Baldur’s Gate 3’s realm of naked men, an offscreen glitch that’s baffled and amused players, actually serves a pretty important function. The realm of naked men often only appears in modded games or during a particular glitch where the game teleports your party to the middle of nowhere, a segment of the Astral Plane inhabited by a crowd of nude male character models and the Dragonborn Dark Urge, lurking just out of sight and watching you.
Some players reported it turned up in multiplayer mode as well, even without mods.
The glitch, unsurprisingly, became a feature for the thirsty BG3 community, and then Twitter user amirdrassil discovered the clothesless crowd is actually just offscreen while you make your character.
You can see it for yourself on Twitter, though be warned that the images aren’t censored.
“The council judging your character creation in silence,” one commenter said, and considering all eight of them and the Dark Urge are staring unflinchingly at your Tav while you form them, it’s a reasonable assumption to make.
It turns out that idea is only a little off the mark, too. Developer Larian Studios told GamesRadar that the realm of naked men exists to help you bring your character to life and pick your ideal Baldur’s Gate 3 class.
“Primarily, they are used as VO dummies,” a Larian rep said. “When you select your voice in the character creator, it needs to be assigned to a physical dummy character in order to play. So, one of these random naked dudes will pipe up from the shadows, playing samples of your chosen voice.”
“The other use is to have a physical avatar assigned to the player in the background, while the player creates their own Tav. A cruel fate, indeed. Thanks, Naked Men!”
In other, clothed news, Larian recently gave some insight into the weirdest and least popular BG3 class combos players are experimenting with and recommended one that most people haven’t even thought of yet.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF