Baldur's Gate 3 streamer's very honourable honour mode run ends with the "perfect" tragic defeat

If you feel bad about some of the embarrassing or painful deaths your party has suffered in Baldur's Gate 3, it’s well worth checking out how one poor streamer’s attempt to complete an honour mode playthrough as honourably as possible ended. Tragically is the answer, in case you’re wondering.

For the uninitiated, BG3’s honour mode, added to the game late last year, is designed to provide a hardcore challenge for those who just aren’t satisfied by difficulty levels that don’t feel a bit like shoving your nose into a toaster’s bread slot and turning it on. There’s permadeath, a bunch of other stuff with bad vibes, and - up until recently - the threat of getting permanently stuck if you left your hammer at home.

Yet, that’s not enough tough stuff for some players, with streamer WolfheartFPS (thanks, GamesRadar) having decided to add some extra rules and turn an honour mode run into something even more honourable. Naturally, their reward was a tragic death while battling the Netherbrain that made Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke declare “that was perfect” like a proud dad.

As the streamer explains in this video, the honour mode run they were attempting was one that abided by the principles of “actual honour” as they define it. That meant no sneaky tricks like exiting the game upon death, getting help from mods, or looking up the abilities and tendencies of upcoming bosses like a dweeb. Also, no getting tips from their chat, a gameplay aid unique to streamers.

How’d it go? Well, pretty well through the first two acts of the game, a bit less well during Act 3, thanks to a scare from Ansur the undead dragon. Then, they took on the Netherbrain, and things went very badly. First, the streamer accidentally managed to help out the brain with a haste spore grenade.

Then, with just 19 HP left to knock off of the boss in order to defeat it and a killing blow with inflict wounds lined up, the streamer sent Shadowheart on a short walk that led to a fatal turn switch. Boom. Game over.

The moral of the story, as outlined by WolfheartFPS at the end of their video, is basically not to mix haste spore clouds and characters who haven’t got much time left on the potions of speed, especially if you’re nearing the end of a boss fight’s timer. The more you know.

In other Baldur’s Gate 3-related news, the Xbox update that’s designed to rectify the game’s save issues on that platform is now available.