I'm very aware of two very specific things that I missed.

Wait, and just let us know what your character was again.

Oh, yes.

My character was

a Wood Elf barbarian.

I read that, because I hadn't ever played one of these games before, so I was like,

I need

an easy on-ramp

for me to be able to enjoy this game.

And I'm really glad I did this.

And everyone said, a barbarian is going to be easy for like is an easy class to start with.

And so so I did, I was a wood, a wood elf barbarian.

Uh, I kept the default name Tav also because I did not know that I could change it.

Um,

and

I,

I, you can pick like a, when you're a barbarian, you can pick like a type of animal to like rage as.

Yeah, and if you do, if you do a wild heart barbarian, yes, yes, and so I was doing that, and um, I

uh I had Carlak in my party also who had a similar, is very similar to how I was playing my character.

But I made sure that our

rage animals were different.

Carlak's was a bear and mine was an eagle.

Sort of on my banjo-kazooie.

Shit.

But I didn't think about that honestly until just now.

So that's really funny.

But

I also...

I sort of played this game knowing like that making the

like the i didn't want to i played virtuously as well and i because i i can't help but just do what i think the game wants me to do sometimes in that way and that's not really like a role-playing exercise but i would also sort of my my tav was just like a i'm just asking questions kind of guy like i would i would i would see i would see an option to be like let me just see what this would get me yeah and then you know gail or whoever would be like i don't think that's such a good idea and get kind of mad and i'd be like okay okay we don't have to we don't have to do that I was just asking questions I like that so you're just you played you role-played as the annoying guy in the comments I would kind of just be like hey you know like maybe we don't you're like the tucker carlson of barbarians yeah yeah maybe we you know maybe we don't uh you know uh

do this in service of the god of magic or whatever right sure uh and then uh gail's like oh well wait a minute what if we do this i was like oh if that's what you want i'm just seeing i kind of would just defer to whatever the characters felt like they actually wanted to do i would always just go with what they wanted i actually love that about this game and and there are a few situations where that that isn't the case and those kind of feel like um you know notable because this isn't present but like for a lot of the major decisions there are times when you can be like

Step back and let Shadow Heart handle this.

You know what I mean?

Like you can let it, you can defer to a character.

Yeah, which feels like a way, like if you're role-playing it in a certain way, there are times when it's just just like, oh, wait, no, this isn't my place to speak.

I understand that I should, I should defer to somebody else on this topic, or this is their decision to make.

I should let them make it.

Or if you want to role play a different sort of character, a more domineering sort, you can just step in in those moments and make your voice heard.

But

I do love that optionality that there are times when you can just like let someone else make their choice.

Yes, yeah.

Cause then it's like, okay, well.

That's the choice they made.

I can't.

There are certain things that I felt like I couldn't make that choice for them.

Yeah.

Because I also had just been, you know,

you do weirdly become attached to your party.

Like, I was very, very fond of,

I had, I rolled with Shadowheart, Carlak, and Gale.

And, like, I switched Gale out for a little bit, but then Gale came back into the fold because I missed Gale.

Who was doing your thiefly duties?

I mean, me kind of, but, like, not very well.

We were having a really hard time with lock picks and things like that.

And then I would get to some doors sometimes that had a high

at like a high dex roll

and i would go through a bunch of like thieves tools yeah and then run out and be like you can't unlock this i'm like i guess we're not not uh unlocking this door but if the often if the door was made of wood that door was coming down i was just attacking doors i do so that's that's the thing i do love i love that you can just bust shit up yeah just you can just like and that's also the case for a lot of puzzles in general of this game not that the puzzles are ever all that difficult but like it's like also like I didn't want to, you know, like if you didn't change into cat form and you know read the hidden note in the banker's office to get the vault combination.

Sometimes you just take a big warhammer and knock that some bitch open.

Yeah.

And it's like that feels very DD.

Feels very, you know, like this is a role-playing experience, but also it's just like, oh, this is this is interesting to have things presented as,

you know, as obstacles, not as puzzles.

And I know this is a thing that's been present in a lot of, you know, I'm no stranger to

RPGs, so I know this has been present in a lot of games, but

it's very well presented in Baldur's Gate 3.

It's satisfying because there are things that you would want to do.

The only frustration I have with the game is...

Wanting to do something, knowing it's possible in the game, and not being able to figure out how to do it, which when you're doing a tabletop game with a DM, you just say the thing.

You're just like, okay, I'm going to cast this spell and I'm going to do this and then do that.

And like you roll for it

and either achieve it or you don't.

Whereas in this, there would be times where I'd be like,

okay,

I know I can set this on fire, but I cannot figure out how to set this on fire.

And I...

And I'm not

like I like it's wood.

I have flame spells.

i have oil but i don't know how to combine these things in a way that will allow me to set this thing on fire also that's a funny um example of something i want to do

um but i do like the the times where it's it's successfully implemented is like okay this fucking person is like i'll give you the key when uh when you finish this quest or like you know that there's like a barrier a magical barrier in a room and you have to put something into a fucking lock in order to undo it.

And you're like, I bet this lady has this on her.

So you leave the room, separate your party into two groups, re-enter invisible, pickpocket her, and sure enough, it's in her pocket.

And you can take it out of her pocket, skip all of her fucking missions that she wants you to like prove yourself or prove your loyalty or whatever the fuck.

And then walk back in as a group, put the thing in the lock, and she immediately is like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, how did you, why do you have that?

And the door is talking to you, and the door is like, oh, you must be the chosen one.

Come on in, and

everybody in the room is upset, but nobody can prove that you've done something wrong.

Feels like a virtual implementation of your favorite moments of Dungeons and Dragons, which, by the way, the movie captured very well.

100%.

No, Honor Among Thieves is similarly like just like, it's this is the fun of what this experience is.

Yeah,

I also think it's worth noting that a huge part of the story of the game is its reception

in terms of like, you know, its commercial success.

Because like that's a that's a big part of this game is not just like it's doing these things, but it's doing things that have reached a point of mainstream awareness, right?

Like that's what takes this game, it elevates this game in terms of importance and in terms of legacy to a game that kind of alters how, alters gaming moving forward.

At least that's what I think is going to happen.

I think this is on the level of something like a Skyrim or a Minecraft or a Dark Souls, that this comes out and this has so much influence over the marketplace

because the obviously developers

are aware of this and

that's going to influence that level, but this is like commercially successful enough where publishers are like, we need to do this.

And that's what leads to imitation at this kind of scale.

And that's what that'll lead to iteration.

And I think it's going to be a huge net positive for where gaming is going to go in terms of games that are going to try to emulate this, this approach to design at this scale.

And like, you know, again, that's the other part is like, this has triple-A production values.

Like this is, yeah, a lot of these stuff was present in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or Divinity Original Sin that franchise, Larian's previous games.

Like a lot of that stuff was present.

Fallout New Vegas has this stuff, but they were not as visible.

They were not,

they were not played by everybody, and they did not look and sound like this.

It is like, I, it, it boggles the mind to just like stop and think about like

the totality of this game and like the opportunities that it like presents to you in-game.

Cause like,

I just know that like we all saw completely different stuff.

Like, that's really crazy to think well i you actually had a nice transition point that we should go back to which you talked about what your core party members are and so you didn't have lay's all which is which completely influenced your playthrough all the way through the end game which we'll talk about

um yes yes uh i uh so my core party for basically both playthroughs ended up being i it's it sounds like a boring way to do it but i just liked it so much that i went back to it you know what i mean like like it's it's it's it's the it's the i think the big ones it's it was lay's

um, Shadowheart, and Gale.

And on my first playthrough, I was a bard, which I would advise anyone who, who hasn't played this game and is curious about it and doesn't know which class to play, play a bard.

It's so fun.

It has a bunch of class-specific dialogue.

It's also a very powerful class, both in and out of combat.

And the most important stat in the game is charisma, because so much of the gameplay is driven by conversations.

And if you have a high charisma stat, you can talk yourself out of combat oftentimes and talk your way into solving situations.

So I would definitely advise that for anyone.

But because a bard

has a sleight of hand proficiency, that handled all of my lock picking duties, which are another huge thing in this game.

And I'm amazed that you were able to get through it without a rogue in your party because

on my second playthrough, what I ended up doing is I took at first a couple levels and then later reduced it just to one level of

rogue for Shadowheart and then put the rest into Cleric so that shadow heart was able to handle all of the uh block picking duties and that also and trap disarming uh duties and that also felt like it tied into like the sort of you know uh trickery domain cleric you know shar acolyte sort of uh trickster

uh character so it felt fitting for that so then i had that character since my my main character was a paladin uh that character handled all that stuff i i i do i do think i maybe played this game in an insane way which was that

I kind of just did everything.

There was a couple of occasions where I would have somebody else do

something else.

Yeah.

But for the most part, I would say 95% of the things I did as my player character tav.

I don't think that's unusual, and I think

that's a perfectly valid way to play, obviously.

I mean, hey, you got through the game.

I did finish it.

Heather, what's kind of your party you're running with?

Well, I'm running with all the members of

the world that are still available to me.

I've got Shadowheart, Lazelle, and Astarion

are the only people I can bring anywhere because they're the only people.

I mean, Halcyon is in my camp.

But as far as I know, he's not available as a party member.

He just fucking talks to me.

Maybe that's different, maybe that changes.

I don't know.

Um, or maybe he's really upset at what I did to the druid uh area.

Uh, but those are the only guys who haven't either left in extreme disgust and anger at my actions

or attacked me on site and I didn't know they were possibly going to be a party character.

Uh, and then

Gail left because he was like

he lied to us about what, what he, who he was.

And I was like, well, fuck you then.

Like, what?

I haven't lied to you.

So I told him to go fuck himself and he left.

But

I was like, none of the other, you know, Shadow Heart hides that she's got like an item.

But generally speaking, nobody's lying to you about anything.

They're just like difficult people, right?

Like Asterion's like pretty fast is like, I'm a vampire.

And Shadowheart, pretty fast is like, I got this item.

And I'm, and it's pretty spooky.

And I also like this, this evil lady.

And as soon as she tells you, you have the option in dialogue to be like, that's fine.

Thanks for telling me.

Or you can like have an issue with it.

But Gail, like.

See, like, he's like, I've made a pact with some.

I don't know.

I don't even remember the fuck he told us, but it pissed off everybody.

And like, I talked to Shadowheart and I talked to Lazelle and he talked to Asterian, and they were all like, I can't believe he hid that from us.

And I was like, you know what?

I can't believe that either.

And went back and talked to him.

And I was like, he's like, so do you accept me, even though I've kept this secret from you?

And I was like, fuck no, dude.

And he's like, okay, I'll leave.

It's,

again, I love that you have that option to just like say, you're out of my party and that you, I also like that you chose it.

But it's the kind of thing where it's just like they don't have to have that in the game.

Like there could have been a reality where they're like, it's certainly a much easier to design, much easier to QA a game where we know Gail is going to be in the in the user's party after a certain point.

And they will always be present in the player's camp.

Like it's so much easier to have the

worst option be like, you have betrayed me.

I don't know if I can forgive you for this, but they stay in your party.

But they have the option.

You can just kick him out, get the fuck out of here, and then you never see him again.

He's just not present for the game.

This character who is relevant all the way through the end game story-wise.

Like all that shit is fucking, is fucking crazy.

I've heard that you can, that if you don't find Astarian, which I didn't do, I couldn't, I didn't find him when I first played on my Mac.

So I was stunned when I found him in the my second playthrough and he's really close to the beginning.

Like I was like, oh

i just missed this guy yeah um but if you don't find him you do find him as a corpse later which is pretty grim it's very uh it's very elden ring um the uh very from so the the the other thing is

what you were talking about is like is like not all the party members have secrets i mean it's like you know I think Will, who is another major character, major companion that you probably drove out of your camp because of your genocidal rampage,

He is another guy with a secret.

And it's like a huge secret that comes out and is like a huge part of his character, but he is also like the closest to like kind of a virtuous character, a fully like good character throughout.

And so like he's, he obviously, he and Carl like obviously aren't going to be a part of your playthrough if you're going the evil route.

Or the chaotic neutral act.

No, chaotic neutral.

Yes.

I never, ever, ever, and I'm pretty deep into Act Two.

And I've had, like, I've got friends in the world.

Like, not, I've gotten far enough away from the initial act of terror that people are starting to be like regular.

Always telling when somebody's like, I have friends.

Just took, it just took a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaking of the companions, and I think that this

kind of canceled and then like waited a year and came back.

Yeah.

I'll just make movies again.

I'll just be a famous stand-up again.

Yeah, Tav's just back.

Yeah, Tav's at the Hollywood Bowl.

Isn't that crazy?

It's sold out.

It's called the Truth Tour.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

All the companion, like, and I, you know, this is my reading of it, I, but all the companion quests to me, they all seem like journeys of acceptance, right?

Like they are, and that ties in with what's happening with Tav with the player character as well.

It's like, you know, Astarian and Will are controlled by abusers.

Gail and Carlac's bodies are destroying themselves.

Lazelle and Shadowheart were indoctrinated into death cults.

All of these people's lives did not go as they planned and have been disrupted by this event.

And they are all kind of having to make peace with that and through over the course of this journey,

you know, either reject or accept that and

you can go either way.

And that so much is like thematically ties in with the with your own character's Elithid parasite.

And obviously all everyone's got a brainworm at this point, but you're your illithid parasite, which is like, you know, again, it's it's disrupting your plan.

