Baldur's Gate 3 is just as fantastically intricate as the role-playing game it's based on, Dungeons & Dragons 5E, and that means it's paved with so many bisecting and diverging narrative pathways. Some of these pathways are, as decisive players say, its "good endings" and "bad endings," immovable plugs tacked onto a game otherwise riddled with choice and possibility.
But, in line with the RPG's uniquely complex story options, developer Larian Studios' Patch 5 recently expanded its endings with a new Baldur's Gate 3 epilogue. Its endings are now no longer easily summarized. But don't get your hopes up - aside from its impressive dialogue, BG3's "bad ending" for Dark Urge players has only gotten worse.
Detailed spoilers for BG3's conclusion follow. Scroll past the Dragonborn at your own risk.
BG3 has a ton of bad endings - the RPG offers 17,000 or so finales in total, and they can't all be winners. For example, take the "bad" ending for bloodsucker Astarion, players' favorite white-haired rogue, in which he turns you into his vampire spawn property. According to senior narrative designer Baudelaire Welch's Discord comments, this ending is "very much admitting that you failed to think of [Astarion] beyond a sex object." Tough lesson, bad ending.
Then there's the bad ending involving the Netherbrain final boss, who, if you play your cards exceptionally wrong, turns you into a completely useless Mindflayer. This one's bad and annoying. But BG3 players particularly loathe one conclusion for Dark Urge characters, or characters with bloodlust.
A Dark Urge playthrough is hard enough to navigate on its own, especially since the game offers countless opportunities to indulge the enticing, but sick impulses that dog your character. So the bad Dark Urge ending, in which you choose to embrace the God of Murder Bhaal and be forever burdened by death, is kind of depressing. The epilogue makes it even more so. In it, your character, their clothes completely saturated with blood, is shown wide-eyed and twitching, surveying their old party members with a blade in their hand.
I’ve been SO looking forward to you all discovering the Baldur’s Gate 3 epilogues… and this one was my particular favourite to record. 😈Hats off to the @larianstudios writers for giving me such juicy words to sink my teeth into throughout BG3 💜🚨 WARNING: DURGE SPOILERS 🚨 https://t.co/bae0FYtWFxDecember 1, 2023
"What is this place?" the Narrator, voiced by Divinity Original Sin 2 actress Amelia Tyler grumbles. "It was something once. Bonds, warmth, strength, fear…love…" An action prompt pops up with enticing options: pick at your scabs, lick your dagger blade, or piss yourself. Then the epilogue ends with the Narrator's instructions - "Kill them all, mad Baahl-bairn," she hisses, "Kill them all." Just like that, the hours you plugged into BG3's main campaign are undone. It's awful. But, at least, Amelia Tyler loves it.
"I’ve been SO looking forward to you all discovering the Baldur’s Gate 3 epilogues, " she wrote on Twitter, "and this one was my particular favorite to record. Hats off to the Larian Studios writers for giving me such juicy words to sink my teeth into throughout BG3." At least one of us is happy.
There's more to the story. Check out the ways in which the Baldur's Gate 3 epilogue has "some of the most complex writing in the game."
