D&D: ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Achievement Teases A New Mode That’s An Old Larian Favorite
A mysterious new achievement included in the most recent update to Baldur’s Gate 3 may herald the return of an old Divinity standby.
Baldur’s Gate 3 got a massive new update over the weekend. Pulling together more than 1000 fixes and tweaks, the new patch, which many of you may still be downloading. There’s a lot to love about it. Including:
- Refined Scratch’s fetch behaviour. He will now fetch… pretty much everything.
- Archfey warlocks now get a choice of cantrip at Level 4 as intended.
- Updated the mechanics of Speak with Dead so that you can cast it again if you didn’t ask any questions the first time. (For example, if you’re told the corpse doesn’t want to speak to its killer, and then you cast the spell again in Wild Shape.)
- When you purchase a statue from Boney in the circus, you can now choose to make it look like you in full equipment, in camp clothes, or naked.
- Scratch’s ball will now be harder to lose. If you lost his ball, go see him at camp and he might give it back. (Ball warranty voided for chasm-related accidents.)
- Halsin will no longer spontaneously decide it’d be fun to turn into a bear before he talks to you in Act I.
- Licking the hunk of spider meat in the Gauntlet of Shar might make you sick. You should have listened to Gale.
And most importantly, you can read the recipe for the Emperor’s favorite soup. But, accompanying all of the changes was a mysterious new Achievement that, at present, can’t be completed.
But in its text, we get a hint of what the future holds for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Baldur’s Gate 3 – A New Achievement For An Old Favorite Mode
The achievement in question, which appears in the list of GoG achievements, is titled Foehammer. And you get it when you “complete the game in Honour mode.”
Those of you who have played Baldur’s Gate 3 know that there are currently 3 difficulties, Explorer, Normal, and Tactician. Or “easy”, “medium”, and “choke me, zaddy”, if you prefer. But Honour mode is something new—to Baldur’s Gate, that is.
Because Honour mode has existed before. Divinity: Orginal Sin II, Larian’s previous game of fantasy adventure and exploration, featured “Honour mode.” It was basically an Ironman mode. You get ONE save file for the campaign. It auto-saves whenever characters die. And if you get a game-over, that’s it for your campaign. Save deleted. You died, the end.
And Honour mode was independent of difficulty. So you could play on easy and still absolutely lose your game. But Baldur’s Gate 3 notably lacks an ironman mode. Adding this in, hints not only at the future, but the longevity of the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 really is trying to capture the whole tabletop experience, including getting TPK’d and having to make a new character.
Would you play an Ironman Baldur’s Gate 3 run?