It's altering this character's fate and it's altering your body in a way you can't control, your brain and body in a way you can't control.

and ultimately how much do you want to fight against that or how much do you want to just accept it and treat it as a strength you know who also I think has the illithid parasite a lot of our U.S.

politicians

they have worms for brains over there Emma and I are clapping in studio yeah I was shocked to get a clap from Emma

it's just straight up go off king

it's funny that two of the major role-playing games of the last few years, and I'm speaking about Cyberpunk 2077 and BG3,

have been about having a terminal condition

and what you do in the wake of finding that out

that allows you to continue existing until this thing either destroys you.

Like both of them also are about like, well, I have like, I have this thing in my brain and it's going to kill me, but temporarily it'll make me stronger.

So, I'll do what I can to live under those circumstances.

Those are the parameters of existence.

Um, and that feels a little bit like, and I'm gonna say something big here: that feels like what it feels like to be in America, which is that we all know this system is rotting and destroying itself.

We can see what it's doing to like individual people through like wage, wage suppression, inflation, corruption like it is squeezing us all to death and eventually we'll either destroy the planet or or the system will explode from within and there'll be like a french revolution or whatever um

but while it's here we all have to make this pact with like well

i mean i'm gonna buy a car Yeah, like

and I'll use these roads.

Like there's all of these like subconscious,

you know, pacts we make with the system and with the country.

And for those of you who are listening in other places, because I know we have a lot of international listeners, I'm sure that you feel that way about your systems also.

Or perhaps maybe you look at America and see it as sort of an indictment of the way we exist.

But it feels like a specifically American theme.

Like,

fuck, this thing's going to kill us, but maybe for a little bit, we have a big military.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's why the you know, zone of interest is the movie of the moment, because it's like, we're, it's just like, how can you live just normally amidst such horrors, amidst such atrocities?

And it's just like, well, that's just like living, that's just what life is.

Like, there's just like unspeakable horrors happening constantly.

And there's, and you're just gonna, I don't know, you're gonna go record your video game podcast because that's what you do.

Yeah.

And

and if you're if you're my tab, you're taking all this and you're like, God, this tadpole in my brain is going to kill me.

I better eat every single one that I find

and have more.

I can tell that we're playing similarly because I not only did I eat them whenever I found them, but I also convinced everybody else they might be good for us.

Like through

deception and like charisma.

Like I'd be like, I don't know, this,

I feel like this might be okay.

And like, initially, everybody's like, ha, and now everybody in my party is like, yeah, put the worms in my brain.

Let's do it.

Yeah, I convinced a couple, but

a lot of my party was like,

you're a fucking maniac.

No, absolutely.

Right.

It's, but it is a thing of, of, it is a,

I think there's another thing of this, that this game does interestingly, and I touched this, I touched on this previously,

taking the, like using the Ellithid parasite

in conversations and then also consuming additional parasites to improve your powers, it just objectively makes you more powerful.

Yes.

Like the choice there is just is a purely moral one.

Do I want to allow myself to become a more mind flayer than person?

The trade-off is

I'm more powerful, but I'm less human.

But that's it.

It's not like it's like, oh, well, now I'm going to suffer all these other negative consequences in the game.

It's purely, it's purely an advantage from a combat perspective.

And some of the things that you get, like, my favorite one was Perilous Stakes, I think it was called.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Perilous Stakes is an illithid power that you basically can cast it on an enemy and it like

gives them the opportunity.

They're able to now be vulnerable to any type of attack, but every time they

get like they every time they successfully attack and and take damage or they uh you know

they they hurt you, uh, they gain health.

Uh, so it's like a okay, is this really worth it?

But if you're like you're fighting some sort of enemy that's not uh vulnerable to a lot of things, it's very, very helpful.

It's that's a great power, and there's so much burst damage available in the game that you can do that on an enemy and then kill them before they even have a chance to attack you.

Yes, no, that and like black hole, and I don't, I don't have an I haven't looked at an elithid parasite tier list, I'm sure one exists, but like that, those to me just seem absolutely Olivia.

Next week's episode, we're going to rank all the Elithid powers.

Those seem absolutely OP because you can just completely control the board with black hole and suck all the enemies towards one point,

which is another one.

And again,

I really like stage fright.

Stage fright is a great power.

Another great one.

As a power.

I enjoy that one.

I like the idea of just making enemies frightened.

And generally speaking, my combat is against frightened enemies.

I don't know what it does, but I like that they're scared and I can see it on screen.

It gives them disadvantage.

It gives them disadvantage on attacks.

I like seeing them scared.

There are so many status effects in this game.

This is one of the things that makes playing through just absolutely daunting.

And it's the kind of thing of just like

in a broader, in a broader sense,

it's amazing that this that I keep saying the word amazing.

And I know that's annoying, but it's like it's that Larian.

It's amazing that the game works.

It's amazing that the game works.

And it's also amazing that Larian was just like, we're going to not really make any compromises here.

I'm sure some compromises were made, but ultimately we're going to put out the game we want to make and then to have everyone receive it and be like, we love this.

Like that's such a miracle when that ever happens.

When it's just like, hey, you know what?

We're just going to make all the decisions we want.

We're going to throw in a status condition muddy that you'll see in one combat encounter.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And it's just like, and we're going to have that in there, and you know, and you're just going to deal with it.

Like, in this particular circus, yeah.

You can summon an elemental that makes everything muddy, and I like that elemental.

I use that one.

Yeah, the muddy benefit.

It's like a mud goblin.

Yeah.

Throws mud.

That's really, really good.

When I played DD, I played a swamp druid.

So I was like a mud.

I was like a mud guy.

I love it.

The mud's funny.

It's great.

It is.

It's funny.

It's great, but, but

it's just so jam-packed with so much.

It's such a more is more approach.

Yeah.

It also, I think it celebrates how impressive the D ⁇ D system is.

Sure.

That these things have been dropped into a game and work.

That like you, there's not, there's,

that generally it's like, oh, you can use this thing in a combat situation or you can use it in a conversational situation and having that rule set

implemented as a game system works is fucking awesome yeah that that's why i like i'm just trying you know because i could i could find things that that bug me about this game that i could complain about but i'm just like i'm trying to keep the conversation and and i i do have issues with it but i i'm trying to keep the conversation so positive because to me it's more like

Yeah, there may be things that bother me about the inventory system.

And there are there are, you know, you're looking at the hotbar and you're squinting at so many identical looking icons.

Yeah, there are things that are like a little bit that there are grievances that one can have with the UI.

But there's also so many things like just that you can cast a spell like guidance or friends, something that helps your...

That helps your character during a dialogue encounter without popping out of that encounter or having to cast it in advance that you can cast it like from within the menu.

Like that's thoughtful design that that's implemented like that

i i uh i i just stepping back to what you're saying earlier heather about like the

this game about like like or the stuff about like just kind of living in in the living right now and and how and this game's comment on that i mean i think that also comes across in uh in terms of the absolute and the scheme that exists to weaponize the absolute to essentially create a false god to brainwash a bunch of people a bunch of of underlings into fighting a crusade on the behalf of the powerful.

I mean, that's so much of just like a,

you know, that feels like so much of a comment on just like how people are mobilized into a wartime footing.

And the other thing I think it does is it's just, it feels like ultimately like a rejection of utilitarianism.

Like it feels like the

ends justify the means people in this game are such monsters.

They're such pieces of shit and they're fundamentally inhuman.

What the what?

Come on.

I'm right here.

I'm right here.

What are you talking about?

Fuck.

But I don't know.

I think I do think it makes that point very effectively.

And I'm always in favor of like anytime I see something, I see utilitarianism taking down a peg.

Because it's usually monstrous.

I want because we've we've talked about,

again, I'm just thinking about people who are tuning just for this episode.

I want to recap what happened to my character and why I only have four party members.

Because I think that it is a celebration of the game's strengths that I am so far into the game and it hasn't collapsed or that I haven't hit a dead end.

Which is that in one of the earliest play areas, which is the Druid Village,

the Grove, yeah.

Yeah, playing as a thief,

I

opened a box that I was told that.

So there's a hidden passage that goes around the back of a storehouse.

I went down the hidden passage, jumped on the roof of the storehouse, entered the storehouse, and there's a lady who's paralyzed.

She's like, I'm stuck in here.

I forget why.

Don't help me.

Don't do it.

Get out of here.

You're not supposed to be in here.

Who the fuck knows?

But she's with all these boxes.

And I search the area and I start going through the boxes.

And she starts screaming because she's like,

Help!

There's a thief in here.

The door opens from the front, and there's like a security guard who's like upset at me.

And the security guard's like, We're gonna take you to jail.

And I was like, No, no, you're not.

Like, I'm just looking.

Like, I haven't stolen anything.

Uh, so I thought maybe I could put that guy to sleep or like put like tie him in place and leave.

Unfortunately, uh, I failed that check and he attacked me.

So then everybody within viewing distance of him also attacked me.

And

I

was forced by like, imagine like a virus spreading through an entire area.

The farther out people would get a role for initiative and turn hostile, the people beyond them would then roll for initiative and turn hostile.

So I was basically fighting a horde of the entire village because I opened up a box

and I killed everybody.

The women, the children, I literally

killed them all,

which is when

Will

was like,

you're a fucking terrible person.

I'm leaving.

And that was the first time I was like, oh, wow, this game has like consequences.

This is cool.

And then I met Carlak

in the

wild and she attacked me on site.

And I killed her thinking she was just like some NPC.

And then lost access to Carlak's story for the rest of the game, not knowing that she was a playable like party member.

From that point forward, there were just ripple effects through the entire world where everybody I fucking walked into had heard or had a friend or something involved in that village and was either very upset at me or was super on my side.

Like they'd be like, hey, you, like the goblins were like, fuck yeah, man.

Wow.

You're working for us.

I'd be like, no, I'm not fucking working for you.

And then all the goblins fucking attack you.

But I've managed to play

whatever 40 or 50 hours of this specific playthrough.

And I'm not complaining about the game when I talk about how insane it is that everybody, everywhere, because also I don't know how you do that in a save file.

I don't understand video game programming.

But it is only now that I am, you know, past, like past significant parts of act two, I think, that I'm finally encountering people who are like, don't have awareness of the Druid Village and are just like engaging with me on their own terms.

Yeah, when does that start happening?

Does that start happening to you in the Underdark, in the Mountain Pass?

When are you starting to be like kind of

past your

Underdark?

My first entrance into the Underdark in Act 1 was with some kind of thief, some underground thief community, and they were upset at me about a different box that I opened on the fucking road.

That happened to me on my first playthrough.

I ended up having to kill all of them because

it's a quest where they want a treasure chest

returned to them intact.

And if you do do that, you get a substantial reward.

My first playthrough, I had already opened the box, the treasure chest when I found it.

And then I found the thief community.

And they were like, you opened it.

You've killed us all.

And then they attack you.

Yeah.

And which I thought was great.

On the second time, knowing what was going to happen, I brought the chest intact to them and played that way.

So in the Underdark,

like getting to the Underdark, all those thieves attack you.

And then you...

By the time I got to the mushroom people,

they were not attacking me on site, they were just like, We're fucking mushroom people, and I was like, Great.

I don't think they're capable of hating you.

I love the mushroom people.

I love the Myconids.

It's it's also a thing where it's just like, oh, you are just completely alien.

Like, you, it's not, it's, it's like the mind flayers of like, it's not that you don't have, you are immoral, like, or, or have a different moral code.

You're just like, you don't, you don't understand the concept of morality.

You function in a completely different way.

And that's just like an interesting life form to interact with.

Yeah.

I thought they were beautiful.

I love looking at them.

They're beautiful.

They're interesting.

Bioluminescence.

No, the art direction of this game is amazing.

I think the game is looking at its best in dark areas and where it can really have some, you know,

just like a dazzling palette and some great lighting effects.

And that's one of the things.

The Underdark is like, those like, and the Shadowlands are like the two best looking parts of the game.

I really like rotating your on-screen camera.

I really like the way the stuff dissolves when it gets in between you and your player characters.

I know that's a very basic effect, but it's like, it's almost like looking at a diorama that's made out of opaque glass.

Because like if you view it from certain angles, it's totally tangible.

And if you rotate the map then or rotate your board, then it disappears.

It's really, and I know what I'm describing is so basic.

It happens in so many games.

I'm not stupid.

I just think it's

gorgeous.

No,

I'm just jumping there as well.

Yeah, we're not stupid.

I'm stupid.

Like, I'm also,

I don't know what the absolute is because I, the player, don't have enough invested in being told about it.

So like when people are like,

Are you part of the absolute?

I'm like, I don't, I don't know.

Whatever, man.

And I think I've been inconsistent on what I am siding with because I'm just playing it literally conversation.

But I'm like, do I like this guy?

And if they're like, hey, we're from the absolute and that guy's cool, I'll be like, yes, me too.

But if I'm with somebody and they're like anti-absolute and they're cool, I'll be like, yeah, fuck the absolute.

I don't, I don't like that guy.

Fuck that.

Um,

but it's, I don't know, I love the game so much, and I love my weird tunnel compressed playthrough because it is so fun to roleplay it, and it is so satisfying when you run into people and they're like, I know what you did.

Yeah,

I have like a list of, I had a list of like 14 quests I wanted to touch on, and we've gotten to zero of them.

But

we're not going to have time for these.

I just accept, but I do want to touch on a couple.

And also, I want the two of you to chime in if you have any favorite quests or favorite characters, NPCs.

We can talk about that a little bit.

One that I really locked into, especially in my second playthrough, is Barkus Root, who is the gnome you first encounter who is tied to a windmill and goblins are taunting him.

Heather, I imagine you shot him with an arrow.

No, no, no, I stopped the windmill.

Okay, got it.

