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Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely trains you in the noble art of savescummingI quicksave this game on average every 6.27 minutes
I quicksave this game on average every 6.27 minutes
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios
That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just a thing. In Dungeons & Dragons in real life, your DM can (depending on your DM) give you some leeway or fudge some things so even if you fail a roll you don’t instantly get your face liquidated. Most DMs I’ve played with will appreciate you making the effort to actuallyroleplay, so if you can think of an appropriate in-character, in-universe response, or reason to role a different skill, eh, they’ll let you. Because the aim is to all have fun together, right?
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsNow that Baldur’s Gate 3 has left early access, vid bud Liam reckons it was worth the wait.Watch on YouTube
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But though the DM inBaldur’s Gate 3isbeautifully voicedto give some flavour to your playthrough, this is a veneer over what is essentially a complicated calculator with no feelings. There might be some goings on in the code to nudge things a little in your favour, but you’ll fail skill checks often enough, often with no way to get out of the failure, that the savescum is the solution. It works! We should have a less negative term for it when it’s basically built in to the process. It’s not scummy, it’s sound common sense. We’d quicksave our way through life if we could.
It’s not just the skill checks in BG3, of course, although they’re certainly the most frequently annoying fails. You can control any character in your party at any time, so you can, for example, take control of the rogueAstarionto lockpick an important chest, but when he fails at that, what recourse? But even combat (which you spend about 70% of your time doing) is hard, and can turn on a dime based on one whiffed fireball. Even though you can talk your way out of a bunch of combat interactions and still be rewarded with XP (which I appreciate), there are still unavoidable ones where BG3 says, “I see you getting that necromancer to self-yeet into a chasm, and raise you a giant skeleton with a gold hat.” So: you save before fights. You save before opening suspicious doors. In a sense, it makes you less risk averse, because there is no risk.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Larian Studios
Disclosure: Former RPS deputy editor Adam Smith (RPS in peace) now works at Larian and is the lead writer for Baldur’s Gate 3. Former contributor Emily Gera also works on it.
