Baldur’s Gate 3 Honor Mode: Week 1
This is what happens when a couple takes on Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3.
WARNING SPOILERS ABOUND.
This will be our third (ish) playthrough. In our second, we made it to the Lower City in Act 3 and overwhelmed with quest locations, I panicked and suggested we start over and play Honor Mode together (my solo honor mode character, Pilbo Baggins, will just have to wait his turn).
My beautiful, amazing, very pregnant wife agreed and decided to stick to her bread and butter and play a rogue (Aster), while I went with a light cleric (Varis). What is D&D if you can’t throw a fireball? It wasn’t necessarily our intent, but our selected character’s voices sounded like steely-eyed veterans. I like to imagine it isn’t their first playthrough either. The fantastic has become mundane, and the quips like “I shouldn’t have wished to live in more interesting times” cut deeper as we get in our 30 minutes of play per evening between toddler bedtime and preparations for the new baby. These characters just want to eat some apples, potatoes, and fish heads and go to bed. Honestly, same.
Because my wife and I are cute, our characters are hopelessly in love. We are holding out hope that eventually, Larian Studios might be able to patch in a good make-out scene or something between custom characters, but I am not holding my breath - though, a good second is the incredibly sweet custom character art our good friend Cat Rocketship did for us for Christmas of our first playthrough characters, Ori and Dorian. I understand why (I am sure it is due to safety issues as this is an online game) but maybe they will toss us middle-aged married nerds a bone. Currently, the Helldivers in Helldivers 2 can show more intimacy by hugging while our roleplaying avatars BG3 show love by merely sitting next to each other on a log. Not holding hands.
Helldivers (not Aster and Varis) Hugging (from IGN)
Part of the conversation is exactly how much we will cheese the game. How meta will our builds be? How often will we change classes to deal with a particular threat? How do we stretch each gold piece and magic item? We still haven’t decided on this, but I am leaning toward “a bunch”, even if my wife isn’t.
Starting the game: This time is different?
The intro movie happens. The plot is set in motion. We are abducted by mind flayers who put tadpoles in our brains. In 3 days we are going to be soulless monsters. Then gith flying red dragons attack the mind flayer ship we are on, forcing us to make an emergency jump into the hells. We are freed and everything is on fire. This is classic D&D.
Everything started great as we worked our way through the Nautilus. It was all standard, really. Make friends with Us, pick up Lae’zel, pop Shadowheart out of her pod, and head for the bridge to finish the section. In an extra flourish, we even managed to snag the devil’s Everburn Blade for the first time as we dashed to the console to warp us out of the hells. A cutscene later our ship crashes and we are on a beach alive, surrounded by wreckage, and somehow still at full hit points.
The subsequent clean-out of the Nautilus crash was uneventful. Even the extra deadly fight with three Intellect Devourers was easily steamrolled. I get that this is our third play-through, but wasn’t this supposed to be hard?
We picked up Asterion along the way. My wife decided that he would make a good Bard, which honestly, sounds like his true calling. The violin is his vibe, and now we hear melodious strings each time he acts. It’s the little things.
Working our way out of the crash site, we truly discovered the consequences of our actions for the first time.
Rest in Portal
One of the first magical-portal-waypoints you find is unstable, and if you approach you find a hand sticking out of it. A quick little tug and out pops the most learned man in all the Sword Coast: Gale. This is how you meet your party’s wizard. Gale, of course, has his problems. As he spent his magical youth fucking around, and now he’s founding out. Currently, he has a mighty need to consume magical items to keep the giant magical bomb in his chest at bay. In our first playthrough, we looked up where to find Gale because we had avoided this weird portal through a good portion of Act 1.
I want to note my first character, Dorian, died during the final battle of the game, was revived and then almost died again. The experience left emotional scars. Gale, with his attached nuclear bomb, was the solution to the fear instilled in me about just how hard that final battle would be in Honor Mode. With a press of a button, he could end it all before it began. He dies, of course. But that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Besides who wants to play through the game and then fail at the final ending? Not me. Thus I had resigned myself that Gale was going to be politely goaded into blowing himself up for the good of the Sword Coast. He’s a good man, Gale.
And then, Aster, Rogue extraordinaire, failed the first DC 7 Strength check (with a +1 Strength and a +1d4 from Guidance) when she tried to pull him out. Not to worry, the game gives you an oopsie: just try again. A second harder (but still manageable) DC 12 check. Fine. Whatever. Just a toss of the dice and we will be on our way.
We rolled a failure. A statistical anomaly. With both throws, we had a 95.3% chance of success in recruiting our wizard. But it was not to be. Gale’s poor little hand disappears into the portal before anyone can intervene with a sad, “I’ll perish in here!”. After a quick Google, we learn that Gale will never be seen again (at least not in this playthrough).
Our new box art
This gave us pause. Within the first 30 minutes of the game, we killed someone whose face is prominently featured on the box art. It hits differently. There is no going back.
This also ruins my exceptional plan of killing Gale to avoid the final battle. Back to the drawing board.
Current Party Status: Level 2
Current Members:
Varis: Light Cleric
Aster: Rogue
Asterion: Rogue/Bard
Lae’zel: Fighter
Shadowheart: Trickster Cleric