So Barkus Root has an amazing story and is a character that starts off kind of prickly.

And I'm kind of like, this asshole, I wish I hadn't saved him.

Or I watched some video where some people like, I watched a video where I guess you can do something with the windmill where I think if you stop it at a certain time and then restart it, he flies off of the windmill and into oblivion and then he just dies.

He's being tormented by goblins.

You can free him.

If so, you just you keep encountering him throughout the game.

And the next place you encounter him, and you've probably encountered this already, Heather, is in the Underdark when he has been enslaved along with a lot of fellow gnomes and forced to

work in the mine on behalf of the Dwergar.

And it's

like if you keep following him and you keep like keeping keeping up with this character, he has such an arc to him.

And this involves this other guy that he's got, this Wolbrin Bongle, who is like this friend of his.

My reading of it is that he's in love with him.

I'm not sure what your reading was, Matt, but like he has this guy that he really cares about who's also just like a dick to him.

And so the story throughout the way it evolves and the way you keep getting touched on with his character, and also that every time you run into him, he has gotten himself into some bit of trouble is just like it's it's really entertaining.

And I think he's just like a really, just an exceptionally well-written character.

Is he in

wait, is he one of the guys who's trying to clear like a rock rock slide?

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

I killed a good chance.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think he also might have accidentally died in mine as well.

I didn't, yeah, I didn't attack him.

The rock slide was a pretty fraught

situation for me, if I'm being honest.

There was a lot,

a lot going on.

And then

there was like a poison as well, right?

There was like a poison gas.

Yeah, yes.

At one point, I left, and then I think I came back, and then like the poison did what it did, and like a lot of people died in there.

Um, I uh, I did save the gnomes there because that's a thing where you, you can set, you can either side with the gnomes, or you can side with the captors, or actually, I guess, true soul nair, who's the guy who's trapped underneath there.

Um, and uh,

based on your choices, it's like they either all die or they're all liberated, or everyone dies is another option.

But again, it's like a thing where like, like, depending on your choices, some of this stuff follows you all the way into act three and into the end game, honestly.

I saved those gnomes because the guy who, like, I ran into a guy and he's like, boy, I hate that fucking eye that's following us around.

And I was like, me too.

I don't like that thing.

And they're like, blow that up.

And I was like, you got it.

And like, I went and blew it up and felt pretty good about myself.

And then it was like, you have dialogue.

And I was like, oh, I I recognize that's the guy who wanted me to blow up that eyeball.

I'm on his side.

Right.

And then I sided with him and freed the gnomes and it was great.

But I think maybe that dude who you saved from the windmill, he may have died in that

scene, maybe.

I mean, I didn't, certainly didn't recognize him if he was talking to me.

Yeah.

Wow.

Can I say one of my favorite quests?

Yes, please.

I really like the lady in the mushroom kingdom who's looking for her husband.

And her husband is just like downstairs.

He's like trapped in like a gas, like a horrible gas.

And you can, you can just throw him a scroll of Misty Step and he gets himself out.

I couldn't fucking believe it.

Yeah, right.

Like, I have no idea what the.

You know, as soon as he leaves and he's like, I gotta, I'm gonna go back to my wife.

And I'm like, ah, then I could like light that whole gas area on fire, blow it up, and like go collect everything that was underneath the gas.

That was so fun.

I loved it.

And then I went up and talked to both of them.

I'm like, I don't care what your story is.

You guys are, you guys suck.

But generally, I like that the thing that you think you might be able to do, you can do in this game.

For sure.

And there's another thing, which is they're looking for the noble stock mushroom.

That's the reason he put himself, he put himself in that dangerous exploding fungus.

That noble stock mushroom if you find it which was like is like a difficult thing and like i had to use like mage hand to like grab it and i didn't do this on my first playthrough i i did it on my second playthrough

uh then you can give it to them and then those two characters reappear uh in their potion shop in act three in balder's gate and then they have like a new inventory and it's it's actually like a vital source of of end game supplies or late game supplies and so like like you know if you but that's just like one element of that quest you also can just rescue him and just get just get the one reward anyway if you talk to the two of them

their story is extremely dark which is that he has he has basically gone senile he has lost his mind yeah um and she treats him like

and if you talk to her about it you're like hey maybe be nicer to him you know he's doing his best she's like He was an abusive monster and I'm glad his brain is rotten because he can't abuse me anymore.

And every part of it is just like so depressing.

But the thing that you retrieve, the noble stock mushroom, has all sorts of uses.

You can either give it to the potion shop owner and then she appears again in Act 3 and has Noble Stock mushrooms in stock.

Or you can, apparently, I looked this up, you can, as a single-use item, you can give it to Shadowheart and she will remember something that she's forgotten because her memory has been wiped clean.

Or you can give it to the abusive husband who's gone senile.

His brain comes back and he goes, aha, you're in for it now, woman.

He fucking like jackie cleanses her.

Jesus Christ.

Isn't that insane?

That's so crazy.

Oh, I remember what I liked doing.

You're horrible.

It brings anybody any comfort.

I accidentally blew him up in that field.

And he went back to like, oh, he's dead.

She's like, all right, well, well.

But

just that all those options exist just speaks to like,

they're thinking from a design perspective.

I don't know how much this is coming from the designer, the top-level designer, how much is coming from, you know, iterating through QA and through early access.

But at a certain point, they're realizing the player will want to try this.

So we better include functionality in case they do.

Yes.

And so we'll make this an option and we'll have some consequence to it.

Two of my favorite quests in the whole game were in Act 3.

And maybe it's recency bias and maybe

you know what though i actually really liked um in act two

um

getting the

meeting that big spider guy oh the drider yeah meeting the big the drider and then i double crossed him he led me through the

the what is it called the um

the shadowlands he led me through the shadowlands to a point when i until i met these other guys the um like the archer type people

The harpers.

The harpers.

And I was like, okay, they seem good.

I'm going to guess that this spider guy is not on the up and up.

I'm double crossing this guy.

And then attacked him with them and then got to meet the harpers.

And that's where then I encountered Jaheera

at the Last Light Inn.

I like that.

That whole sequence was awesome.

It was really, really great.

Yeah, The Last Light Inn is great.

And the,

but but it's it's interesting because my approach was different because I emerged from the Underdark and so I came across the Harpers first.

Okay.

And so the Drider was a thing where in my first playthrough, I just discovered him and took him out.

And he has the, you know, the moon lamp or whatever that that helps you avoid the darkest parts of the challenge.

But on my second playthrough, because I'd already been established at Last Light Inn, they were like, hey, we're going on a mission to hunt this guy down.

And then

so you join up with some harpers to go chase after him and then you stake out a point and you can ambush him and you get an advantage on the combat encounter uh also apparently that there's all sorts of lore involving what a drider is and how they're kind of like exiled uh drow men uh that that have betrayed the spider god lolth and have been transformed in this abomination so like even there it's like one of those things where again it's kind of a from soft thing where there's just like elements of rot to everything.

Like there's so much stuff where it's just like, well, even this guy, you know, this knight that I'm fighting on a bridge is grieving his dead son.

You know what I mean?

It's like, there's always shit like that that you'll find in one of those games.

It's the same sort of thing here.

It's just like this guy who's like this evil spider guy actually has some sort of tragic backstory that's that's heavily implied by his nature.

So you can get through, you can get to act two

two ways.

Yeah, or there's maybe more ways, but there's two very specific ways.

There's two ways.

And this is the thing.

Actually, you know, I do wish the game conveyed it a little bit better.

I think it will, I I could expect this being a content update at a certain point, just to clarify exactly what's happening.

But Halson,

the druid, tells you you have a choice of two ways to get to the underdark, either the mountain pass, or I'm sorry, to get to the shadowlands, either the mountain pass or the underdark.

And he pushes you to go towards the underdark.

And it feels like, okay, I'm just making a choice.

I do one or the other.

And I didn't realize that, no, you can go back and do the other one after you get to the shadowlands.

So this is what I did.

Yeah.

Well, I basically got as far as i could in the underdark yeah without getting to the shadowlands because i think there was something there was something going on where i was like confused about where i was supposed to go next it feels like you're about to hit a point of no return yes and so you're not i left and it went through the mountain pass so i like got the entire experience of uh the underdark basically uh and then went I the reason I was avoiding the

mountain pass was there was that big fight like right outside of it basically that I was like I felt under leveled for and like just kept getting smoked to get yankee with the dragon?

Yes, and so I went back.

I went I was like, okay, I'm not doing that.

I'm gonna go to the underdark and then got to the point in the underdark where I was like, I don't know where I'm really supposed to go.

Went back to the mountain pass and then just continued through there after until I was like a little more like either

like one level higher or I just knew better about what I was doing basically.

So I got to, I got to do both.

But all that to say, there's two, one that we talked about over text that I think maybe we'll talk about a little later.

A quest later on in Act Three that I was like, this is like the most fun I've ever had in a game.

Like, I loved it.

Wait, I want to go back to this because you're just talking about the mountain pass there, and that is where the Geth Yankee crash is, and that's like a huge Lazelle thing.

And, Heather, I know you just had played through that pretty recently.

Um, we could talk about that as well.

But, but remind us why Lazelle is not present in your party.

So,

okay,

So, so Lazelle,

in my playthrough,

on the jump, and I don't know if it's because it was like a new thing or I just didn't like her attitude.

I had beefed with Laiselle from the jump, like just immediately.

Right.

I don't know if it was that maybe I picked an answer that she didn't like and then we started beefing.

But we basically got through the

prologue of the game, basically, the first thing that you have to do.

And then split ways.

She was like, I'm done.

Then it was me and Shadowheart from then on.

Because then you get Shadowheart after that thing crashes.

I couldn't figure out how to get her out of the pod before it crashed.

And she was not happy that I didn't get her out, but she did stick with me.

Yes.

And I critically failed on that on my second playthrough.

I seriously thought, I was like, knowing the game, I was like, is Shadowheart just going to die on this ship?

Yeah.

And the prologue.

But no, she recovers on her own.

And so, which would be such a fascinating choice because of how important she is in the game.

Right.

But so Lazelle leaves.

It's me and Shadowheart.

I find Astarian right away.

I find Gail pretty quickly as well.

Then it's just the four of us.

We then at the Mountain Pass

where

the Githyaki Geese and the

is that what it's called?

I can't believe how wrong you said that.

Get the Yankee crash?

See, okay, well, so this is the thing.

This is the thing that you have to understand.

They were basically not in my game at all.

Yes.

Like, because

of Lazelle not being in the game,

I basically didn't experience them at all.

And every time they would come up, I would just be like, well, I don't even know you or what your guys' whole deal is.

I'm working with this other stuff.

Back the fuck off.

And at a certain point, they were basically almost all dead until the very end.

Um,

where um,

I feel like I can't say what happens yet.

Um,

right, but, but, yeah, you can hold off on that, but but what you're saying is that you basically had a you played through the game without really the Yankee having a presence.

There was an entire race of people that I ignored completely, which is horrible.

It's like saying I had, I, I did a playthrough of Star Trek with no Vulcan.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, wait, this huge thing you missed out on.

Yeah,

yeah, it was so crazy.

I just, I just didn't, because she died in

that encounter.

Yeah.

And I was like, okay, well, I guess she's just dead.

And I didn't know that

maybe based on her attitude, I was like, okay, well, I don't actually care this bad.

And then I found out, I guess I should have known based on the cover art that she's pretty involved.

But so I just ignored her and I was like, okay, whatever.

And then I just also didn't know really about like reloading saves and things like that.

But

that's the whole thing.

That's what makes it

an interesting, compelling role-playing game is that there are some choices that

you can undo if you want.

If you want to sort of reload a save and re-engage an encounter.

I know that I saved Gale several times from

a death battle, you know, where he died.

Right.

Gale probably died the most for me for some reason.

Did you play it out after Gale dies?

As soon as a party member would die in a battle, I would reload the battle.

Oh, because

you can resurrect them if they die.

Yes.

There are some times where I didn't have

the scroll.

But then later.

But you can talk about the battle.

You can talk their skeleton.

Oh,

that'll bring away a lot of time.

But anyway, I was going to say.

Also basically ignore anybody ugly.

I was like, I'm out of here.

This is crazy.

Oh, man.

You got to talk to Withers.

Withers is my guy.

I think what both of you, the way both of you played this is the way that someone should play the game.

I actually, I applaud both of you just committing to your insane playthroughs because

it's awesome that you didn't reload it and you're just like, oh, I'm just going to live with these consequences and see what's going on.

I think that's the most fun way to experience this game.

There's a temptation to be like, I failed this role.

Let me reload it.

I don't think I would not advise anyone to do that.

Devil Lady is on the car,

but she's so far in the background and she's like kind of talking to like win, I think.

So I just thought she was like,

whatever.

You're talking about Matt's best friend that you just killed with a pole axe on site.

No, she attacked me.

I don't know.

Oh, she attacked you.

Sorry, you had no choice.

Yeah, I get it.

I think she like attacked me too, but we like sorted it out.

Like, I didn't even, I thought she was like just some monster on the road.

Like, she's just like, stop this.

I'm going to have your head.

But she's so far in the background of the, of the cover art that I didn't have the Lay's Le experience that Matt did.

It wasn't until I talked to you guys that I even realized she was a character.

Like, and you were like, that's Carlak.

And I was like, what?

Like, that's,

that's incredible.

The game is, it's not,

look, it's not my favorite game, but it is such a masterpiece that it's kind of astonishing.

That's my big thing here.

It's astonishing that this exists and functions.

The thing about Carlak that I really need you to understand, Heather.

Yeah.

