Highlights
- Players of Baldur's Gate 3 are discovering surprising details, such as a note found on a random Flaming Fist guard's corpse that humanizes the fallen foe.
- The guard's parents can be found in the Elfsong tavern, but there is no way to notify them of their son's death, adding to the moral dilemmas of fighting the Flaming Fist.
- The game's extensive attention to detail, including personal correspondence for many guards, makes the choice to fight them difficult for good-natured characters.
One Baldur's Gate 3 player recently ended up questioning their act of killing "a random guard" that's a fairly typical occurrence in role-playing games, Larian's latest title very much included. They later went online to share that poignant moment with the rest of the fandom, adding to the already substantial list of details that have been surprising Baldur's Gate 3 players since the game's early August release.
Warning! Minor Act 3 spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 ahead.Baldur's Gate 3 players cross ways with plenty of factions during the RPG's lengthy campaign. One of those organizations is the Flaming Fist, a mercenary order operating in the northern half of Faerun's Sword Coast. The group is headquartered in the game's titular city, which the protagonist's party reaches in the third act of Baldur's Gate 3. As is the case with the majority of the RPG's major factions, the player can choose to ally with or against the Flaming Fist.
And though the latter option will instantly appeal to anyone role-playing as a heroic character, the choice to fight the Flaming Fist is not free of moral dilemmas, as recently discovered by Reddit user Hasagine. Namely, after killing a random Flaming Fist guard in the Steel Watch Foundry located in the Lower City region of Baldur's Gate 3, this player went to loot their corpse, only to discover a note that humanized their fallen foe—Gasper Throaks—way more than most RPGs bother to do. The letter, penned by the guard's mother, congratulated the deceased for "finally landing a job with a future," concluding that his parents are going out to the Elfsong tavern in order to celebrate what turned out to be a short-lived career.
The tragic story doesn't necessarily end there, with numerous Baldur's Gate 3 fans pointing out that the guard's parents can actually be found in the Elfsong tavern. And though the player can even talk them up, it doesn't appear that there's a way to notify them of their son's death. Gasper Throaks is also not the only Flaming Fist member who possesses personal correspondence, as many guards encountered throughout the city of Baldur's Gate carry similarly humanizing letters from their loved ones, making the choice to fight them that much more difficult to live with for good-natured characters.
This type of content is just one of many examples illustrating the extensive attention to detail that went into the making of Baldur's Gate 3. Larian's worldbuilding and other efforts have hardly gone unnoticed, given how Baldur's Gate 3 is currently the highest-rated new game of 2023.
Baldur's Gate 3 is out now for PC. A PS5 version releases on September 6, and an Xbox Series X/S version is also in development.
