A year on from the launch of revolutionary CRPG behemoth Baldur's Gate 3, developer Larian Studios' ridiculous attention to detail still manages to impress. We don't know how the wizards there managed to predict the strange, bizarre things players would do with their open-ended epic, but they seemingly thought of everything. Vague spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 Act 3 to follow!
YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician has been kicking the tyres and testing weird edge cases to try and get a reaction from the game (thanks, PC Gamer). In Act 3, the player is tasked with gathering the three Netherstones to progress, so the content creator does their best to lose these plot-centric devices. In doing so, Proxy Gate Tactician unearthed some very likely never-before-seen dialogue and a unique non-standard game-over sequence.
They tried to leave the stones in the underwater Iron Thone dungeon, which players only visit once, and doing so leads to some interesting reactions and a mini-quest to get them back, as the stones inevitably find their way back to the docks in the Lower City. By default, they'll be carried by ambushing Sahuagin, but if the player has already killed these fishy foes, they'll end up in the grasping hands of a fishmonger known as Old Troutman, who will sell them back to the player for a pittance. But what if you had already killed Old Troutman, like some Dark Urge psychopath? The stones will turn up inside a fish and wash up on the shore.
Similarly, the Steel Watch Foundry can be irreversibly destroyed, and so trying to dispose of the stones inside before doing so can result in a non-standard game over. A group of kobolds will spawn, having looted the stones from the rubble, and the player will be given just five turns to reclaim them before being met with a unique "Lost the Netherstones" ending.