She would be your favorite character.

She would.

Yeah, I could see Heather getting a Carlac tattoo after a second playthrough.

Heather getting the Carlac haircut.

I could see all of it.

Look,

I thought I was going to go through this game with Shadowheart being my favorite because, you know, she's pretty and she seems sad and you kind of want to help her out.

Sure.

But the farther in the game I've gotten, what?

She's also mean, which I like.

Didn't have to repeat it.

She's mean?

Yeah.

What are you talking?

When does Shadowheart mean she's mean?

She's a little stern.

She's sort of a little,

she's very quick to tell you.

I didn't like.

What?

Yeah.

She's so sweet.

Is that, are you guys doing a bit?

No, no.

No, no, no, no no well she's just like constantly like i hate we've had some really nice moment but

every time i talk to her she's like we've had really nice times and at first i didn't believe in you but boy oh boy you've really made my life special like that's doing something she doesn't like

yeah once she disapproves it really uh really cuts like a knife yeah

no she's like i i i worship this thing and i'm like okay good for you and she's like you were able to ask her about her religion see how that goes

i did i totally did did.

And she told me about it.

And I was like, that's fine.

And she's like, really?

And she's been nothing but sweet.

And then once I find like, if I find like a dark, just

a car

armor or something, I give it to her.

And she's like, oh my God, you saw this and you thought of me?

This is great.

I love it.

Like, I gave her a fucking statue.

And she's like, oh, this is my girl.

I love this girl.

And I'm like, good, go have your fucking, she's great.

She's so sweet.

But she's sweet.

What I was going to say is

that

I thought she was going to be my favorite, but the farther and farther into the game I get, the more I like Lazelle.

And the more I'm like,

fucking Lazelle is so good.

She's so straightforward.

And when she starts like having emotional turns, you're like, oh, man, I'm going to fuck people up on behalf of Lazelle.

Like, as soon as I see who's responsible for the pain that this woman is in, I'm going to...

I'm going to lay waste to those people.

Whereas Asterion's been pretty straightforward about like, ah, vampire vampire made me, he's mean.

And I'm like, ah, we'll, we'll see how we play that when we get to it.

But Lazelle's been like, I'm hurt.

And I'm like, I got you, girl.

Fucking got you.

I think all the character quests have really satisfying resolutions.

And, you know, I think,

you know, Will kind of gets, I feel like, backburnered in the conversations just because there's just so many characters.

But I think ultimately where his story goes is like so engaging and so well executed executed in the and in the back stretch of it.

But Lazel is my favorite.

Milazel very much became my favorite NPC.

And also I would say I think the most useful party member just is an absolute force on the battlefield.

The battle master fighter is just such a strong subclass.

And I was especially feeling that in Tactician where,

you know, three attacks at max level plus the ability that lets you get an extra move

that's unique to fighters.

I'm forgetting the name of it right now.

Action Surge or something

uh the that combination like i was taking out act three bosses in one turn with a with a buff with a buff lays

uh and so it's just she she is she is such a potent force but also just like

an unflappable moral code which is so interesting to have in a character of just like this is what i believe and that these are my principles and these are what i live and die by and i i'm your ally only up to the point where you make me betray uh you know uh my nature and my core beliefs.

And isn't that the way of the Githyanki?

Jesus Christ.

Heather's going to have a Carlac

haircut and Matt is going to have a Lazelle t-shirt in like a month.

Yes, yeah.

Okay, so I'm going to take a playthrough, and you know what?

It's correct.

Not enough talk of

the Emperor, but there's lots to talk about.

There is so much to talk about.

Just to touch one thing on the Emperor.

I think we should all give our thoughts on the Emperor.

I know we're approaching the two-hour mark.

I know people have things to do.

And also,

this studio is not ours indefinitely.

Yeah.

Wait, I don't know the Emperor.

So we'll save our thoughts on the Emperor.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's...

I fuck the Emperor.

Okay.

We'll follow up on that later.

Definitely a character my thoughts changed on across the different playthroughs.

I think we should just wrap this up with any final thoughts.

It's just impossible to touch on anything.

And then Matt and I will go into a little spoiler country special edition after we hear everybody else after we do the Ryu crew.

But any other thoughts on this game?

Any other things we want to touch on?

I love the menu screen or the screen that pops up when you're rolling the dice, and I love the sound of that dice roll.

They absolutely nailed it.

I love it.

Absolutely nailed the dice.

I love it.

I love that.

So satisfying.

You know,

this is a game.

I don't play a lot of games a second time unless it's Kingdom Hearts 2.

But

I did immediately...

I started a Bard character

as a second playthrough.

And

I think I'm going to stick with that now knowing that

he's pretty tough, actually.

And I'm going to do my my best to keep Lay Zell in the party because

I want to experience the things I didn't get to experience.

There's like other characters that we haven't talked about that I didn't even get to really interact with.

We've barely touched on Astarian, who I, you know, I saw his character quests through to the end in both my playthroughs, but like I didn't really use as a character because I didn't really have a need for him.

And I was like, on my next playthrough, I'm just going to have to Astarian in my party the entire time.

I'm just going to commit to that to just get all of his dialogue.

Because I liked his.

I did all the the character quests for the characters that remained alive and that I didn't accidentally kill.

There was or

you know,

Halzen left my party, left my camp at a certain point, and there's a Drow woman character.

Oh, you recruited Minthara.

Yeah, well, I didn't, I killed her.

Oh, okay.

There was a battle where I think either she died or I killed her because at a certain point I had her gear.

I'm sorry, a different drow woman in NPC.

No, Minthar.

I had her gear.

Yeah, but you mentioned a Drow woman.

I'm sorry.

Oh, I thought that's who that was.

Is she not a Drow?

We were saying the same thing and not realizing we were saying the same thing.

This is my fault.

I apologize.

Should not have interrupted.

Who is on first?

What is on second?

And I don't know who's on third.

Do you think if somebody saw that for the first time today, they'd be like, this is fucking funny.

This is good.

Aren't you?

You're waiting for an Abbott and Costello clip to resurface on TikTok, and a bunch of like 17-year-olds are like, This is the best shit I've ever seen.

I'm actually, you know what?

Should I go home and make that?

You know, like, just one of those, one of those TikToks where I'm in the front of it, and then I kind of step away, and I'm just like pointing at it.

Like, it's fucking good.

That's kind of funny.

Maybe I will do it.

That's really funny.

Point to follow up where you're like, whoa, Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein.

Maybe that was a fucking movie.

Yeah.

And actually, they established the big guy, little guy thing.

Yeah, I didn't get to.

There's like three

major characters that I didn't get to

get to really interact with that I'd love to love to learn more about in another playthrough.

And there's like a, I know that there is a, there's a complete area that I didn't see

that I think we talked about months ago.

With like, there's like water people.

I didn't see them at all.

I'm having trouble playing.

Oh, I think i know what you're talking about yes uh i didn't get to them uh by the time i got to them in act three uh i guess a lot had happened on their end and uh i i like there's like an area i mean we'll talk about it uh it's not too crazy but then there's also another thing i think that you can see in act three that i did not see um but because i guess i would just be like with certain with certain side quests i would do or i'd start them or in the case of like those uh that little goblin guy if there was if it didn't seem like it was worth my time from staying away away from the story, I'd be like, well, I'm not, I'm not going to do that.

But now I know later on, having played a hundred hours of it or whatever, that everything, everything in the game is worth doing.

No, I kind of played my first playthrough.

I kind of played like you're playing now.

And it was the same sort of thing.

It was just like, I was like, you know what?

I'm going to abandon some side quests.

I'm not going to follow up on a Melu Omes potion or whatever like that.

Not realizing that all these things have consequences that can last all the way through the end of the game.

Yes.

And which is, again, just another amazing aspect.

Heather, any final thoughts?

I love the way that I am seeing this game because when I get to play it again, it's going to feel like DLC.

It's going to be like, what if

the Druid Village lived?

Like, like, I'm going to get to see so much content in a different way.

that

I really feel like the playthroughs are going to be so radically separate that it will feel like a new version of this game that I already love.

And that is something so remarkable, so upstanding about Baldur's Gate.

I don't know.

It's

then again, Final Fantasy VII Part 2 is coming out in a week.

So maybe none of this will happen and I'll never.

It's so funny to call both of these things role-playing games because

you don't choose hardly anything in Final Fantasy games.

Like you don't choose, nothing of consequence is on your shoulders.

They're all things that you're propelled through.

The world, like the world propels you through these circumstances in this story, and you're there to read it and to enjoy it, but you're not affecting it.

Like Sephiroth is never going to be a good guy.

Whereas I feel like in Baldur's Gate, you can be like ally to trolls and like goblins and shit.

And they'll they'll be like on like you i got some object from some dude and he's like blow this horn like some dude in the goblin camp really early on and he was like blow this horn and and i'll come to your aid no matter where you are and i was like wow cool and i forgot about it and then much later in the game was

in a like a combat scenario i think at the geth yankee crash and i blew the horn and those dudes showed up yeah and i was like wow that's awesome.

And I'm pretty sure they're bad guys because I think you can attack them

when you enter the goblin camp.

Like,

what a remarkable experience it is.

It's so good.

It's so good.

That's my final thought.

It's really fucking good game.

Those ogres, yeah, they're great.

And it's a great that you can either talk them into or bribe them into being your ally.

You summon them with a horn.

I will say when I did that in my first playthrough with some of them with the horn, where I was also had NPCs, and they started just like attacking NPCs as well.

Oh my God.

That's like, uh-oh.

I didn't realize they're going to be so indiscriminate.

But yeah,

their moral code is just like, I kill things and I get to eat them.

That's great.

I will reiterate that this is just an incredible piece of narrative art, and I'd remain astonished that it even exists.

The writing, which if we, if I haven't made it clear enough, I just find to be incredible both in quantity and quality.

And I feel this is one of the best video games ever made and my favorite game of all time because it plays to the unique strength of the medium, interactivity, and consequential player-driven decisions.

And this will sound trite at this point after we've all said this in different ways, but like you can miss things.

You can miss major things and accepting that's a big part of the experience and that's a big part of what makes it,

you know, so incredible and so unique among triple-a games it's also just an approach to game design that i really like which is which is look i love a triple a game that's a sequence of gameplay uh interrupted by a cutscene that advances the story i'm very into that approach i i love a i love a game that's presented that way you complete the level uh to earn the movie But this game is not that.

This game, like the cutscenes remain interactive.

You retain your agency as a player

all the way throughout.

And

again, it's a big part of what makes it feel so specifically like a game and not like, you know, something that can be so easily translated into a prestige TV series or a movie or something like that, if that makes sense.

Like,

in terms of adapting this, it's like the Persona 5, the anime problem of like...

The player character, the protagonist, does not have a clear identity.

So you just have to make that choice and make that decision.

And that completely alters what this thing is saying.

So

this is in its best form is as this game.

And I just, I can't do it justice verbally

because

you'd have to do the Baldur's Gate 3 of podcast episodes.

And I'm just unfortunately not capable of doing that.

But this is an incredible game.

Well, well, here we go.

Hey, those were our thoughts, at least some of them.

Matt and I will be back in the back end for a special spoiler country epilogue where we will talk about Act three and the end game but right now it's time for the you play of our we play you play it's your review crew the reu crew hello can i thought for sure you were queuing up maybe we were wrong because you went well those were our thoughts but i was like oh man are we going to read negative reviews of balder's gate

it's turn-based blank it beats spider-man blank

Shut up.

All right.

This first one is from Moldy Bread on our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

And Moldy Bread writes, fuck around and find out, Simulator, 2023, 10 out of 10, 108 hours played and haven't made it out of Act Two.

I love that.

Fuck around and find out is absolutely good way to think of it.

100%.

Puff and stuff writes, I bought a nice dagger for Astarian, went into battle, then immediately had it disarmed and thrown into a chasm never to be seen again.

10 out of 10.

Total Chaos writes, as someone who played the originals, this was a trip back to what I loved when I was 14.

Also, I learned that I'm still a safe-scumming piece of shit.

11 out of 10.

I just want to comment on this because I don't think I said it at any point in this episode.

I did play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.

I never finished either of those games, but I put a lot of hours into them.

And

I do absolutely feel like this is like, this is the natural evolution.

This is the, this feels very much like those games that I remember.

And, you know, Planescape Torment, I've listed as one of my my favorite games of all time.

Also, another Infinity Engine game derived from

the Spiritual Ancestors, the BioWare,

Baldur's Gate Originals.

And yeah, this absolutely does justice to all those.

I have Baldur's Gate 2 and Divinity Original Sin 2 on Steam.

Yeah.

And they're both playable in my Steam deck.

I wonder if it'd be worth...

It'd be probably more worth booting up Divinity Original Sin 2 than it would Baldur's Gate 2 at this point.

That's the much more modern game.

I'd be curious.

I've thought about returning to at least Baldur's Gate 2 after playing through this and maybe trying to finally make my way all the way through it.

It's an awesome game.

And Total Chaos, you're not a safeguarding piece of shit.

Play how you like to play.

Do what you do.

There you go.

This next one's from Oddbod.

And Oddbod writes, 160 hours to finish, and I didn't even need most of the allies I gathered along the way because I just had Gail do his thing.

To the I will uh redact that part.

Um, I'll give it six months more for patches and then play again.

Nine out of ten, minus one for bugs and weirdness, even after multiple big patches.

Hey, that's fair, definitely buggy.

I after this latest patch, it crashed on me twice.

I got some crashes in the in the trading, the revamp trading screen, which looks better.

Uh, but I did get some crashes there.

