Baldur’s Gate 3‘s New Epilogue Is a Wonderful Goodbye, But Not the End

When Baldur ’s Gate 3 released this summer , its end was one of the rarified moments where praise for Larian ’s take onthe humanity of Dungeons & Dragonswasn’t united in effusive lauding . Abrupt , a little messy , and lack in shutdown to characters thespian had just spenthundreds of hourswith , it was both interesting and full of friction in adequate mensuration . Should we ever jazz everything about a history ’s end ? What should be left to imaginativeness ?

While fans have spend three month think about that storey themselves — what the lives of their “ Tav ” ( the default option name for acustom player character ) , their lovers , their friends , and even their foe were like after the credits rolled — this workweek Larian decided to tender something a little more definitive . The surprise headline news of this week’sfifth major patchfor BG3 was a brand new playable epilogue , with K of lines of newfangled dialog , new fundamental interaction , and more all tailored to weave together hour of player decision - making into a kinder , warmer , more bathetic stopping point to the game . The Modern epilog — which can take about an minute , at most , to figure out through — does exactly that , offering a riveting hazard for Larian to revisit Baldur ’s Gate 3 ’s immediatelyiconic and loveable charactersthrough the lens of histrion reaction after launching , after those all those month of fan art and stories and interaction with the actor behind them . It is filled with joy and love , and the stab of regret that you are really enjoin goodbye to its story and its characters for one final time .

But it is also in many way something that feel like a celebration ofplaying D&D itself , and a hope : just as friend groups come to the table to adventure together , and then float back asunder in the Leslie Townes Hope that some day in the future they will gather as one and speculation forward , this is not the metre to say goodbye to Baldur ’s Gate 3 constantly . There could always be something more , should prison term and luck align ( and , in a wonderfully jokey nod to the herculean task of getting a group of grownup to class their own schedules out to play D&D regularly , a synchronising of unnumbered personal calendars ) that land us back to this particularimagining of Faerûn .

Screenshot: James Whitbrook/io9, Larian Studios

Although you embark on playing it immediately after credits first roll on a playthrough of Baldur ’s Gate 3 , the epilogue is set six months after the conclusion of the master story , and more specifically after player select the end way of life that pick up them ruin the sinister Netherbrain , freeing their friends , and the Sword Coast , from the tadpole - wriggling grip of the Mindflayers and their reborn Illithid Empire . Picking up your character and their loved one via an invite from Withers — the ancient mystifying undead entity that , it turn out in BG3 ’s original last , was an agent of the immortal working against the machinations of the Dead Three , Myrkul , Bane , and Bhaal — the epilog need situation at the very first camping ground your party arrive together in during the upshot of the plot , the sentimental phase to host a reunion banquet for masses who , for the most part , all fit their separate ways after keep get to the day .

Depending on the many , many , many option you made over the course of your game , where those characters all come from , or even who ’s alive to return in the first place , will be unlike . I played the epilogue onmy very first “ Tav,”Lhukesh the Dragornborn Paladin , so I got to learn that , even as the original game saw them shortly part way with their devotee , the Elven Druid / Notable Bear Halsin , they had in fact reunited in short thereafter , withdraw from the desperate life , and build a family life for themselves looking after refugee and orphans displaced by the Mindflayer crisis . I fetch to see the forking of a lot of the choices I ’d made with Baldur ’s Gate 3 ’s party tucket , for the most part .

A japing jabbing with Jaheira , the perpetual grandmother of the cast here , a earnest thanks there from the like ofAstarion , Shadowheart , and Lae’zel , for the impact Lhukesh had on improve their lifespan for the better and widening their worldviews from their brusque , selfish origins . Some of it was bittersweet — Gale the Wizard , for the exercise , apparently perished forever after I run out to convert him of the hubris of playing with the ancient thaumaturgy that had been used by the Dead Three to verify the Netherbrain for their own closing , leaving behind a witching holograph of himself to say a final good day and apologia . Some of it even felt like it bordered on undoing what could ’ve been perceived as a tragic ending from the original game — like Karlach and Wyll joyfully telling me that , after months of combat in the hellish planes of Avernus , they had see a way to get Karlach ’s goddamned railway locomotive , a plan in idea to unmake the dire destiny that nearly kill her by Baldur ’s Gate 3 ’s original orgasm .

