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Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot of quests that feel resonant around this particularly spooky time of year. It has an elaborate haunted house that unravels a sordid saga of love and betrayal. It has vampires and vampire hunters. It has shadow monsters that hide in plain sight until you trigger an ambush. But none of these segments got my heart pumping as much as my trip down to the Iron Throne.
Aesthetically, this return to our old pal Sarevok’s sunken stomping grounds isn’t nearly the creepiest or most unsettling part of the adventure. That would probably have to go to the Mindflayer Colony below Moonrise Towers. It’s a murky prison full of evil fish men and some unpleasant surprises, but the somewhat BioShock-esque decor isn’t doing the heavy lifting on its own. The key here is that it’s one of the only places Baldur’s Gate 3 flips our mechanical expectations on their head to create genuine panic and terror.
The reason I feel my stomach starting to churn every time I approach this quest on a new playthrough is that diabolical timer.
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If you haven’t been here before, I’ll keep it light on story spoilers. But basically, the party has to rescue a group of captive gnomes and a couple important plot characters from an underwater prison run by the Sword Coast’s own Prince of Cringe, Enver Gortash. He’s not exactly thrilled by your submarine escapades, though, and triggers a series of events that will flood the prison and kill anyone in it after six frantic rounds.
If that doesn’t sound like a lot, it really isn’t—especially not if you’re coming into this for the first time without knowing what’s about to happen or how to prepare. Anyone who hasn’t made it back to the sub when that timer expires dies horribly by either drowning or the sudden, crushing pressure of an ocean compressing them into slush.
And of course, this being Baldur’s Gate 3, even the gnome civilians who aren’t relevant to the story have names, relationships, and recorded dialogue if they survive. You aren’t losing generic pawns here. You’re failing well-written people.
(Image credit: Larian)
If you’re not playing Honor Mode, party members who didn’t make it out will have their lifeless bodies wash up on shore where they can be revived by Withers or whatever miraculous magic you might have access to. If you are, you can say goodbye to them forever. And everyone else who can possibly die during this sequence is simply dead as all get out. This can even include one very major NPC with a role to play in the story and a strong connection to one particular member of the party.
Can’t save em all
In almost every other case, undoing a mistake or seeing a different path in Baldur’s Gate 3 is a simple matter of reloading a save. And sure, you could reload back to the very beginning of the Iron Throne quest and try to do it better. But due to the structure of the quest, this isn’t as simple as redoing a boss fight or picking a different dialogue option. This sprawling dungeon with locked cells, flooded corridors, and tough enemies is just grueling enough that the idea of trying again isn’t particularly attractive. It’s designed to make savescumming feel painful and daunting, encouraging you to live with the consequences of your actions.
By giving us a puzzle to solve using the turn-based action economy with lethal consequences for small errors, Larian created a deep well of fear beneath the sea.
On a first playthrough, and unprepared, you may find it’s not even possible to save everyone. I’ve done it once, and it required hours of prep with haste spells, teleportation, portal scrolls, telekinesis—everything I could muster to give me any kind of advantage. You almost have to plan out every action for every character in advance. Even one mistake could mean you find yourself deciding who to leave behind.
As much as it made my heart pound and forced me to experience the cold sting of failure when I had to explain to one of my gnome allies that his loved one didn’t make it, this was easily one of BG3’s best quests. I’ll never forget how it felt the first time through. And even as a very experienced player now, with hundreds of hours across multiple playthroughs, it never feels trivial. It never feels like something I can take for granted if I want everybody to survive.
By giving us a puzzle to solve using the turn-based action economy with lethal consequences for small errors, Larian created a deep well of fear beneath the sea.
Though I try to limit my savescumming, I’ve never had the stomach to brave it out in Honor Mode, where the consequences of all of my mistakes would become permanent. Maybe if I did, I’d come to feel differently about the Iron Throne. At that point, would it just become another life-or-death adventure like any other? Would wandering around the Underdark creep me out just as much as boarding that submersible?
I would love to see more developers try to instill fear by subverting expectations about failure and consequences.
While that may be, the fact that the Iron Throne works the way it does means players like me get to experience a little taste of that permadeath anxiety. It’s easy to be a hero when the F5 key is right there. It’s a true champion who can soldier on when you only have one shot. And so, while it might be Baldur’s Gate 3’s scariest quest, I also found it to be one of the most gratifying. Even though I couldn’t save everyone the first time through, that bittersweet victory felt hard-won and honest.
I would love to see more developers try to instill fear by subverting expectations about failure and consequences. It can be far more effective than a jump scare or an unkillable pursuer like you see in so many more traditional horror games. Especially in an era where run-based games are ascendant, and every defeat is nothing but a new beginning, I long to have the threat of living with a bad outcome held over me. Even if I do succeed, that thrill adds a lot to the experience.
I’ve stood here before, and it never fails to make my throat feel dry. The waves churn. The hatch opens. Those prisoners are down there counting on me.
Here we go again.