Yeah, after uh, the update, I finished a quest and the object just didn't appear in my inventory and had to do the entire quest again, which was like,

up until then, had never occurred to me or happened to me.

I think like that this is that those sorts of things are just baked into having something so complex and ambitious.

But it's absolutely an issue and it's going to ruin some people's experience.

This next one is from Lafenstein.

And Lafenstein writes, BG3 is a masterpiece.

Having never played the TT RPG or video game predecessors, it managed to pull me in after getting accustomed to its mechanics.

The more time I spend playing it, the more I realize there is to uncover.

500 hours and seven playthroughs, I see new content every time.

If Laiselle ever let me break up with her, I could even see new romances one day.

Wow.

What a hero.

That's who I aspire to be.

Yeah, that's

stupid chad shit.

That's incredible.

This next one is from Unagiroll, and they write,

the game has everything you could possibly want.

Horny wizards, horny Githianke warriors, horny tieflings, horny doppelgangers, a horny angel, lots of horny devils, and also a miniature giant space hamster.

We didn't talk about midskid all because it's ask three, act three, but mid sketch.

Another Baldur's Gate, a previous Baldurgate character.

Balder's Gate character.

This next one is from Edoko 18.

One of my favorite games of all time.

Completed it six times, including honor mode, and it still surprises me.

My favorite part is either when you can meet the fish people, the Kuatoa, in the Underdark, or going to the going to the circus in Act 3.

I didn't go to the circus.

Matt, you missed the circus?

I missed the circus.

You might want to circle back to the circus.

I didn't know that the White House was in the game.

Oh, man.

Emma didn't applaud that that time because she fell asleep.

No,

Emma is understandably doing something more important.

Also, Minthara is the best companion, and I'd do anything for her.

10 out of 10 masterpiece.

And then there's an emoji of

a natural 20.

Oh, I love that.

And finally, this next one, this last one is from Kiro Seta.

And they write, I played the game with a group of friends when it first came out in early access two years ago.

We had a blast with it, even though it was buggy as hell.

Then, when it came out in full release, I jumped back on it and played a single player.

I got to the near end of Act 1 and was really enjoying it.

I'd say, as someone who's been playing DD on and off for about 25 years, it is the closest any game has come to ever feeling like actual DD.

It's like someone took Planescape Torment, spent millions of dollars remaking it, and tossed it through a 5e upgrade, 10 out of 10, RPG of the year, hands down.

What a great comment to go out on.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Yard underscore underscore sard on social media.

Our music

is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Also, check out our paywalled show, Get Animated.

Matt, what's this week?

We're watching the finale of Pluto, episode eight of Pluto, just a couple of days after you hear this to the Patreon, patreon.com slash get played.

And then we'll be moving on to the next series, TBD.

We don't know what we're watching yet.

We'll announce that on the upcoming episode of Get Animated, and we'll announce it next week on Get Played.

Available along with our entire pre-head gum back catalog of Get Played episodes only at patreon.com/slash get played.

And Jemmy, if I did have that potion of animals speaking, I would give this to you, the dog asleep in the office, and hear your thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3.

But unfortunately, that does not exist in our reality.

It's only in Fairune.

So, Jemmy, I hate to do this.

You got played.

I'm not okay with that.

Hey, buddy, it's Weiger.

I am here with Matt.

So we are going to talk about the end game of Baldur's Gate 3.

We're about to head into spoiler country.

So if you don't want this spoiled, now is your time

to exit the freeway and resume your life.

And we're going to play.

That's a natural way to say that.

Yeah, get back to your life, why don't you?

We're going to play a few seconds of Bard Dance by Borislav Slavov from the soundtrack.

And after that happens, then we will be full-on in Spoiler Country.

So you've been warned.

All right, yee-haw, we are back here in spoiler country.

Matt, you'll find this out as playing a bard.

But, you know, bard dance is one of the songs that you can play as a troubadour.

If you come across another bard playing a song, you can join in with them and duet playing a song.

This game rules.

It rocks.

That's so good.

It's so good.

There was a, I know we're in Act 3.

I don't want to jump straight to the end game.

Yeah.

But there's a.

I guess it's fine.

Yeah, it's fine.

When you get to the camp at the end game where you're like reuniting with everybody at the end of the epilogue the end the epilogue there's this like different bard there that's like playing a music and you can go up to him and talk to him and my taff was like who the fuck are you what are you even doing here

and he was like oh I was just like famous I'm like a famous guy I'm like a famous musician.

And then, you know, I couldn't pretend to know that.

So I just picked the option that was like, oh, that's good.

Good for you.

That's nice.

Thanks for being here.

Wow.

I mean, it's an honor for you to be here.

So I didn't talk to him the first time through the game.

And this time I was like, I talked to him as another thing.

He's like, oh, I didn't know you could do that.

Yeah.

And I don't know the character.

I mean, I wonder if it's like a little bit of an Easter egg, if this is a character that's like established in DD lore, like a Volo, you know, who's like, oh, this character has some sort of history.

And if you know who they are, you get that little extra thing.

But it's just like one of those things.

It's just like,

you didn't have to be able to talk to the bard at camp who was giving background music for your reunion party.

And they also didn't have to give him a backstory.

No, no, it was such a funny, like, he was so offended that I asked who he was.

And I was like, that's, this, this is just a,

like, to the, till the end of the game.

Yes.

It was just like full of surprises and fun.

So Act 3, you're in the city of Baldur's Gate.

Yes.

Act three is huge.

And, you know, as much as I love the game, I can admit that this, that it feels a little bit bloated at this point.

There's just so much to do.

It is so sprawling.

And I think also the end game is kind of, you know, emblematic of that.

It's just like another thing of like, it just kind of keeps going and going

that final fight.

And it's maybe a little bit overscoped, but still, it's all just like amazing that it's all there.

And so many of the quests in Act Three, I really loved.

I mean, I referenced it up top, but Dribbles the Clown retrieving his body parts is just like, it's so grim, but also the so youth is the thing you missed because you didn't encounter the circus.

I missed that, but I like found body parts throughout the game.

So you're just finding body parts and not knowing that they're part of a clown.

And just like having them in my inventory the entire, like, I just, like, I was very bad about

like discarding things that I thought I didn't need anymore because there was a very real

panic that I had in the end game, which was that I thought for some reason I didn't have

Ketherick's netherstone.

Yeah.

And because I hadn't seen it in so long that I was like, did I like sell this or like toss it or something?

Because, like, I don't know if it's a will the game let you toss it?

I think you need it.

The most recent patch added a thing where quest critical items, if you leave them at your camp and you're in like a certain you know part of the game, you can retrieve them.

I believe that is a thing that's in patch six.

But yes, prior to that, you could get stranded.

And in fact, I had to replay, you know, that first part of the end game.

So you go, you go into the,

you go into what's it called?

It's not the mythic pool i can't remember what it's called yeah but i don't know what you're talking about uh you go into that under that underground area and uh near where aurin's lair is and you progress through that whole thing and it's like an hour of gameplay and you have the the end the encounter with a nether brain uh and then you get transported to

uh inside the astral prism yes and if you're doing my playthrough uh my style of playthrough uh the the way i did it uh which you didn't do because i like i went through all the get the yankee quests and went through all the layzelle quests.

Part of what you do is you go to the hells to retrieve the Orphic Hammer, and then you use the Orphic Hammer to liberate Orpheus.

Yes,

I had forgotten to bring the Orphan, the Orphic Hammer with me, and so I had to reload from before that first part of the encounter.

Yeah, because you can't go back to your camp at that point.

And you couldn't go back to your camp at any of my saves up to that.

So I just had to replay all of it.

Now they've included a thing where you can, I guess, retrieve those items.

I was really morally

confused by that, the quest to get

with the hammer

because you're making a deal with the devil.

And I did do this.

I like talked to him.

First of all, you're meeting at this brothel.

And I'm like, what am I going to do?

Not explore?

See what's going on?

Churess's caress?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, I got to see what's going on.

And

exercised every option that I had until they were like, go be free.

Don't come back here.

And then

I met with

Raphael, right, is his name.

And he's the devil in this, you know, a devil in this game.

And he's giving me, you know, a very devilish option.

You can have this.

You got to get the, I'll give you this hammer.

You go take this, free Orpheus.

But that crown is like mine, basically, is like his thing.

And I'm like, I don't want to help this guy.

He's like helping me a little bit right now.

But no.

And then, but I, what I did was I saved outside of it before I went to go talk to him again so I could reload it in case I didn't like

what happened.

And I said yes.

And my entire party was like, what the fuck are you doing?

We just signed a deal with the devil.

Right.

And I was like, no, I didn't.

And I like reloaded my save because I was like, I'm not going to make anybody mad.

But then it seemed like the quest.

When there's a quest marker there,

that's something to go back to.

Like, that's something something you sort of like not necessarily like implicitly have to do but that one wasn't going away right it kind of wants you to go down to the hells i didn't get i don't think i got down to the hells it sounds like yeah i and and i think you'll probably if you do a subsequent playthrough uh all the way through like that will be a thing you'll want to explore because it is an awesome area and there is it does have like really you know pivotal story importance because yeah i don't know you can't you do have the option of of making the deal with raphael uh in exchange he wants the crown of cars i actually have not investigated what happens if you get to the end game.

You've made that deal and you haven't undone it.

And you just have to hand him the crown, I guess.

Yeah.

But I don't know

what the ramifications are, but I can't imagine it's a positive thing.

Because as it stands, where you

were,

I sort of branched off to start this conversation.

Yeah.

You get to the,

what is it called?

The realm, the

inside the astral prism

in the astral prism.

where Orpheus is locked up.

Can we just talk about how great that reveal is?

What the astral prism actually is?

It's really, really good.

Or the artifact as you know it at first.

Yeah.

Because it's like, I thought this was just going to be a MacGuffin.

This will be like a J.J.

Abrams style mystery box and whatever.

It's just an artifact.

But then you actually learn what it is and you actually learn it's like some men in black shit that

contains a universe within.

It's really cool.

Also, let's talk about, I mean, this is a good time to talk about the Emperor, right?

Because the emperor is also there in this option.

So the emperor, the, you know, at first you encounter the emperor as the dream visitor, who is just like this figure who is coming to you at night while you're sleeping

and is

based off of a design that you create.

I guess the implication being like this is a thing that was the emperor created to appeal to you.

Yes.

And

so then eventually reveals themselves to be a

mind flayer, a mind flayer in disguise, the emperor who has an incredibly interesting story and a bunch of interactions, a bunch of choices you can make.

My first time through the game, I did absolutely

completely with the emperor.

I was like, you know what, this guy, I think maybe what this game is trying to say is that, hey, the mind flayers aren't so bad after all.

And hey, you're turning into a mind flayer.

You know what?

That's maybe okay.

Maybe we've been too quick to judge.

I thought it was maybe making some sort of comment like that, and that the emperor was just a figure of good.

And then obviously as it progresses, you start to get a sense that, oh, wait, no, maybe there's something else going on here.

He is kind of like a neutral evil figure.

I don't know exactly.

I can't claim to know enough about the granularity of different alignments to particularly assign him, but he is a guy who like acts only in his own interests, purely as utilitarian calculus.

And

on my second playthrough, I really felt that because on my second playthrough, I kept pushing back on him.

And for instance, there is a moment where you can fuck the mind flare.

You can fuck the emperor.

I did that on my first playthrough too.

Everyone is disgusted.

Everybody was really mad.

Everybody was really so mad at me every time I would stray from my shadow heart.

You also like smell bad, which is the thing.

There's like a stench that follows you.

So anyway, so the second time I rejected him.

And what's amazing if you reject him, especially having been like romanced by him for the first time and you have this experience and the game tells you it's the greatest experience of your entire life.

Yeah.

Like it's just you were you are at one

in complete psychic unity.

Immediately to sexual encounter.

Yeah, exactly.

I slept with a squid.

That was a, that was my highlight.

I loved it.

My second playthrough when I reject him, he immediately is like, yes, that's good.

You pass the test or whatever.

Like he's just kind of like, or it's just like, yes, it's probably good not to not to mix work and pleasure.

Just completely moves on.

And your character has a moment of like, you're affected by how immediately he shifted.

And it just really hammered home like, oh, this is all pure manipulation.

This guy is doing everything he can to try to just get you to accomplish what he wants to accomplish, which is for him to,

you know, him to eat Orpheus' brain and then to claim the power of the nether brain.

So

I think

throughout the game, I don't know if I made like morally consistent choices.

Yeah.

Because

with, with this, with this, without, with, with me not doing the quest to get the, the Orphic Hammer.

Yes.

I'm confronted with, and I've spent a lot of time with the Emperor.

So like, I'm sort of like, I guess this guy's like my friend.

He told me that he,

he, like, revealed that he wasn't who he said he was.

I guess I can trust him now, right?

And then I did that side quest where there's like the undead dragon answer

and uh

you then learn that the emperor is is balderin

uh the um yes when you find yeah with and this is answer there is the undead dragon yes again this is stuff you can completely ignore this completely misquest because also the way to get into his lair well i had to look it up because i was like i don't know how to get past this fucking wall Yeah, and then you have to use like a thunder spell on two

candlehabras.

and then it's like, there you go, now you can go in.

It's like, how in the, I mean, I guess if I read the

things, like you know, the tomes and things like that, or pay more attention to that, it's the thing, and I think that's maybe part of why my playthrough, even my first playthrough, took like 15 hours more than you.

Is like, I cannot resist reading every single book in its entirety.

And there is a book that has like that that spells out how that works, but then also,

uh, if you in terms of how you sequence it, if you rescue uh Will's father, uh, Duke Ravenguard, right?