Screenshot: James Whitbrook/io9, Larian Studios

Screenshot: James Whitbrook/io9, Larian Studios

One the one hand , the soupiness feels realise . The epilogue might be playable immediately after the main game reason , but for a destiny of players this is going back after months away from Baldur ’s Gate 3 in one frame or another . And while Larian ’s post - launch support of the game , through new content , quality of lifespan updates , and bug fixes has largely been exemplary , this epilog feel like the developer saying , for the most part ( outside of underlying hemipterous insect mend ) , it ’s done add together new things to the game : Baldur ’s Gate 3 is as Baldur ’s Gate 3 is in this moment . It was overnice , nifty even , but it ’s clip to beak ourselves up and bid it farewell . That vibration is suffused throughout the epilogue , as characters , almost hesitant to a rustling , attempt to recognize that this might be the last metre they ’re all together . As you cheat around the celebration every fictional character is burden with this unspoken tension : let ’s tell each other how much we intend to each other , permit ’s hug our friends , lease ’s kiss our loved one , let ’s promise to always be there for each other even when we ’re aside , just in display case this is it .

But it does n’t have to be . Of course , metatextually , a player can revisit Baldur ’s Gate 3 whenever they want , replay onetime save , start new tally throughs , create new characters and try on unexampled classes . It ’s a video game , it ’s not move to poof into the ether the second you ’re done acting . But the epilogue also acknowledge this within the school text itself . When you ’re done catching up with your party , speaking to Withers to impart the epilog to its finale sees the undead gather you all around the mesa to raise a glass in solemnization of each other — that you all came together to beat impossible betting odds and defy the machination of the graven image themselves . Crucially , however , Withers is much less classic about this being the End as many of your friends were in conversation . As a being keenly aware of the thread of fate , and the wheel of circumstances ever turning , Withers plainly tell apart you that this night might conduct to more — not just succeeding reunions , but future threats to trade with , new adventures to be hand that brings the late mountain of heroes of Baldur ’s Gate together once more .

Many players have taken this as a tacit acknowledgement from Larian that , obstinate to prior statement , it ’s not as done with Baldur ’s Gate 3 as it first said it was after launching . This flirt , it ’s believed , could number in the form of expansive DLC , or perhaps even a Baldur ’s Gate 4 down the line of merchandise . Neither would be surprising , given the overwhelmingly positive reception Baldur ’s Gate 3 has enjoyed . But as much as it does experience like a touch at more to amount from this world for them , it also just feels like the ceaseless hope of TTRPGs themselves , D&D or otherwise . TTRPGs are all about the story and characters you weave on the table , yes , but they ’re also intrinsically about the musician behind those risky venture . Their connection to each other , the experience of coming together to make something unique and meaningful , and then drifting apart . They might not get the luck to do it often as real life and commitments interrupt , they might not get to do it again at all . They might get to do it on a regular basis for years and years to come . But the potential for a return and more is always there , and always so captivating , no matter if it ’s finally the eventual outcome . The tale can go on evermore , grow and evolve and take newfangled forms , or make new ones entirely , but the connections made along the room can always be reforged no matter how much distance or sentence comes between them .

It ’s a meet view to close Baldur ’s Gate 3 on , and a 2023 that has seen Dungeons & Dragons itself brave out a dizzyingarray of high school and lows . A farewell and a farewell - for - now in equal mensuration , it ’s also a celebration of that promise of playing TTRPGs in the first place : bringing people together in , as you raise a chalice to as Baldur ’s Gate 3 fades to black one last time , wellness , wealth , love , and above all , trouble deserving solving .

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Screenshot: James Whitbrook/io9, Larian Studios