That's the name.

You rescue Duke Ravenguard from the submarine.

Man, this game sounds like nonsense if you've not played it.

I came down to the hells to do two things.

I can confirm it sounds like nonsense.

If you rescue him from the submarine, he gives you more context.

And I think he also tells you partly how you're supposed to discover it.

I think with some of those guys, I was like, all right, okay, shut up, dude.

I saved you.

Leave me alone.

But so you get down there, you learn that the Emperor is Baldurin, and he, you know, is the founder of Baldur's Gate.

So I was like, okay, he's like not that bad.

Like, he's maybe like a kind of, but, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely, right?

So like you have to then think about how he has become, he's chosen to become a mind flayer at this point, or, you know, and then he's like strong and he wants, he wants the crown for himself.

So he could be, he could rule over

everything.

And you could either choose to join join him or or not join him or you could do what I did which was

which this is where I was saying this is morally inconsistent yeah

I let him basically kill Orpheus sacrifice Orpheus

horrifying absolutely just insane thing horrifying choice an insane choice an accidentally consistent choice with my choice to ignore the Githyanke completely for sure yeah no you you you had it you the the great liberator of the Githyanke people unjustly imprisoned.

You let a monster eat his brain.

I told Nick that I did this, and he texted me.

You basically gave up Githyanke Nelson Mandela.

And I was like, so I wasn't really looking into it as closely as I should have at that point.

But I let him do that.

So then he's in my party now as

a fifth guy.

And I'm like, okay, well, this is actually really good.

Because now I don't just have four guys, I have five.

So we're going into this, you know, guns blade.

You got a man up.

You're sitting pretty.

And so now, you know, we're doing the thing where we have to get to the,

to get to the crown.

And

that was a bitch and a half.

That was really hard for some reason.

You mean when you're in the city or when you get inside the...

Getting past the city was like nothing, but was hard.

That's basically just like a sprint through it.

You run through the city, you get from point A to point B, you climb the brainstem, and then you are fighting the nether brain.

Yes.

so yes it's that that's the encounter where there's a red dragon in the center um there's a bunch of tentacles that spring up the the dream visitors i do they actually think this is an awesome moment that hits is that all is that dream visitors spawn uh four of them yes and in my case gail goes uh the figure from my dreams yeah it's like oh everyone's had dream visitors this whole time the emperor's been manipulating everyone in the party i just had no i had no idea that this was happening and so those guys i guess they're not really dream visitors they're like uh i guess the in mine it's i don't know if it's explained exactly like that but they are like uh what are they called they're called

are they called thralls or something where they're like basically copies of my party yeah uh and so like if gale was casting a spell and the gale copy was nearby he would counter spell it and i'd be like well this I hate this.

So you got it.

Yeah, that's interesting because I had not explored this version yet.

So you get a different version of it because what's happening with when they turn the dream visitors on you,

it's because you're fighting the emperor.

If you refuse to hand over Orpheus, and instead you liberate him,

and then Orpheus joins your party, and then the Emperor is an enemy in the final encounter.

And instead of those Thralls, it's the Dream Visitor.

Yeah, so because like, so in mine,

he has the three netherstones, and he's going to use that to take down the, or you know, to

take down the crown, to break the barrier on the crown, so then you can open a portal

it sounds crazy like but you so you open a portal and then you can fight the brain and the brain is not hard the once you get to the brain you're basically done it was like it was very very easy to take down their brain uh because everything else up until that point is pretty challenging i had to i died a lot on my way to the crown because i was just like because there's a complete there's like a strategy like you can you can't really go on the path where the brain is because that's where the tentacles come up and that's going to fuck you up.

There's a dragon that's at play, but the dragon sort of, everybody kind of really only attacks who's closest to them.

The dragon will do big area attacks that you can survive if you're careful.

But getting to the crown was hard for me.

But once you've beat the nether brain, I'm really interested in you because you said

the ending I got would like shock me.

or something.

And I was like, save it for it.

Save it.

Tell me later.

I'm going to tell you basically what what happened in

my game.

So I sacrificed Orpheus.

I teamed up with the Emperor, destroyed the mother brain.

And then now, based on who was in my party, based on the finishing these

story, these character quests, this is what happened to everybody.

Carlak went back to Avernus with Will because she was going to explode.

And I gave her the option of like, do what you want to do.

Because she was willing to basically explode and explode in my arms, even though she was not my romance.

We were very, we were very, very close.

I love that.

She was like, she told me that she loved me.

And no, she told me she adored me.

Wow.

And that made me feel like a million bucks.

Yeah.

I loved it.

And then Will is like, we can go to Avernus.

You're not going to be sick there.

We can then, you know, have some more time to figure out what's going on.

Yeah, that happened in my first playthrough, too.

So they left together.

Two of them teamed up, which is cute.

Asterian, looks now all the, oh, oh, because this is what happened.

I skipped a major point.

We defeat the brain,

and you have the option of giving it to the emperor or

you taking it yourself

or destroying it.

The emperor really wanted me to give it to him and I did not like how he was telling me that.

So we did destroy it.

So that was where I think it's really morally inconsistent.

I did so many things to partner with the emperor up until that point.

And then I was like, oh, his vibe is kind of weird with this.

Yeah.

He kind of wants this too much.

I think there's a very moral reading of what you did, which is that you just kind of played his own game, right?

You like, you did the same sort of manipulation and, you know,

pragmatic calculations to achieve your end, which was destroying the crown and freeing the city and destroying the nether brain and getting rid of the mind flare menace.

And you were, you, you partnered up with this guy because it was convenient, not because you were actually allied with him.

Yeah, I do think that was sort of like the driving force throughout the entire game because I was like, oh, well, I get these powers.

Okay.

Oh, he's going to help me.

All right.

Sure.

Whatever.

And then the other of the three options, I felt like siding with the emperor or taking the crown for myself was going to make

my friends really mad.

And I couldn't sit with that.

I was like, that's not right.

That's not what I'm doing in this playthrough.

I really love my friends.

So

because of that.

And everybody's Illithid powers vanishing after the mother brain is destroyed for good.

Astarion, no longer able to be in the sunlight, is now a regular vampire again, runs away.

And you did not ascend him, right?

I did not ascend him.

No.

And I'm not really sure what happened with Jaheira and Minsk.

They seemed fine.

I feel like because Jaheera's main quest is to get Minsk,

she was like, okay, this is fine.

I don't really 100% remember what was going on with them.

Minsk is,

just to touch on him real quick.

And I didn't finish Minsk's quest, I think.

Okay, Minsk is like, was like a fan favorite character,

you know, for the original Baldur's Gates.

And it's, I, I, I, it's, it's such a fun way they thought of how to bring him back because he has a human lifespan and this takes place like, what, 100 years later?

So they're like, well, he gets, he gets petrified and everyone thinks he's a statue and then he comes back to life.

Um, but, you know, he's manipulated into being the stone lord, this figure of the underworld.

His dialogue is so funny.

He's hilarious.

This is the kind of thing of just like, man, this, this game is amazing because it's just like like the level of writing is this

high quality where this guy just has like solid jokes consistently, but it's all coming from his character.

And he has a little hamster that he talks to.

Boo.

Yeah, Boo is really fun.

Well, he's actually like a miniature giant space hamster, to be clear.

And so

they seemed okay.

Gail

Gail went off because

Gail,

his whole thing was

Minstra, Mistra,

Mistra,

like the god that he worshipped was basically like, bring me the crown and we can like, you know, I can fix stuff and like, or, you know, use it to my benefit and things like that.

And he saw through that and was like, I, what if I just take the crown?

And I was like,

I don't, yeah, he, I could not convince him not to do this.

Yeah, by the way, because we got into some like arguments in the late game.

He was like, I think

we should go up there and you should give me the crown.

And I was basically like, I don't, I don't know, man.

That sounds crazy.

Was he also lobbying to use the orb?

Was that another thing he was doing?

He would not, he was like very anti-the orb.

Oh, okay.

For some reason.

So I would pitch the orb and he'd be like, I'm not doing the fucking orb.

I think what happened, did you see where you were in terms of your relationship with him?

He liked me.

He liked you.

He liked me.

Everybody in my party really liked me up until like, I mean, I didn't check check at the end, but basically what happens to Gail is he goes after the broken crown.

He's like, with the netherstone, I can repair it.

And then I can become a god.

So in the epilogue, I see him.

He's fucking silver now.

And he's a god.

He's got glowing eyes.

He's like, yeah, I became a god.

I'm a god of,

ah, he's like the god of like inspiration or something or something like that.

And so he helps people.

He basically like helps people with the things that they care about the most, which is cool, which is not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

But

my TAV dialogue options were like, all right, I'm really, I'm really happy for you.

If that's, if you're happy, I'm happy.

At the reunion, Carlak was like, Can I have a hug?

And they got to hug.

And I was like, this is incredible.

I love this.

Shadowheart, my romance option

in the game, at the end of the game, after Destroying the Mother Brain was like, hey, I have to go serve Lady Shah.

And I was like, you're killing me?

Wait, you, so did you kill the Night Song?

Yeah.

Matt, this is wild.

We not only killed the Night Song, Shar,

look,

Shadowheart, Shadowheart did kill the Night Song.

And she also killed her own parents in front of all of us.

And then Shar made her forget about it.

And we're all just like, we all saw that.

Like, my whole party was like, I guess it's good that she can't remember what she just did.

Cause then you get to this temple or this, this, like, this place where, oh, it's the, it's the house of house of grief.

You go to the house of grief, and the house of grief is a place where your memories are wiped completely.

And this is why she can't remember anything because Shard, not unlike any other of these powerful figures in this game, is just manipulating everybody to serve them

like they're doing.

Which I guess I didn't really realize until I got to this point.

And then you get to the point where

Shadowheart's parents are captured and they're of a different religious sect.

They like, are like, what are you called?

The Saluna.

Yeah, basically the opposite god, the light god.

And so you learn that they're

her parents.

They're her parents.

I think it's the moon god.

Doesn't matter.

And all this dialogue is happening.

All these, all these dialogue options are happening.

Yeah.

And I'm just picking.

I'm staying out of this because I'm like, this definitely feels like something I shouldn't get in the middle of.

But

if I, I guess I was like, I don't know what I can stop here.

This is really crazy because Shara's like, you have to kill them to, you know, to ascend, like to like, to become closer to me.

You have to do that.

And Shadowheart's like, what do you think I should do?

And I was like, I guess just do whatever you think is good.

And she's like, okay.

And then just kills her parents.

Like, it's like nothing, basically.

That's wild.

And yet I still love her with all my heart.

It was like a really crazy thing because then I talked to Carlak and Gail afterwards, and they had dialogue options for like, I guess it's good some things you're not supposed to remember, and hopefully, she never remembers this.

But, like, the in-world logic there is they'll always remember that.

They'll always remember that their friend killed their parents in front of them.

Yeah, imagine seeing that.

Jesus Christ.

And then them just being like,

I don't know what happened here, but I feel really close to my God now.

And so she leaves me at the end and um

comes back uh to the reunion and is now like

basically in charge of like the religion like is like is like the like basically like one of the head people in in in

in the house of shar

and uh

we still got to kiss though uh it's interesting because you know i i was i was trying to do uh goody two shoes playthroughs both times yeah and talked shadow heart out of Killing the Night Song my first playthrough.

The second playthrough, I let her decide.

She throws the spear over the side and into

the abyss

and rejects Shar

and ultimately comes to embrace Saluna by the end game.

And the whole thing there is that what to do with her parents is like...

You still have the unspeakable choice of whether like you let them live or you let them die.

But

what happens in that version is that the parents are asking for death because they've been so tormented and they know that she will always be haunted by the pain that she gets from her wound.

Shar will forever punish her until

she makes the choice to

kill her own parents.

So

it's like a crazy thing.

I mean, the game calls it an unspeakable choice.

But

it is like that, the character basically flips and like her character ultimately is like realizes that she's been brainwashed

based on a lie and that she needs to escape this thing that's entrapped her and uh and so as such you don't uh you you free the night song um you kill balthazar uh who was the guy who had you who tasked you with killing her uh or was was tied into that mission with cetherick thorne yeah and then the night song becomes your ally and can and fights on your side and is at your camp i wish i wish i'd known that because

that is cooler because i also here's the thing i i went through the trouble of killing Balthazar, which was a hard battle.

Yeah.

I was having a lot of trouble with that.

And yeah, and then I just, as soon as that was done, I was like, okay, you come here dead.

Like, just like kill, kill the night song immediately after doing that, like without really even thinking about it.

So here's what happened with my endgame.

The first time through, I got what I think is, I did what, I opted to what I think is meant to be the canon ending because of all the choices you can make

within the astral prism, this is the one that gives you an achievement.

And also the way my second playthrough played out when I made a different choice, I was like, hmm, they're very much,

it feels like the game is pushing you towards this one.

This is the way that, you know, this is whatever

the most moral of all the paths that are available to us, to you.

You reject the alliance with the emperor.

The emperor goes and fights on behalf of the nether brain.

You use the Orphic Hammer to free Orpheus.

It's a very funny scene because if you fucked the Emperor, Orpheus comes out out of this, you know, eons-long imprisonment and looks at you and is like, you fornicated with a mind flare.

And I was talking to a friend of the show past guest, Eva Anderson, who also experienced the same thing.

She was like, it's so funny.

It's the first thing he said.

And then also, he, like, if you think about it, he witnessed this.

Yeah.

Like that you did did it in front of him.

Yeah.

This guy's so

from his perspective, he's just like chained up watching like, you know, a humanoid do the nasty with this fucking squid monster.

Can't even jack up.

That's his issue.

But also if you, if you like,

evolved your lithid parasite or whatever, he's like, you stink of mind flayer.

And then he talks, he basically scolds you and he talks you into,

or he, he, he, he basically says that what you the you didn't do the moral thing you did exactly what the emperor did uh you just prioritized your own survivability if you actually were acting morally you would have surrendered to my honor guard uh they would have freed me they would have killed you and it would have been a noble end So so he tells you all this, but ultimately is like, I will ally with you anyway, because this is my only choice at this point.

How many allies did you have like in the in the end game?

I'm not sure how many you can have.

I feel like I had everybody, but then again, I'm like, I think I haven't looked it up.

I mean, I had, I had, I really had a huge, when they have that Avengers thing of everyone saying they're with me.

Yeah.

It was like 10 minutes.

That's so long.

I had, so yeah, I had like, I had Jaheir and Minsk and the Harpers, right?

I had

Shadow Hearts denizens,

whatever they're called.

the like the Shaharan, whatever people.

The Sharans.

Yeah.

I had them.

I had Mizora.

That, like, she's a drow, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, Mizora is the

devil.

Look similar.

Mizora is Will's devil.

Yes.

So I had her.

I had her.

And

then I had just some like plain guys.

Like some like,

like probably people that I saved like early on.

Right.

You get like some foot soldiers who work for the,

I can't remember the name of the fire faction that's like the flaming.

Flaming fists.

Yeah.

And i was just like okay like and i used all of them basically until they are presumably dead yeah because they

did not make it to the they did not make it to um to see the end of the the game i think mizorah or not uh jaheira and minsk did i didn't see i didn't see mizorah again so and i had volo Yeah, Volo, Volo just kind of gives you a boon.

I mean, if Halson's still around, he'll give you a boon as well.

And then you can get a bunch of them.

I mean, depending on which tieflings you save, some of those can show up.

The gnomes,

they can show up.

You didn't have any of them.

So I had a whole bunch.

But here's the thing.

I feel like that final encounter, it's just the characters you can summon are kind of just cannon fodder.

Yes.

And

whatever,

I'm sure that's by design.

I do wonder if that encounter is going to be rebalanced or rethought at a certain point.

But it's like,

I kind of wish it was more just pure power fantasy.

I kind of wish it was more just like, you know what, all my guys are here.

This is going to turn into dynasty warriors for one encounter.

And we're just going to absolutely wreck house.

We're just going to sprint all the way through the, you know, through the gates of the city and get to the nether brain and clean things up.

But you can, but I also had like the night song was available.

And then do you remember your gear?

This is the guy that you talk, you can potentially talk into killing himself to go overcome that boss encounter.

A few things have to go your way, but in my second playthrough, I taught, I, you know, I, I, I defeated him there.

He returns in the hells as Raphael's ally Wow and then in that encounter you can also talk him into betraying Raphael and fight Raphael on your behalf and then after that

you can follow another yeah exactly

you can persuade him endlessly after that you can do another persuasion thing to get him to fight for you in the final battle and he is a fucking monster that rocks um he's great there's also did you did you follow up with a strange ox do you remember that character i did and i lost track of him at some point so yeah he shows up again in all the acts, and you can keep talking to him.

He ends up being a shapeshifter.

And if you bring him all the way into the city,

then he fights on your side, and he's another guy.

He can just like shapeshift into a Minotaur or spider or whatever.

And just like that.

That would be so funny if he was like, I can only do a cow.

So, so, anyway, to continue what I was saying.

Yes.

So, that happens with Orpheus.

You free Orpheus.

Then he's like, but here's the thing.

The Emperor is right.

We need a mind flayer in order to confront the nether brain.

That's the only person who can wield the nether stones.

So you need to become a mind flayer.

And on my first playthrough, that's what I did.

My character turned into a mind flayer.

And

it's one of those things you don't realize how jarring it is and how attached you are to a player, to your character that you created and that you've played for like 100 hours to just be like, oh, your entire physical form is going to change.

Your abilities are going to change.

You're going to just be a completely different character, and it's presented as a sacrifice, and it is, like you as the player have to sacrifice that, but it is presented as like the most morally just option.

I think the game is pointing you towards that the whole time, like especially with the evolution of your Elithid parasite, with how objectively more powerful your character gets once you do that.

And then also, I just think thematically, so much of this is just like accepting this thing you can't control and following it to its end point and realizing that you are going to be completely different, but you can continue to exist, you know, as this different creature.

But ultimately, someone has to do it.

So that was it in the first party.

By the way, in my post-game, I also romantic Shadowheart.

Shadow Heart and the Mind Flayer were still together, which is crazy to think about.

That's wild.

They were like roaming the wilds together.

In my second playthrough, I just wanted to make a different choice because I was like, all right, I saw this one.

And I thought maybe I was going to have Gail use the orb, but ultimately use my boyfriend.

And I wanted to see what the romance epilogue was although i think there is one even if he does blow up when the orb

imagine that's the one thing that's not in there it's like i don't know uh he he he went he went home i guess so the emperor uh is willing to turn into a mind flare to me that is just like a really

uh you know

to me that's almost a more repulsive option than killing him that he has to like transform into the thing that he hates yeah he has to surrender his physical form after being you know released from prison for the first time um

He has to give up his soul or whatever, and he's willing to do it.

But

Carlak volunteered to become a mind flayer.

Yes.

So I let her do it.

And Carlac is a mind flayer.

And this, Matt, your jaw is a gape.

This is what I knew you're going to be shocked by.

Carlak was a mind flayer in my endgame.

Now, what made me think on the second playthrough that like this is not, you know, that they're directing you towards doing this with the player character is that there would be moments in there where like Orpheus or like the people of Baldur's Gate or, you know, or Lazelle would be like, you're the hero.

You sacrificed for all of us.

And they're talking to Carlak.

And I'm like, oh, this is now the central character in this story, this party member of mine who selflessly was like, well, my heart is going to fail anyway.

I'm going to die.

At least I can go out as a hero.

At the epilogue, Carlak returns as a mind flayer, and it's Carlak's voice actor, but.

talking in kind of a mind flayer way.

Personality has completely transformed.

He's still saying like, hey there, soldier, but it's talking about like snacking on the brains of criminals for sustenance.

And it's, it's just like, it's just a crazy thing.

I honestly felt

very guilty after I did it.

I was like, man, this is, this is, this was a selfish act to force this onto

onto one of the party members.

I, so

I could have had, either had the emperor do it, which is what I did.

Yeah.

I could have become a mind flayer.

Yes.

I also had the Carlak option.

Yeah.

I worked so hard to convince her not to do it.

Yeah.

There's like a couple of dialogue options you go through.

It's like two or three things where she's like, I'm just going to do it.

I'm going to die.

She wants to do it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I was like, no, stop, stop, stop.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Because there was an instance earlier where I texted you guys this when I was finishing up her character quest and she realizes

there's not a cure for this that I can do right now.

And then she kind of accepts her fate.

She goes back to the camp,

sort of like distraught that she's like, you know, ultimately going to succumb to,

you know, her heart exploding.

This is the moment where we kill Gortash.

Yes.

And she, Gortash was like her captor, basically, and just like, you know, and she hates him.

And so she finally gets vengeance and then is kind of like, what?

I don't feel any better.

What was this?

So I've already been, you know,

really attached to Carla at this point.

And then talking to her.

And then hearing her accept

this reality,

I'm getting like choked up.

I got like tears in my eyes.

And I'm like, video games never done this to me.

And then we get to the end there, where she's like, I'll become a mind flayer.

And now I'm like really fighting them back.

I'm like,

no,

you will not do this.

And I did not let her do it.

Yeah.

Because I just like, couldn't, I just couldn't.

It seems like a cool way to do it.

But then you immediately become the second banana in the game that you've been spending.

That's what it feels like.

Something hours in.

And also it feels like, you know, again, it's just like the, to me, it feel,

I don't know.

There's, there's, there's no, there's no, the truth is there is no canon ending.

There is no canon romance.

There is no correct thing to do.

They're just options.

But I did everything right.

But

it feels like you're, they're pushing you toward this.

And it feels to me like the, the most moral of the available,

again, unspeakable choices.

Every, like at some, at a certain point, is to self-sacrifice, is to surrender your own physical form and to accept the annihilation of your own soul

so that everyone else can live.

Earlier in the show,

we were talking about our favorite quests, and two of mine were in Act Three that I didn't get to say.

Yeah.

So I didn't want to spoil it for Heather or the audience, but mostly for Heather.

If you're listening now, sorry.

There's a mission.

They both involve Gortash, actually.

Yeah.

So there's the one where you go, you're down in

the sewers of Baldur's Gate, and you're, this was like,

you know,

you kind of just find stuff sometimes.

So you find this area that has like a submersible, and then you talk to this guy, and he's like, yeah, I'm taking this submersible down to the

Iron Throne.

I think

that's what

the submersible is called or whatever, or the secret base.

They're like, okay, let's go down there.

You get down there, Gortach is like, what the fuck are you doing over here, man?

And I'm like, you take this episode one underwater vessel.

It's like, it's like a really good one.

There's always a bigger fish yeah

and um

by the way i think i'm gonna go see that in theaters when it comes

i'm 100

we'll talk about it later but um

i've seen it in a miss the phantom menace in theaters i saw it in 3d when it came out uh years ago i'll go see it again um but um

uh

you get down there and he's like what are you doing here also he looks like clive from uh Final Fantasy 16.

He does.

He does have Clive vibes.

And

almost down to how he's dressed and everything, too.

But he's getting me mad.

He's like, go back up and we'll just forget all about this.

And I'm like, well, I'm not going to go back up and just forget about all this.

I know the Duke's down here.

I'm going to save the Duke.

And then, so then he's like, okay, I'm going to basically blow up

this underwater ship.

And then you have like eight turns or something in

easy mode or whatever, explorer mode to get, or I think it's, is it eight or five?

Well, in tactician, I think you have five okay so i think it's eight yeah and the first time i attempted this carlac was so far back at turn one i was like she's not gonna make it and then the thing explodes and i was like carlac's fucking dead dude and i can't i had to reload because i was like i need carlak i just need her i can't i can't play this game without her at this point in another playthrough i think i'll let the chips fall or they lie and with things like that because i think that's That's interesting and that sort of makes it like makes it fun.

But at that point, I was not ready to say goodbye to her.

Well, Well, that's what honor mode is for.

I mean, you can always play that, that you get one save and you just live with whatever.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

Because I saved everybody.

Well,

I bring this mission up because saving everybody on that on that sub, including

that one mind flare guy.

Yeah.

And

the Duke, I was like, this is...

Having played some D and D, I was like, this is the type of shit my friends and I would get into in our campaign.

Yeah.

This is the most fun I've had so far.

It rocks.

That section rocks.

That section rocks.

And then the section where you have to blow up the foundry where those big mechanical

soldiers are built.

Yes.

Also, a fucking banger.

And you get the

Iron Hand gnomes, right?

They rebel and they're on your side.

You have to keep them alive.

I don't know if there's an achievement for keeping them alive, but because I almost kept all of them alive.

Yeah.

And then on

one turn, I just had, you know, two of the

Steel Watch left.

And one of them like leapt away from melee with my Marshall characters and went over and just like, just hammered like a,

just, just fucking pole-axed one of the gnomes and killed him.

And I was like, oh, well, there's that.

It is funny to think that I saved all of them in the sub, and then they did all die in the factory.

Like, it's like, this was not.

So you saved their family, because their families are on their subs.

Yeah.

And it is cool.

Like, I almost almost saved everyone on the on tactician.

I almost saved everyone on the sub too, except for one gnome.

And what it was, I told you this, Matt.

Two of them were in front of the ladder on the last turn.

Yes.

And I had game planned this out, and I had, you know, Will and my party and Gale and my party, they both had the Dimension Door spell, which lets you teleport yourself in one adjacent character.

So some of those gnomes, you know,

I could go to the distant cells and transport them closer to the escape hatch.

Two of them were in front of the ladder.

One of them, I guess, goes first, and maybe their escape route is blocked by the other gnome's positioning.

I don't know exactly what the pathing issue is, but they look at the ladder, they turn away from the ladder, look back at the ladder, turn the other direction, and then just run in the opposite direction to the ladder.

He's like, I forgot my phone.

He's like, are you fucking kidding me?

You both could have escaped.

And the other one goes up the ladder.

And then, so I had all but one gnome on tactician, which was a bummer.

I think, yeah, I left behind like two randos um but i got like the two like i got basically the people that were like come save my family at the factory and then the family died and then uh the two like named characters yeah um

and i loved i loved that mission and i loved i loved what the reason i loved the blowing up the factory was you get a really cool um cinematic of everybody running out of the factory as it's exploding.

And I was just like, this is like the movie.

I I was like, this is, this is, I love this.

Did you have the big bomb, or did you have a different way of destroying the factory?

I had to work with like a blind

okay, so you were to bring that guy down.

So like if you,

and I can't, I wish I could remember the name of the other gnome faction,

the Underdark gnomes that you, that you run into, but like

if you keep Wolbrin, Bongle, and

Barkus Root alive, they give you a bomb that can detonate it.

So you can skip the thing of bringing

that guy down with you, the guy who's been blinded.

I wish I had that because, yeah, he was a bit of a hindrance, this guy.

Yeah, I had to really keep him alive.

I think they've been buffed in the most recent update.

Just to talk one more thing about

the epilogue, just to return to that real quick.

That was a thing that was added in the update.

And if you think about completing this game without having the epilogue, without having that little bit of, you know,

space to sort of breathe and just sort of like

decompress from this,

you know, 100-hour thing that you just committed to, it would have felt very abrupt.

And so

I love that they added the epilogue.

It's just such a great, you know, come down after this, after this journey.

As far as a third act quest for me, one thing I'll touch on, did you talk to Biscotti the dog?

No.

I talked, I used talk to animals on like every single cat I could find.

And there was like a cat that I think had some more things going on, but I couldn't keep up with.

Did you talk to the

noir cat?

No.

There's a cat who's just sort of like a hero

enters the city.

He meets his companion, you know?

I did talk to him and then

failed like a role or something.

Like there was like, there was like something that I failed.

There's a part like there's only one question.

Are they up to the task?

And then I think if you say

yes, he's like, he failed the first test.

He was too trusting, you know, or whatever.

Yeah, I think that's what it is.

It's really fun.

It's a nifty piece of writing.

I talked to Scratch, too.

I didn't realize.

Scratch is great.

I love Scratch.

It's like a companion dog that you have at your camp, and he'll bring you

little things that he finds.

And I spoke with him, and I really enjoyed

his voice work as well.

They do a great job of characterizing animals in the writing.

Biscotti is a fancy little dog who is owned by one of the refugees.

And if you talk to him,

he's like is he gonna say it are you gonna say it oh please please say it and then if you're like who's a good boy he's like oh yes you said like he's like so happy it's really really funny uh anyway as far as quests go

This was a big change versus my first playthrough.

There is a Gethankey egg in the crest that you can steal.

The first time I was like, this is going to displease Layzelle.

I don't want to do this.

And this feels like this is going to have consequences for this faction I'm possibly going to ally with.

The second time through, I was like, I'm going to steal this fucking egg because I didn't do it the first time.

Let's see what happens.

You steal the egg, you give it to someone who's affiliated with a Society of Brilliance.

That's who Ameluem works with, the Mind Flayer and the Hobgoblin.

So, if you don't do that, you can get to the Society of Brilliance, and it's this like mensa-like institution of geniuses that can help you and can tie into some of the quests in Act III.

If you give them the egg,

when you get to Act III and you go to the Society of Brilliance, everyone is dead.

The egg hatched, a Gethyanke emerged and killed everybody is ultimately what happened.

Wow.

And so

it's just a thing.

I was just like, I was just like stunned.

I just walked in and I was like, oh my God, it's just a fountain of blood in here.

There's just corpses lying all over the place.

And this guy who was very alive in my previous playthrough, I now have to use Talk to the Dead on him to hear what happened.

I didn't steal the egg and I killed that lady who asked me to do it.

I mean, I think that's that's fine too, you know?

She was like mad at me.

And I was like, I'm just not stealing because I don't even know you.

Anyway, that was awesome.

The other one was, yeah, I do really like retrieving Dribbles, the Clown's Corpse.

I think it's fun.

But the Hag Survivors, like that's another one where I didn't follow up with the Hag on my first playthrough.

In the second playthrough, there's so much you can do with Hag.

Did you do this in Act 3?

I like lost track of the hag at some point.

It's easy to miss.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So basically what you can find is there's a group of people who have all been cursed by hags and they're trying to fight against hags, but they themselves have like kind of now gone into exile because the consequences are so dire.

Mayrina, who is the woman who was entrapped by the hag in Act 1 for her, like

she was pregnant.

The reason she was being force-fed is because she was pregnant and the hag is going to steal her baby to turn into another hag.

So you find her.

She's been polymorphed into a sheep.

You have to de-sheep her.

And then once you do, you find out that the hag is still in the city, you go track down the hag, and then you fight with the hag again.

Uh, and it has this whole like you know, resolution to it.

But it's one of those things where it's like, I can't believe how much of the game this thing is spanning that feels like a one-off quest that you're just doing and uh with this transformed anti-ethel in the first part.

It's really, it's really cool.

I loved like the detective stuff that you had to do, like, yeah, that's fun too in act three, like solving this, like, who's doing this murder?

And then you, you know, of course, Oren.

Yeah,

the queen of murder.

Oren rocks.

Oren's such a fun.

I didn't love Kethrick

because

I thought J.K.

Simmons was bad.

Like, I...

How dare you?

I always think he's good, but I thought his voice in it was not great.

Like, I was just like, like, I, I don't know.

Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it kind of to me sounded like he didn't know what he was saying.

I think it's, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's maybe not the most locked in he's ever been.

But I always love him.

I always think he's great.

I think it's funny and cool that he's buff.

I think it's great.

But I liked, and I liked Gortash because I liked his missions the most, but I loved Oren because she was just, she was

the most Heather and Campbell character in the one of the more Heather and Campbell characters in the game.

Yeah, I was like, who's the most Heather character?

Is it Oren?

Is it Shovel, who we talked about?

Yeah.

Who is the summonable character who just yells profanities?

Or is it the hag?

Is it the hag?

Or is it the option that I think?

Did you meet the,

I don't remember what her name is, but she's this like scary big lady that like eats gold and she's like, give me your gold.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's one of the thorns that's in the

cursed lands.

Yeah, I think the cursed lands.

I think they're a pretty strong contender for a Heather character.

I have two more things that I'm going to say.

And then

if you have any other thoughts, but we should wrap this up.

We've gone way too long.

But

the one thing I wanted to say, and just to hammer home, how well the Emperor is characterized.

So much of the game is you manipulating other people through conversation.

Persuasion checks are so common.

Deception checks are so common, like intimidation checks.

These are things that are happening throughout.

That's so much of what the game is.

The Emperor is doing that to you the entire time, and that they are able to manipulate not a fictional character in the game, but you, the player, into doing what the emperor wants.

I don't know.

It's just, it's just like a really cool reversal and like

a bit of a

bit of a mindfuck when you think about what the game is doing to you.

But I think that's really effective.

The other thing I want to talk about is Withers, which

we were texting about this, but

Withers seems pretty clearly to be

Jurgle, the god of death, who is, or the Lord of the End of Everything is his proper title, but like a more powerful death god than any of the ones that are being, you know, facilitated by the chosen three.

Yes.

And it's really interesting to think of his role, especially that portion of the epilogue when he's looking at the painting of the three defeated

gods,

Baal, Bane, and Merkel, and effectively scolding them.

Merkel's all, did I do that?

I wish I had ever heard that.

The

like

just thinking in terms of like, oh, everything he was doing behind the scenes in terms of helping you and facilitating you, just so that you could help, that you could,

it's another figure who is like, who is omnipresent, who is, who is changing the courses of events, who is directing you towards doing what

facilitates their aims.

So it's, I don't know, I like that that revelation as well.

And that seems very strongly supported by a bunch of text in the game and also like, you know, some data mined assets or what have you.

I would love,

and I don't know how possible this would be, because it seems like I'm about to ask for perhaps the thickest book alive.

Yeah.

I would like a lore book of specifically Baldur's Gate 3.

Like this, like, I, you know, I could probably just read, like we were talking about this, we could probably just read like,

uh,

you know, one of the D ⁇ D books or whatever, like the, you know, the character manual, like to get context for some of the characters or, you know, but not all the characters are in the thing.

Yeah.

But

I would just like to know more information.

And maybe on my second playthrough, I'll just read the

little pieces of paper.

Most of my inventory is books and paper, by the way.

I'm just like picking up everything that I see and it's being like, I guess I'll read this later.

But I can't, yeah, I can't wait to start another one, start another playthrough.

I feel like even though we've gone long, there's still a million things we haven't even talked about.

That's the main issue.

I was like, oh, I'm going to talk about Oren a bunch.

It's like, we're just completely out of it.

Yeah, here.

How about this?

Oren's cool.

We like Oren.

Did you kill the Murder Council or did you kill the Hall of Fame?

I did both

I accidentally I accidentally killed the that little like elephant guy

who I loved yeah

I think I must have I think I selected the wrong like thing or something like not like oops I clicked the wrong thing I maybe clicked one that I thought was gonna give me a different result I was like I guess he's dead but then I was like I don't like that they made me do that

so I'm gonna kill these guys and killed all them.

So when I went to, you know, the

hall of or the

different murder organization.

Yeah, one of two murder factions.

I just like got to like walk on through basically because they're like, oh, he killed the

three.

I do.

That's what I was going to say is I do really like when they're just like, what, like, what is your proof?

And you can hand over the bag of hands that you get or whatever

from the dwarf who's killing people, but you can also just say, like, I killed the murder council.

And they're like, unorthodox, but yeah, welcome in.

But, oh, and so something else too about Withers that was great was that we were texting a little bit about how there's so many things I, you know, wish I could have done differently or like things I could have seen in this first playthrough that I didn't get to see or really experience or follow through all the way to the end.

And I think this is a good way to wrap up the conversation because Withers is basically like, hey, man.

You're not going to see everything.

And don't don't worry about the things you didn't see.

Like celebrate the things that you did do.

It's a dialogue.

It's so great.

It was perfect.

I was like, it made me so happy and immediately alleviated all the stress I had about finishing the game.

I was like, you know what, Withers?

Thank you.

Thank you, Withers.

And yeah, just

what an incredible experience.

And,

you know, I know that we just did an episode about it, but I'm sure we'll...

continue to talk about it for the rest of our lives on the podcast.

But what a, what a, what an episode and what a, what a, what a a game!

Yeah, what an episode.

The episode's good.

I'm gonna call it now that the episode's good.

What a, what a big boy.

What a big boy, yeah.

Yeah, this is a huge, uh, this is a huge episode for a huge game.

Yeah,

um, anyway, uh, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode of Get Played for our We Play, You Play of Baldur's Gate 3.

Um, and yeah,

I just hope we did this game justice.

People are gonna be mad.

We definitely did not do this game justice.

Hey, buddy, it's Weiger.

Okay, I know this is getting ridiculous, but I asked for something specific on our Discord, which was reactions to the ending.

And I wanted to read a few of these because some people had some good thoughts.

Also, I meant to earlier in the episode shout out one of my favorite random NPCs in any game, who is the Dragonborn, who wanders around the lower city, loudly complaining that they took the puzzle section out of the newspaper.

Love that character.

Oh, and I meant to say that Sarah Vock from the Murder Tribunal is the antagonist of Baldur's Gate 2 and kind of goes down like a chump in this fight, but you know, no big deal.

Anyway, here are some of these.

I guess we'll call it

some bonus DLC for the Ryu crew.

Okay, first up, this is from P.

Fafulis, Luigi Luigi Main.

Thought all of it was amazing.

I freed Orpheus, turned on the Emperor, became a Lithid myself.

After the battle, I broke up with Bazel so she could go save the Gith.

Karlac exploded and I committed suicide.

10 out of 10 am playing again.

I had saved almost everybody, so I had a lot of choices for support, which was also nice.

Really satisfying ending.

It actually mattered what I had done.

Everything paid off well.

Hugizu writes, I finished the game a couple of weeks ago.

I love the ending I got.

I became an Elithid.

I freed Orpheus earlier.

He was going to become an Elithid, but I told him I would do it so he wouldn't have to, and was able to save almost everyone except for Carlak.

Somehow I had screwed up or just totally missed some part of her quest line, so after we defeated the Elder Brain, she went up in flames as I held her.

I was sobbing my brains out and was a total mess for a solid hour after the credits rolled.

I knew there was some kind of post-credits scene, but at the time my eyes were too tear-filled for me to even see what was happening.

Wow.

That's rough.

I'm hope you're hanging in there at this point.

Traumatic.

Katie writes, I've heard that could happen with Carlak, and yeah,

thankfully, I avoided it in both my endings.

Katie, I've seen a few different endings, and overall, I like how there is no perfect ending.

You cannot save everyone, and I feel like it plays into the themes of the game where even the good choice comes with baggage.

For example, it feels like Shadowheart doesn't really get a good ending.

Astarian's best ending is he's still a vampire spawn and loses all his tadpole immunity to the sun.

I love how many different ways things can play out, and it's a big reason why I played through the game two times, have multiple tabs, and just generally can't get enough of this masterpiece.

Well said.

Finally, Beatnik Bedlam writes,

I romanced Karlac and went with her and Will to Avernus after killing the Netherbrain.

I was very thorough about making sure everything went right on my playthrough, and I felt like I was really rewarded in the end game with allies showing back up, etc.

The epilogue was extremely satisfying.

It felt like the exact right amount of downtime to cap things off, and I didn't feel like there were any big lingering threads that I wanted to get solved.

But I can't imagine playing a version of the game without it, especially if you chose to not have Astarian ascend because he just fucking catches on fire and runs away.

Gameplay-wise, it was fine.

They weren't my favorite fights in the game, but they were pretty cool, and it was very funny to just use my monk's step-of-the-wind dash to completely bypass that gauntlet where the Nautiloid shoots at you right before the final fight.

This was in the House of Hope, but it's basically the same trick.

And they link to a video of that.

And yeah, it's it that that does seem it basically I mean, it's in the game, but it basically seems like an exploit, how much ground you can traverse with this monk ability.

I haven't played as a monk.

Maybe I'll try that.

Anyway,

thank you, everyone, for writing in.

Thank you to Emma for guest engineering the super long episode.

And also, special thanks to Rochelle, who is editing this episode.

I think on vacation.

Oof, sorry, Rochelle.

Oh, I also meant to mention that I earlier in the episode said that there were three Paladin subclasses, but of course, there are in fact four

if you count Oathbreaker.

So you can't yell at me because I already corrected myself.

And if you've already yelled at me without hearing this correction first,

you got played.

Thank you.

That was a hit gun podcast.